For the second year in a row, San Jose State University was scheduled to play "Eastern Football" in its September 19, 2020 non-conference game against Big Ten opponent Penn State, picked by many to be one of the top-five teams in the country this season.
"Eastern Football," defined as college football in the New England area and Mid-Atlantic states of Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, has a gritty, urban, working class feel different from East Coast football which would include West Virginia, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and all states south along the Atlantic Ocean with more of the campus atmosphere surrounding its gridiron shrines.
A year ago, San Jose State traveled cross country in late October, headquartered in New Jersey, crossed the New Jersey/New York state border on its way to the banks of the Hudson River for its first Eastern Football experience with Army West Point. The 34-29 road victory over the Cadets meant San Jose State became the 20th school with victories over the three Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) military service academies – Army West Point, Navy, and Air Force.
#10 vs. THE BIG TEN CANCELED - WHAT WAS & WHAT WAS MISSED
"I remember scrolling through social media and when the Big Ten announced conference play only, it was a game we were looking forward to. It was a bummer to see we weren't going to play a big-time school, have a full season, and show what we can do," said Kyle Hoppe, a two-year returning starter at center.
At least during pregame activities of the San Jose State-Penn State game, Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin and Spartans' running backs coach and recruiting coordinator Alonzo Carter likely would have exchanged pleasantries in person. During the spring and summer weeknights, Franklin would be one of Carter's participants in the West Coast ZOOM Clinics that attracted hundreds of minority football coaches in a forum to listen, learn and network for themselves, their families and their players dealing with #BlackLivesMatter and COVID-19 issues and challenges.
Other football ties between the Spartans and Nittany Lions are relatively sparse and loosely knotted. When San Jose State was looking for a new football head coach after the 1968 season, Penn State assistant Joe McMullen answered the call. McMullen had 11 years of head coaching experience with six winning seasons before joining the Penn State staff in 1965. The 1968 Nittany Lions finished with a perfect 11-0 record, an Orange Bowl win over #6-Kansas, and was ranked #2 in the final Associated Press poll behind Ohio State.
What seemed like a great coaching hire for San Jose State lasted 13 games ending with the third game of the 1970 season and only three victories.
Total up the crowds for those three wins against Oregon, Pacific and UC Santa Barbara and it would be about 1/3 of the Beaver Stadium capacity of 106,000-plus, potentially the largest crowd ever to see San Jose State play football. The other two times the Spartans played before more than 100,000 spectators were the 2002 game at Ohio State in front of 104,892 and the 2010 season opener at #1-ranked Alabama with 101,821 in attendance.
"Penn State is one of the perennial powerhouses in college football. It's not often you get to play against a school like Penn State. Everyone was looking forward to it and it would have been a great experience for us to see how far we've come, be a gauge as to where we are at, and how much further we need to go as far as being an elite program," said senior linebacker Tysyn Parker, who has 13 starts in his first three seasons with the Spartans.
Ohio State, Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin are the "traditional" Big Ten teams on San Jose State list of all-time opponents with the Spartans showing a 2-7 overall record. San Jose State also played at Nebraska twice when the Cornhuskers were a Big-12 Conference powerhouse.
BEATING BIG TEN TEAMS
Check out the statistical similarities in San Jose State's wins over Big Ten opponents Minnesota indoors in 1992 and Illinois outdoors in 2002.
| SJSU vs. Minnesota | SJSU vs. Illinois | |
| Points | 39 | 38 |
| First Downs | 33 | 31 |
| Total Offense | 535 | 517 |
| Total Plays | 83 | 89 |
| Turnovers | 1 | 0 |
| Punts | 4 | 4 |
| Penalties | 8 | 8 |
| Possession Time | 37:30 | 36:30 |
The Spartans never trailed by more than seven points and were never behind in the second half in both wins.
FINISHING THE JOB – THE SPARTANS' FIRST BIG TEN WIN
San Jose State played Minnesota in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in 1991 and 1992. The 1991 game was the Spartans' first in a dome since a 1971 trip to the Astrodome in a 34-20 loss to the University of Houston.
The Metrodome staff took on the unenviable task of converting a baseball diamond for a Saturday afternoon Minnesota Twins game to a college football field for the Spartans and Golden Gophers Saturday night and then to a NFL configuration Sunday afternoon for the Minnesota Vikings-San Francisco 49ers game. Minnesota had just enough to hold off San Jose State, 26-20.
"Going back there the next year (1992), I thought, 'We're going against an opponent we can compete against, hang right in there, and give them a run for it.' It turned out to be a great day for the Spartans. We ran the ball effectively for over 200 yards rushing and threw the ball for over 300 yards. I thought we were very efficient and had a little luck on our side with a fumble recovery in the end zone," quarterback Jeff Garcia remembered recently about the victory. He gave Minnesota fits completing 20-of-32 for 302 yards and two TDs and scored on second half runs of 1 and 12 yards. Seen weekly before and after 49ers games as a NBC Sports Bay Area pro football analyst, Garcia was the back-up quarterback to starter Matt Veatch in the 1991 game.
The Spartans relentless running attack consisted of starting halfback Donald Lindsey with 16 carries for 54 hard-fought yards, Garcia's 10 carries for 58 yards, and newcomer Nathan DuPree, then, a little-known Bakersfield College transfer who wound up the game's leading rusher with 19 carries for 97 yards.
Garcia's reference to a little bit of luck turned out to be San Jose State's go-ahead, stay-ahead touchdown early in the third quarter.
Trailing, 13-12, at the start of the second half, the Spartans took the kickoff, marched down the field and was at the 1-yard line. Lindsey was called on to finish the drive and give the Spartans the lead. Instead, it was offensive tackle Todd Ranney who did the honors being in the right place at the right time.
"It was an inside run play. I was combo blocking out to the linebacker and I got to the second level, saw the ball pop out of Donald's hands and essentially, the ball landed at my feet. I jumped on it, scooped it up, and ended up with a touchdown," said Ranney, who manages and owns a real estate business in his hometown of Lompoc, Calif. He also agreed with Garcia about the team's mindset on the return trip to Minnesota.
"So, going back that following year, it kind was a theme in the locker room that we can play with these Big Ten guys," remembered Ranney.
A TURN(ER) AROUND PLUS THE BIG THINGS IN SMALL PACKAGES IN 2002
San Jose State was given no chance in the 2002 game at Illinois. The Spartans' schedule that season was 13 games in 13 weeks. The Illinois game was the fourth consecutive road game to open the year and followed one-sided losses at #14-Washington, 34-10, and a 63-26 humiliation at Stanford. Plus, Illinois was coming off a Big Ten championship and a 2002 New Year's Day Sugar Bowl appearance. Ron Turner, the Spartans' head coach in the 1992 win at Minnesota, was in his sixth of eight season as the Fighting Illini head coach.
Then San Jose State head coach Fitz Hill had a team with only 62 scholarship players by his count and shortened practices by 30 minutes twice a week in order to get the team through a season without a bye and a game at #5-ranked Ohio State three weeks after the Illinois win.
Compounding the Illinois challenge was a delayed charter flight to the Midwest. The Spartans did not arrive at their hotel until close to 8:00 p.m. and kickoff the next day was 1:00 p.m. or the equivalent of 11:00 a.m. (PT). Back up the game-day schedule starting with the pregame meal at a body clock time of 7:00 a.m. (PT), time zone adjustments, and there should be no way for the visiting team to be even close come halftime.
Illinois had to complete a seven-play, 80-yard drive to go into halftime tied, 21-21. The Spartans had established their passing game early taking advantage of quarterback Scott Rislov's accuracy and the speed and route running by wide receivers Kendrick Starling, Charles Pauley, and Jamall Broussard. San Jose State also had 6-foot-7 tight end Courtney Anderson, who would go on to a four-season NFL career with Oakland, Detroit, and Atlanta, also occupying the Fighting Illini defense. It was Anderson scoring the game's first touchdown on a 4-yard pass from Rislov, who threw for 402 yards.
The rest of San Jose State's scoring came from two of its smallest players. Kicker Nick Gilliam's listed height of 5-foot-8 was generous, but it was 5-foot-4, 143-pound running back Lamar Ferguson who proved his heart is bigger than size.
"Ferg," whose 196 yards on 10 carries in a 2001 win over Tulsa remains the Spartan record for average yards per carry in a game, would finish the Illinois win with a game-high 19 carries, his personal single-game mark. Only three of those runs were for seven or more yards and just one of them resulted in a first down for his final total of 47 yards.
But, three of his six 1-yard runs and one of his two 2-yard carries produced a school-record tying four rushing touchdowns and put the Spartans ahead, 35-28, with 6:14 remaining in the game.
Two possessions later, the Fighting Illini fought back with a game-tying 80-yard touchdown drive leaving San Jose State 1:21 to go.
The Spartans used all of it with three Rislov completions, two to Starling and the last one to Tuati Wooden. Ferguson's final carry was a 9-yard first down run out of bounds to the Illinois 18-yard line. Two plays later with 0:04 on the clock, Gilliam took the field for a 37-yard field goal attempt.
Gilliam had a solid day kicking converting five PATs and sending five of his six kickoffs into the end zone for touchbacks. His 12th right-legged swing of the day was just as true.
"I always know right away if it's good or bad. As soon as I kicked it, I knew it was good. I wasn't surprised, but I was so excited. It made me feel good coming through for my teammates and letting them know I'll make plays, too," said Gilliam after the win.
"This is my Super Bowl beating a Big Ten team with a field goal. It's a dream," Gilliam added about the reality San Jose State was heading home with a 2-2 record.
"Man, oh man, they (Illinois) were good. I take my hat off to those guys, but we have a very nice wide receiver corps and they underestimated us a lot. We went out and focused on what we had to do and put the hype behind us," Starling said after catching seven passes for 167 yards.
"We had played Arkansas State earlier that year when we opened with them down here in Little Rock. When I talked with their coaches, they said, "With your speed, y'all can beat them,'" remembered former San Jose State football head coach Fitz Hill in a recent phone conversation. One his college teammates was Arkansas State head coach Steve Roberts, whose team lost to San Jose State, 33-18, in the 2002 opener and was thumped 59-7 by Illinois a week before the Fight Illini hosted the Spartans.
"Defensively, they (Illinois) were very predictable. And, maybe for us, they didn't think they had to do a lot to defend us as a team. So that may be one reason we had over 400 yards passing (500 yards of total offense). They were very vanilla on defense. Everything they were going to do, that's what they did.
"Winning on the road in the Big Ten is always tough. Here's the deal. You know as a coach, if get to the fourth quarter and you have a chance to win the game, that's all you can hope for in that environment. And, we didn't beat ourselves. We came down, kicked the field goal and won the game," Hill said. He also pointed to the Spartans overall team speed as a crucial element of surprise in the win.
NOTES: Gilliam's game-winning field goal against Illinois is the last time the Spartans won on a final play of a game. The non-conference win was the first of a three-game winning streak that included triumphs over UTEP and at SMU before losing at Ohio State, fittingly, on Columbus Day... San Jose State traveled roughly 26,000 air miles for seven of its nine road games in 2002. The Spartans only needed bus transportation for games at Stanford and at Nevada... San Jose State University women's tennis head coach Chad Skorupka was a four-year starter for the Penn State men's tennis team and a 1993 Rolex Region I doubles champion. Skorupka started his coaching career in 1996 at his alma mater as the women's assistant coach. He was named the 1998 ITA East Region Assistant Coach of the Year.