By Kunal Mehta
Staff writer
The Spartans’ 2019 football schedule was announced this week, featuring an extremely similar set of teams as the past 2018 season. San Jose State went 1-11 last season, picking up its only win against the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
The home opener will be a non-conference game on Thursday, Aug. 29 against Northern Colorado. The Spartans will meet UNLV again, in Las Vegas this time, and then finish their season at home, hosting rival Fresno State on Nov. 30.
The NCAA Statistics Service rated the Spartans’ 2018 schedule as the 11th toughest with three opponents finishing in the Associated Press Top 25 list.
SJSU will face all three of those teams: Army, Boise State and Fresno State again in 2019. Those three teams all topped the Mountain West Conference last season, going 7-1 in conference play.
On top of that, six of the Spartans’ 2019 opponents played in bowl games a year ago. Students are unsure about whether it makes sense for SJSU football to continue pursuing such a difficult schedule.
“I feel like we should be going for an easier schedule if we can’t win,” aviation junior Alex Zaia said. He said he feels embarrassed about only winning one game last year.
“I don’t tell my friends at Notre Dame and Stanford, who brag about their football team, about ours,” he added. “I pretend we don’t have a football team.”
New recruit Alex Galland has a different perspective. He is a punter from Yale coming to SJSU in 2019 for his master’s degree.
“Every football game is really tough if you look at it,” Galland said. “I can’t really remember a game at Yale where we said ‘that was easy!’ ”
SJSU will continue its four-year series with Army by heading to West Point. Last year, SJSU hosted Army in Santa Clara at Levi’s Stadium for the first meeting of the two schools.
It was the first of four college football games that Levi’s would host, being followed by the Pac-12 Championship, the Red Box Bowl and finally the College Football Playoff Championship.
SJSU athletics media relations director Lawrence Fan explained, “Due to the unique combination of circumstances, San Jose State and the 49ers reached an agreement to play the Army game in Levi’s Stadium.”
SJSU will invite all of its 2019 opponents to play at home in CEFCU stadium and won’t be playing any of those games at Levi’s this season. “The market forces that existed a year ago at this time are not part of San Jose State’s 2019 season,” Fan said.
The team will hit the road in September to face Arkansas for their first road game. This will be the Spartans first time facing off against Arkansas and their first Southeastern conference opponent since Auburn in 2015.
The Spartans have not won an away game since 2016, but have six chances this next season to break that losing streak. The team hopes the new 2019 recruiting class will help improve the its record.
For the past two years, the NCAA has ranked SJSU’s roster as one of the youngest in the nation. However, with more graduate and transfer students like Galland, the Spartans hope to add some more age and experience to the team.
Players are definitely hopeful for the coming season. “We have all the pieces in place now, we just need to play,” Galland said.
