SAN DIEGO - San Diego State was looking for a desperately needed shot of energy when it hired Chuck Long to coach its sad-sack football team. It's been an adrenaline rush so far.

San Diego State football head coach Chuck Long rolls out before throwing a pass at practice Monday, Aug. 28, 2006, in San Diego. San Diego State will face the Texas, El Paso on Aug. 31. It will be Long's first game as head coach of the team. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)

The 43-year-old Midwesterner waded right into San Diego life, learning how to boogie board and taking a liking to fish tacos. Surfing might be next on his to-do list.

Their first practice opened with a burst of Van Halen, and the Aztecs, won over by what quarterback Kevin O'Connell calls a "swagger," have been rocking ever since.

Now that Long knows what a real rip current is, he faces another one — trying to end a long, dismal stretch of losing and shattered bowl hopes.

"We can't wait," said athletic director Jeff Schemmel, who hired Long in December after SDSU missed a bowl game for the seventh straight year. "Maybe it has more to do with his positive energy and personality, because nobody's seen a game yet. But he's really been effective at communicating and having that energy rub off."

Long's goal is to get the Aztecs into a bowl game this season. And he knows his job goes beyond motivating his players.

"It's a starving community for winning Aztec football. And it's been a while," Long said. "And it's a community, quite frankly, I've been surprised at how much support we've had, through all those years. But it's time to give back to the community that's been faithful for all these years."

SDSU, 30-51 since playing in the 1998 Las Vegas Bowl, opens Thursday night at home against UTEP.

Although he's a rookie head coach, Long has a pedigree that overshadows almost all of his predecessors at SDSU. Due to a Big Ten eligibility change, he was able to play in five bowl games at Iowa, including the Rose Bowl twice. He coached in nine bowls as an assistant at Iowa and Oklahoma, including the Sooners' Orange Bowl win that clinched the 2000 national championship.

SDSU has been to two bowl games in 15 years.

Long and his assistants, many culled from an Iowa-Kansas State pipeline, "might just be that final piece," said O'Connell, who's impressed by his head coach's enthusiasm.

"It's not a cockiness, it's not an overconfidence," O'Connell said. "I think it's the aura of success. It's more noticed by you than presented by him, almost."

Although O'Connell was only a few months old when Long was a curly haired collegian, he's aware of his coach's accomplishments. In his final season, 1985, Long was runner-up to Bo Jackson in the closest Heisman Trophy voting ever, won the O'Brien and Maxwell trophies, and led Iowa to the Big Ten championship and the Rose Bowl.

That was a year before SDSU won its last conference title.

When his unremarkable NFL career ended, Long was hired in 1995 by Hayden Fry, his college coach. Fry told him he should be an assistant for 10 years before even thinking about becoming a head coach.

"When he told me that, I was 32, 33, and I'm thinking, 'I just came from the NFL, man, I can coach right now and be a head coach next year,' " Long said. "But as time went, I knew I wasn't ready. I always remember that advice. He was right on the mark."

Long was at Iowa for five years and Oklahoma for six. He was Oklahoma's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach the last four years. One of his pupils, Jason White, won the 2003 Heisman Trophy.

Long is doing his best to create a lively atmosphere. The start of every practice feels just short of a frat party, with music blaring during warmups. Liking the energy it gives his players, Long plays everything from rock to rap to country. He's solicited playlists from throughout the athletic department and even the media.

"All the teams I've been on as a player or coach, when we won, we had fun," said Long. "The teams that we weren't winning so much, we weren't having any fun at all. It was like a drudgery thing every day. That's just the experience I've had both as a player and coach. Gosh, if I'm not having any fun at this thing, then it's time to get out."

Schemmel was on the management team at Kansas State when the Wildcats, then in a 27-game winless streak, turned to Bill Snyder to dig them out.

"I believe it can happen here," Schemmel said. "This program is in such better shape than Kansas State's when Bill Snyder came."