San José State Can't Catch a Break
On the Spartans' brutal decade in the Mountain West Conference
“We are not joining this conference simply to compete. We are joining to win, and to build upon our current record of success reflecting San José State’s role as a leader in the classroom, in research and in athletics.”
These were the words of Mohammad Qayoumi, then the president of San José State University, as he announced the school had accepted an invitation to join the Mountain West Conference (MWC) beginning on July 1, 2013.
But aside from one football title in the farcical 2020 season1 – which itself was sandwiched between two 5-7 seasons – the Spartans haven’t done much winning and, unfortunately, have often struggled simply to compete.
In football, they’ve played to a 28-44 record in MWC play, even including the 7-0 season in 2020. Life’s been even less forgiving in men’s basketball, where they’ve gone 21-139 across their nine seasons of MWC play, finishing last in the league in six of those years.2 They routinely get clobbered by the top of the conference: they’ve lost all 17 matchups against Colorado State since they joined the league and are 0-23 against the Rams all-time. It’s not just demoralizing; it’s the type of performance that makes you wonder why they were invited to the conference in the first place.
It’s enticing to just pull up their list of football seasons on Wikipedia and note that they went 11-2 in 2012, and so that must be why the Mountain West came calling, but no; they officially announced their move from the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in May 2012, before that season began, so that’s just a coincidence. Before then, they hadn’t played a winning conference season in football since 2006 or in men’s basketball since 1994, when they were in the Big West.
The true answer is probably some combination of media market and familiarity with the rest of the league. To the first point, the Bay Area is the sixth largest media market in the United States and by far the largest covered by the Mountain West.3 To the second, San José State was a member of the spectacular failure that was the late ‘90s WAC superconference. Eight members from that conference split off to form the MWC in 1999 and the MWC has since pulled almost exclusively from the WAC in searching for replacement and expansion members during conference realignment.4 The most likely explanation is that Mountain West leadership saw a WAC member in the Bay Area and got dollar signs in their eyes.
San José State was, of course, elated to receive the invitation.5 I’m sure they’re not quite as elated at the results they’ve seen in revenue sports. This year was no exception to the brutality the Spartans have suffered in league play: they went 3-5 in football and 1-17 in men’s basketball. And tomorrow begins the Mountain West Conference Tournament, during which the Spartans will attempt yet again to break one of the most depressing streaks in the sport.
San José State has not won a conference tournament game since 2011. They’ve only played in the Mountain West since the 2014 season, meaning they have yet to win a Mountain West Conference Tournament game. The MWC invites every team in the league to their tournament, so – except for 2015, when San José State was academically ineligible – the Spartans have played in the conference tournament every year and lost their first game every year.6 Per my own research, their 0-7 record in conference tournament games since joining the Mountain West is matched in futility by only Maine, a program that hasn’t won a conference tournament game since 2005 and is historically among the very worst in Division I. Almost every other school that has failed to win a conference tournament game in this timeframe is either new to D1 or a member of the Ivy League.7
There’s nothing fun about this. Unlike many schools so mired in basketball misfortune, San José State is among the largest universities in the country, with 33,000 students as of Fall 2020 and an alumni base of over 275,000. That’s a pretty huge fanbase suffering through this dry spell. As on any team, the players give their all, night in and night out; senior guards Caleb Simmons and Trey Smith8 have stuck with the Spartans since the 2018 and 2019 seasons, respectively. And beginning this season, the Spartans are coached by journeyman and general stand-up guy Tim Miles, who deserves success more than just about any coach in the game.
The Spartans, the 11 seed in this year’s MWC Tournament, draw 6-seed Fresno State in the first round, Wednesday at 7pm EST on the Mountain West Network. KenPom gives San José State a slim 10% chance of winning; Bart Torvik gives them an even slimmer 7% chance. If this year is anything like 2019 – the last time the Spartans’ only conference win was their home game against New Mexico – they’ll lose by 31.
San José State is a longshot to end the streak this year. But hell if I won’t be pulling for ‘em for 40 minutes and beyond.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, San José State did not play a non-conference schedule and the Mountain West played a shortened conference slate, made even shorter by the fact most teams had at least one game cancelled due to pandemic complications. The Spartans went 6-0 and defeated Boise State in the championship game to claim the title before getting slaughtered by Ball State in the Arizona Bowl to finish the year 7-1. No fans were permitted to attend any of their eight games.
Out of 11 teams in the conference, San José State has also finished ninth in 2017, tenth in 2020, and ninth in 2021.
The next largest is Denver (16th), which includes Fort Collins: home of Colorado State.
Discounting Colorado College, an associate member for women’s soccer only, every school who has ever played in the MWC had played in the WAC beforehand. The only school who did not come directly from the WAC was TCU, who was a member of the late ‘90s superconference, but spent a few interim years in Conference USA before joining the MWC from 2005 to 2012.
Some in the Bay Area even called it revenge for breaking up the WAC in 1999, which is nonsensical to me given a) it’s clear the superconference was doomed from the jump, and b) wouldn’t that connotation imply that adding San José State was a bad thing?
Yes, even in 2020; the Mountain West was one of the few conferences to finish its tournament before the pandemic shut everything down.
The Ivy League did not hold a conference tournament until 2017 and did not play either the 2020 or 2021 tournaments due to COVID-19. They have played just three conference tournaments, and in each, they have invited only the top four teams in their eight-team league.
Smith has not played since February 5 and is evidently injured and out for the season.