Conferences begin football

The good news is Cal State Long Beach will not end in the cellar of the Big West Football Conference this year. The bad news is that CSULB will not even finish this year in the conference: our campus has no football team.

It looks as if they would not have had much competition after seeing the results of the Big West teams' performance last week. The week of season openers saw only three Big West teams win games. The remaining seven received their first notches in their loss brackets.

Nevada State, UNLV, and University of Pacific opene d their '94 campaigns with wins over Northern Arizona,Eastern Michigan, and UC Davis. Pacific's win marked their third straight victory for the Tigers since Nov. 13, 1993.

Northern Illinois, San Jose State, and Louisiana Tech all continued five game losing streaks last week.

The 70-21 trouncing by No. 1 Florida State over New Mexico State dropped the Aggies to the lowest rank in the division. One good note for the New Mexico State Aggies is the performance by wide receiver L ucious Davis. Honored as the Big West Conference offensive player of the week, Davis scored all three of the Aggies touchdowns. One score was a 73 yard run on the second play of scrimmage.

Davis has pulled within four touchdowns of tying the NMSU school record for touchdown receptions and already holds the record for most touchdown receptions in a game with four set last year against UNLV.

The Big West Conference's defending co-champions, Utah State and Southwest Louisiana, lost two close games to Kansas State and Utah.

After last Saturday's game against Kansas State, Southwestern Louisiana's schedule is relatively easy. Their hardest games to be played are in their own conference.

Not so easy is Utah State's schedule . They still have to play Colorado State and Brigham Young University.

San Diego State and Fresno State, formerly of the Big West, won their games last week.

In their season opener against Navy, the Aztecs showed up the Midshipmen with a 56-14 trouncing. This performance also showed the nation what SDSU could do even without Heisman candidate Marshall Faulk, who entered the game professionally before graduating.

Faulk's replacement, Wayne Pittman, scored two touchdowns and ran for 87 yards on 13 carries.

Tim Gutierrez, the Aztec's new starting quarter back , threw an impressive 348 yards and four touchdowns. That said something for Gutierrez's arm and Navy's secondary last Saturday.

Fresno State evened their record after dem olishing their traditional rival, San Jose State, 45-13. Both teams may be contenders in the Western Athletic Conference race.