#57 San Diego State

San Diego, CA

Snapdragon Stadium

September 3, 2022

SDSU 20 - Arizona 38 (ESPN Recap)

Swinging through Oakland and San Diego for work the second half of this week and was able to extend the San Diego part for an extra 12 hours to hit stadium number 57. A couple of cool aspects to this game going in: 1) it was my first breaking in of a stadium, as the Aztecs have their first dedicated football facility called Snapdragon Stadium which is more intimate than Qualcomm. 2) One of my former favorite

players who I saw play in my trip to Nevada is now the RB coach for SDSU (#19 Donnel Pumphrey).

12:30pm PST kickoff allowed for a solid 2.5 hours of tailgating, cornhole, and new stadium festivities. I won a cookie with a carnival game of throwing a cornhole bag at a bottle. Partnered up with Taj for some doubles with busting cornhole and held the court without a loss. Luckily, met Dave and Holly who were gracious hosts. Holly is a competitive triathlete who my wife mistook for being 15 years old in this picture. Dave has been doing an annual college football trip with a core crew of 6 guys to a different stadium every year for the past 26 years. We had a lot to talk about and they hooked it up with a great breakfast burrito bar for lunch. Their son is a freshman at SDSU and Holly is an alum, thus the excuse for a sick tailgate. Also enjoyed watching Michigan run away with their week 1 win to easily cover 28. SDSU outperforms its tailgating for a group

of 5 school. Big alum turnout for home games from all over the west coast (Portland, Sacramento, LA, SF). It was impressive. Arizona traveled pretty well to the game and probably had 3-4k fans.

Lots of similarities to the energy and stadium to that of Cincinnati last year (even the color schemes are similar). What was not similar was the on-field product. As a devout SDSU fan 5 years ago, and someone who follows all teams decently closely, this year’s SDSU team has a huge defensive fall off from vintages past. I went into the game holding an Aztecs -5 ticket for a large amount of money and was pleased with the number closing at -6.5. After Q1 I was not pleased and knew I had to do some in-game betting to hedge out of my position. Arizona is transfer-laden and had receivers that were operating at will against the secondary of SDSU. Jacob Cowing (#2) and Dorian Singer (#5) combined for 14 balls, 209 yards, and 3 touchdowns. They were always able to get open, leading to AZ scoring on its first 4 possessions. I hedged with tickets on Arizona -11.0 and the Arizona 2H TTO 10.0 to narrow the game into only a slight loss. Had a monster day elsewhere so it was a great Week 1 overall. San Diego St has traditionally struggled to throw the ball and this game was no exception with 62 yards through the air. They ran decently, but trailed all game so it put them in an unwinnable spot out of their comfort zone.

The downside of going to a stadium-opening on a Week 1 game against a real opponent is that it was a hard ticket to get. No scalpers had any inventory and I was forced to buy on SeatGeek for $70 into the upper decks 30 mins before kickoff. Lucky for me, it was a 100 degrees scorcher and more than half of the lower bowl was empty with all of those fans watching from the shaded areas of the concourse. I sat

5th row at the 43 yard line for the whole game. I counted close to 10 ambulances and stretchers pulling fans out of the game who passed out of heat exhaustion and/or dehydration.

I knew I would be taking a photo of DJ Pumphrey somewhere in the stadium, and sure enough, got him on the screen during Q4 talking about Heisman top 10 finalists in school history.

Captured a cool video of a reckless 4th -down play call that resulted in the only offensive touchdown for SDSU of the game. This score cut the score to 17-10 Arizona with 3 mins left in 1H, but that was as close as they would ever get.

Weird self-inflicted blocked punt in endzone for Arizona which led to the other SDSU TD of the game.

When SDSU gets good again, SnapDragon is going to be rocking home field advantage. I took a Lyft up to the Bullpen to watch all the primetime games on 100 TVs, before hitching the redeye back to FL.

CU Boulder @ Air Force next week for #58 with Rory.