WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY HILL'S FRESNO STATE TEAM WINS DESPITE LOCATION, REPUTATION.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

FRESNO - When Fresno State football coach Pat Hill visits a recruit he is having to wrestle away from other schools, he sits down with the player and draws a square on a blank piece of paper. It's an overhead view of a house in the desert. On each side of the square is a window.

Hill then asks the recruit if he plants a rose by each window and gives it the same amount of water and fertilizer, why will one rose grow stronger, look prettier and smell sweeter than the rest? ``The answer,'' Hill said, ``is because it's in the right window.''

The Fresno State football program, like virtually everything else about the Central Valley's hub city, has grown exponentially in the past two decades.

Not so long ago, it was among schools that no longer play football, such as Pacific, Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton. Now, Fresno State occasionally outdraws and even beats some Pacific-10 schools.

The Bulldogs will get another much-coveted crack at one Tuesday when they play UCLA in the Silicon Valley Classic in San Jose.

Fresno State's ambitions these days aren't limited to beating the big boys but joining them. Yet the question that nags the school - as it tries to overcome a reputation for academic compromise, its Cal State Commuter School status, and being in, well, Fresno - is the same one Hill asks of recruits.

Is it in the right window?

Hill, naturally, believes it is. He has turned away overtures from California and Arizona in recent years and has a five-year, incentive-laden rollover contract that this year will pay him just about the $600,000 that will be earned by UCLA coach Karl Dorrell.

Hill looks out his window and sees all the football talent available in California, a red wave of potential fan support from the 5 million people who live between Bakersfield and Sacramento, and his vision is clear.

``I want to be a legitimate top-20 team and get to a BCS game,'' said Hill, in his seventh season. ``Why shouldn't we be competing for the same prize as everyone else? It can happen here.''

In fact, it nearly did. Two years ago, Fresno State stunned three top-25 teams to open the season - Colorado, Oregon State and Wisconsin - and by mid-October, the Bulldogs were ranked No. 8 in the nation, had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated and there was talk of them crashing the Fiesta Bowl.

Then, back-to-back losses to Boise State and Hawaii and - pffft - they were gone. They haven't been ranked since the end of that season.

Outside looking in

One of the debates that percolates in college athletics centers around the grip the six major conferences - Pac-10, Big Ten, Big XII, SEC, ACC and Big East - hold on the purse strings of college football.

If you're not a member of those conferences or independent Notre Dame, it's nearly impossible to land a berth in one of the four Bowl Championship Series games (Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar) - and with it a $12.1 million payout. Thus, the rich get richer and the poor get ... the Silicon Valley Classic, where Fresno State finds itself for the fourth consecutive year.

A group of college presidents from non-BCS schools, calling this a cartel, have taken their protests to Congress.

Until the playing field is leveled, Fresno State - now in the Western Athletic Conference - is one of the few schools outside the BCS interested in fighting an uphill battle. Mount Everest is more like it.

The Bulldogs schedule the best teams of the BCS and wait for 2001 to happen again. This season, they played at Oklahoma and Tennessee, ranked No. 3 and No. 6, and Oregon State.

The results were two lopsided losses and a victory.

Next September, Fresno State will travel to Washington and has an open date they're trying to fill with Minnesota. A tentatively scheduled date with USC recently fell through. Since Hill arrived, they've also played Ohio State, UCLA and Oregon - like Wisconsin and Colorado, all on the road.

Sometimes, they even pay for the privilege - guaranteeing two-thirds of their $600,000 payout to play Colorado two years ago in the Black Coaches Association game.

Few teams come to Fresno for two reasons: the Bulldogs are 3-0 there against BCS teams and it's not quite like selling a weekend in San Diego or Honolulu to alums. Now, Fresno State is trying to schedule two-for-one series with Big XII and SEC schools, with the return trip in the Bay Area.

``We'll play anybody any time, anywhere,'' Hill said. ``If you don't put your chips on the table, you're not going to make it as a non-BCS school. If you want to eat at the table with the big guys, you have to play 'em and beat 'em.''

Hill believes that with 16 starters expected back next year, he'll have the talent the next two seasons to pull it off.

But there is a rub. This is not a no-lose, give-it-the-old-college-try proposition for Fresno State. That sound you hear is the window of opportunity sliding shut.

At a crossroads

Although Fresno State can notch its second consecutive nine-win season with a victory over UCLA, the Bulldogs have won just one WAC title in Hill's tenure and that was in 1999.

Also, attendance began to dip this season - none of the six home games sold out and the average attendance of 38,603 was the lowest in four years. Ticket sales to the bowl game have also been tepid.

``If the windfall doesn't come, it's hard to maintain,'' athletic director Scott Johnson said. ``There's the tendency to not get enough respect for the conference schedule and the players don't get as excited about those games.''

The BCS contract expires after the 2006 season and negotiations on a new system will begin next year. It was the impetus for the Miami-led defections from the Big East to the ACC that kicked off wholesale realignments as schools scramble to move into the new BCS picture.

Fresno State's long-term goal is to move into the Pac-10, along with Hawaii or San Diego State. Most of its stadium facilities - beginning with the $103 million, 16,000-seat basketball arena, the Save Mart Center - are already the envy of Pac-10 schools.

The privately financed arena showed that produce isn't the only green in Fresno. The Bulldog Foundation raised $7.7 million in ticket renewals and donations during its five-week fund drive. The next projects are a $5 million locker room and academic center, a $70 million project that will expand Bulldog Stadium to seat 50,000 and a new athletic department complex.

``A lot of farmers have Lear jets in their barns, not cattle,'' Johnson said. ``We're no different than Silicon Valley. Their business is computers, ours is agriculture.''

Money, though, can only buy so much. The Pac-10 presidents said last summer they had no intention of expanding. Moreover, they would frown on Fresno State's absence of doctoral programs or a medical center; as a CSU school it was founded as a teacher's college.

Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen said if the Pac-10 did expand, it would look toward Texas and Colorado - research institutions that could deliver new TV audiences.

``Fresno State wouldn't meet the profile we'd be seeking,'' Hansen said. ``The reason for expansion is increasing TV homes and therefore it would be very unlikely we would take in members that are in the current TV footprint. The other thing is that our presidents only consider major research institutions.''

Also looking dim for the moment are the prospects of moving into the Mountain West Conference. The eight-team conference is looking to expand, but the first candidates are Boise State and Texas Christian.

``People don't understand the mountain you have to climb if you're not in the BCS,'' Johnson said. ``Where would Oregon State and Washington State be without the Pac-10 affiliation? That sustained Oregon State for two decades.''

Ultimate underdog

With his Fu Manchu mustache, sweat-stained baseball cap and his leatherneck attitude, Hill is more than the face of the Fresno State football team. He is its personality - equal parts underdog and Bulldog.

As he walked around practice last week, Hill stopped to watch the offensive linemen firing out of a stance to hit a blocking sled. He was quiet until it was time for sophomore tackle Dartagnon Shack - a 6-foot-2, 275-pound converted guard who will line up against UCLA All-American end Dave Ball - to take his turn.

``Ball's going to look at Shack like he's got bulimia,'' Hill shouted, then paused. ``But my money's on Shack.''

Later, in his office, when Hill is asked if he's beaten USC or UCLA for a player, he doesn't take long to think about it. ``Never,'' he said.

Fresno State had been recruiting UCLA guard Eyoseph Efseaff in nearby Porterville for eight months until the Bruins swooped in. Former UCLA cornerback Ricky Manning, a Fresno native now in the NFL, never considered Fresno State. Neither did USC fullback Brandon Hancock, who played at Clovis West High with two of Hill's sons.

``I always idolized the Bulldogs,'' said Hancock, a former ball boy who referred to them as ``we'' during an interview. ``But my junior year I realized it was too small of a fish bowl for me. I had the chance to go to Stanford, Notre Dame and USC. Those have great academics. And you can't have the Coliseum at Fresno State.''

Playing smart

The typical Fresno State player is a leftover, either overlooked or undervalued. Yet, there have been 21 Bulldogs to play in the NFL in the past six years. Fresno State has three quarterbacks in the NFL - David Carr, Billy Volek and Trent Dilfer. That's three more than UCLA. And it might have another in sophomore Paul Pinegar.

``We might not always get the biggest, the tallest or the fastest, but the guys we get are special,'' Hill said. ``They all love to play.''

Hill, who attended Crespi High of Encino and Valley College, used to walk around UC Riverside in overalls when he played center there for former UCLA coach Bob Toledo. If he acts the rube, his football pedigree is blue blood.

He spent five years as an NFL assistant, four of them under Bill Belichick in Cleveland, where the staff included two of college football's hottest coaches, Nick Saban of LSU and Kirk Ferentz of Iowa.

Hill spent another year in Baltimore, on the same staff as Marvin Lewis, before Fresno State hired him. All the while, he worked with one of the NFL's most astute talent evaluators in Ozzie Newsome.

Yet, Hill said the most important thing he learned in the NFL was the value of an education. Every August, hundreds of pro campers find themselves out of a job. ``What do they have to fall back on?'' Hill said.

Harvard it isn't, but Fresno State has come a long way since USA Today called its academic record the worst in Division I athletics shortly after Hill was hired in 1997.

The football team's graduation rate, then at 27 percent, will be 58 percent for Hill's first recruiting class when the numbers are released by the NCAA next fall, school officials say. The school also no longer accepts nonqualifiers.

Since Hill arrived, the Bulldogs have placed more players on the WAC All-Academic team than any other school, including two schools known more for their brain than brawn - Rice and SMU.

Last spring, 33 football players had a 3.0 grade-point average.

Yet, the school is also haunted by the academic fraud under former basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian.

``It's something we have to live with,'' Johnson said. ``Only time and good-faith efforts are going to heal it.''

Efforts by those such as Tyrone Culver, a redshirt sophomore safety from Palmdale.

He is fifth on the team in tackles and his 3.25 GPA landed him on the WAC All-Academic team.

Now, though, his thoughts are on UCLA.

``They could have played us (in a bowl) two years ago and didn't want to,'' Culver said. ``This is our only chance to give them a game, so we want to be aggressive and take advantage of it. We know we don't have the same things as schools like that. We have to fight for everything we get.''

Including a seat at the right window.

Billy Witz, [phone]

billy.witz(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, 2 boxes

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) Fresno State coach Pat Hill, above, knows he can't recruit against USC and UCLA, but has beaten several BCS-conference teams. Fresno State often outdraws Pacific-10 Conference schools major-conference teams.

Tom Hauck/Icon SMI 

Darrell Wong/Fresno Bee

(3) Fresno State fans, celebrating a 2001 upset of Oregon State, didn't sell out any of the team's home games this year, but the school hopes to expand the stadium to 50,000.

John Walker/Fresno Bee

Box:

(1) FRESNO RESUME

(2) BOWL GLANCE