Hoke Assembles Top Notch Staff at SDSU

There is a defensive coordinator in place, Rocky Long, who beat his current employer by an average of nearly 20 points per game during his 11 seasons as head coach at New Mexico. There is an offensive coordinator in the fold, Al Borges, who was referred to by former Auburn coach Pat Dye as “one of the best offensive coordinators I’ve ever seen.” There is a quarterbacks coach on board, Brian Sipe, who returned to his alma mater as one of the program’s most storied players, a former All-American and NFL Most Valuable Player. If San Diego State football coach Brady Hoke was looking to fan the flames of a program whose fire died long ago, his hirings have been the equivalent of tossing a torch into the cargo hold of an oil tanker. Yet unless Long and Sipe can recoup their magic as former college quarterbacks, or Borges is able to find an extra year of eligibility for the three-headed monster that was Ronnie Brown, Cadillac Williams and Jason Campbell at Auburn in 2004, there remains the matter of identifying ability on a team whose talent level is clearly lacking in the rapidly improving Mountain West Conference. – Union-Tribune