By Matthew Gonzalez — Reporter
Historically SJSU has had a pretty sad track record in terms of its football program.
The Spartans have only had three winning seasons since the start of the millennium which makes it easy to consistently write them off as a non-threat in the conference.
This year however, SJSU has grinded towards a 6-0 record and has established itself as a contender to win the Mountain West this year.
What makes this Spartan team more dynamic than Spartan teams of past seasons is a combination of a maturing roster, a defense that is performing at a higher level than it ever has in recent history and a dynamic quarterbacking situation featuring graduate student Nick Starkel and sophomore Nick Nash.
“We are playing much better defense than we have in years past and that is mostly about players maturing.” said head coach Brent Brennan.
Maturity was a very present idea in Brennan’s explanation of the team’s success.
“I think a big part of it is the maturity. I think there is a big benefit in that struggle.” Brennan said.
Another term that was thrown around by Brennan was “struggle” and how struggling constantly for so long really strengthens the narrative that the football program is in some way innately inferior to other teams in the conference year in and year out.
However it is that very struggle that Brennan feels will pull this team together and help them learn from past mistakes and aim towards ongoing success.
“I think our society is so quick to remove the struggle from people’s process, but where you struggle is where you learn.” Brennan said.
While “where you struggle is where you learn” the Spartans surely hope to shed their poor football identity and limit that struggle moving forward in hopes of consistent success.
The start of that consistent success is this Saturday against Boise State in the Mountain West Championship game.
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