Thursday, Sept. 11, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
If nothing else, you would think that if it's possible for San Diego State, picked for next-to-last place in the Mountain West Conference preseason poll, to go into Ohio Stadium and play their Aztecs off in nearly shocking the defending national champions, it would give UNLV some hope at No. 14 Wisconsin Saturday.
After all, the Rebels were picked to finish sixth -- one spot ahead of SDSU -- in the MWC poll.
But when I asked UNLV coach John Robinson if there was anything he could take from San Diego State's "Any Given Saturday" effort in a 16-13 loss to the Buckeyes and apply it to the Rebels' game in America's Dairyland, he offered a sour milk response.
"No," he said, making me feel as if I had just auditioned for a part in "Dumb and Dumber."
But at least Robinson was willing to embellish his one-word reply.
"Each week is different," he said. "I don't think you can pay attention one way or the other. Why is it when you play golf one day you shoot 110, and the next day you shoot 130?"
That's easy, coach. Because I stink at golf. But using Robinson's analogy, what I was trying to get at is how you can shoot 90 one week and 68 the next, which is basically what San Diego State did.
A week before they held Ohio State without an offensive touchdown, the Aztecs struggled to beat Eastern Washington -- a Division I-AA school -- 19-9. Go figure.
Or if you're like Robinson, don't bother. He said there's no rhyme or reason why teams get up for some games and come out flat for others.
"Sometimes as fans we look for consistent performance, but you don't get it," he said. "It's not as definable as it is in our personal lives, and it (the fluctuation in performance) seems so exaggerated when you see it in sports."
Perhaps part of the reason for the mood swings is that football is such an emotional game in the first place. I mean, when was the last time you saw a baseball team get in a huddle and start jumping up and down, slapping each other upside the head before the first pitch?
Every time I hear a coach talk about coming out flat or looking past somebody, I used to think it was a weak excuse. If an entire season consists of 12 games and an entire career of 48 -- and if every game is so crucial to the pursuit of a championship, as it is in college football -- then why wouldn't a team be jacked up like an old Buick for every game?
"You would think that it would be that way, but it doesn't happen," said Rebels assistant coach Bruce Snyder, who compiled a 126-106-5 record as a head coach at Arizona State, California and Utah State.
Curiously, Snyder believes that because there are comparatively so few games and that football is so driven by emotional surges and spikes, it actually makes it more difficult to achieve an even keel.
"I think all of the sports have a degree of emotion, but I don't think you can become real emotional and hit a baseball," Snyder said. "But in football, you may have to run and climb over five guys to make a tackle. There's an emotional drive to that energy and you can show it in football, where in other sports you can't show it as much."
Also, in other sports, once you attain an emotional peak it's easier to maintain it, because the schedule is more continuous. In baseball, for instance, if a team is involved in a pennant race on Thursday, it's still going to be in one on Friday. And when the Cubs and Cardinals get together for a key series in September, it lasts for a minimum of three consecutive days.
Applying Snyder's logic, would Sammy Sosa be able to achieve the same mental edge if the Cubs played the Cardinals on Saturday, then took a week off before playing somebody like the Mets or Padres, where it really wouldn't matter which bat he happened to pick up?
Maybe Snyder has a point.
"This is what I think, and maybe I'm old school," Snyder said. "But I really believe in raising the floor of your performance, as opposed to the ceiling. I think through your winter workouts, your weightlifting sessions, you learn how to work at a certain level with emotion, then that becomes your floor.
"You want it so you don't have that dip (between games)."
Given that the mental aspects of college football are so important, I asked Snyder why schools don't forsake some graduate assistants for a team psychologist, as many NFL teams have done.
Well, unless you can picture Sigmund Freud in a houndstooth hat or coaching shorts, you can probably understand the reluctance.
"The first thing about psychologists is that they are a little weird," Snyder said with a wink. "I believe they are best (at understanding) the individual sports. In baseball, a pitcher won't pitch until he's ready; in track, an athlete won't jump until he's ready. I think psychologists would struggle with the group mentality more than they do the individual mentality."
Snyder said because he has never completely understood the mental ups and downs of college football, he's interested in learning what causes them, and he's not the only one. Concerned by his players' inability to hold onto passes in their first two games, South Carolina's Lou Holtz said he's considering having "quiet time" at Gamecocks practice.
"We're looking at putting them in a relaxation period, which I've done so many times with the entire football team," he said of his receivers.
Before most home games last year, Holtz had his players lie on the locker room floor, turned off the lights, and told them to visualize doing something positive to help South Carolina win.
Maybe that's what happened to Ohio State last weekend. Maybe the Buckeyes decided to just lie down for San Diego State -- and they never got up.
Snyder said as much as he likes to play amateur psycholgist, winning tends to keep a team off the leather sofa.
"My undefeated team at Arizona State, once they got to 4-0, they could taste it," he said of the 1996 Sun Devils, who went 11-0 during the regular season, coming up a few plays short of the national championship in the Rose Bowl. "They took the momentum and just ran with it.
"All I did was get out of the way and make sure they had the right plays."
No need to analyze that. Thankfully, there are still times in football where X's and O's are more important than ink blots.
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