Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Football Beat Reporter
“Coach’s Corner” is three haphazard observations made by football beat reporter Matt Weiner from SJSU head coach Brent Brennan’s weekly press conference. One will find themselves immersed in a splattering of football-related thoughts. Some intelligent, some well…we’ll let you figure that one out yourself.
Lights, Camera, MACtion!
Spartan fans got a taste of the Mid-American Conference, more commonly known as the MAC, last year when San Jose State took on Western Michigan in Kalamazoo.
Is he on an inflatable donkey? Poney? Bronco? Who knows. The point being, that wacky stunts like these are the Kool-Aid many college football fans drink to fall in love with the MAC.
The Kool-Aid also includes a brand of football that pinballs between discombobulated and drunken.
Ipso facto:
You can convince me into thinking the balls are lathered in Johnson’s Baby Oil before each game.
SJSU head coach Brent Brennan has also bought into the cult.
“I love the fact that they play the once-a-week stuff, Wednesday and Tuesday night. I think that’s cool,” Brennan said. “I’m always up for more football on TV on different nights.”
Pound your fists on the table and start the “One of us” chants.
The MAC has become the bridge to get you through the torturous drought of no football between the end of MNF and the beginning of TNF (please excuse yourself from this column if you don’t know what MNF or TNF stands for. I have no time for amateurs).
Perhaps, the farcical plays that belong in a college football circus act are toned down since the game will be played on Saturday and not Tuesday. Nonetheless, expect some football that will spin your head like a dreidel and leave it flying off the shoulders it rests on.
Bye, Bye, Bye
Coming off the team’s lone bye week of 2022, SJSU fans are hoping the Spartans will be *NSYNC (All virtual tomatoes can be thrown @mattweiner20).
Bye weeks are always a glass half empty half full situation. One can come up with plenty of reasons why it’s either convenient or a detriment.
“Bye weeks are always tricky, sometimes we are good, sometimes we are not good, it just depends on the team,” said Brennan. “I wish I had the bye week formula.”
This current bye week could be a helping hand because players are given an extra week to rest and recover following the bout with Auburn. The Spartans were in a 60-minute physically grueling rock fight in which they were physically outmatched and had to play in Alabama’s relentless heat and humidity.
It’s a negative because the Spartans will have to play the next 10 straight weeks.
One other challenge the bye week presents is giving too much time.
“I’ve been a part of that before where we carry too much offense or defense into a game and couldn’t execute at a high level so there’s a real fine line there,” said Brennan.
The Spartans have gone 2-2 following the bye during Brennan’s six-year tenure (COVID 2020 season didn’t include a bye week). One of the two wins came against Arkansas in 2019, which has been stamped as one of the marquee wins in program history.
With circumstances rapidly changing from one year to the next, it’s hard for any patterns to be dissected. No better example of this is Nick Starkel being Arkansas’ quarterback in 2019 and then transferring to SJSU in 2020 and helping the Spartans win a Mountain West title.
Time To Get Serious
When the presser was thought to be over, Brennan addressed and congratulated Utah State head coach Blake Anderson for speaking up about mental health in a video posted on Twitter linked below.
“You couldn’t watch that and not feel it,” Brennan said.
“His story is incredible and I think what they are doing with this game has a chance to help somebody. What he did, his message and his sincerity, I showed it to the team this morning. I think it showed incredible courage and just speaks to what kind of guy he is.”
Anderson lost his wife Wendy to breast cancer in 2018, six months later he lost his father and a year later his brother was diagnosed with colon cancer.
While it wasn’t seen on the surface, it took a tremendous toll on Anderson’s son Cason, leading him to take his own life earlier this year in February.
“He never let any of us know,” Anderson said. “There were no red flags. There were no warning signs. He always made sure to tell you he was OK. If you are hurting, if you are dealing with dark thoughts, if you’re depressed, if you’re dealing with grief so heavy that you don’t know what to do with it: Please, reach out.”
Kudos to Brennan for taking the time to bring it up and spreading the video and the message even further.
Congratulations on making it to the end of Coach’s Corner. If you found yourself not hating this with the fire of a thousand suns, allow to me introduce you to his brother/sister/cousin Water Cooler Talk.