Mr. Sweeney's 9-2 team in 1977 -- "My favorite team because it proved I could coach and motivate" -- captured the Pacific Coast Athletic Association championship. Its signature victory was a 34-14 throttling of PCAA standard-bearing San Diego State on Oct. 8 before 14,114 fans at Ratcliffe Stadium on the Fresno City College campus.

"That was a big game in my life, a big game for this program," Mr. Sweeney would say 19 years later.

Turns out, it helped launch Mr. Sweeney to his brief NFL career. But it also started a flood of support to build the on-campus stadium.

By the time Mr. Sweeney came home to Fresno for the 1980 season, Bulldog Stadium was going up quickly. It opened for the last game of that '80 season.

Asked if the stadium -- publicly funded, without a dime of tax-payer money for $7.3 million -- would have been constructed without Mr. Sweeney's presence, Gaykian said: "I think we would have got there, but it may have been 10 or 20 years later."

So successful at the gate and on the scoreboard -- Mr. Sweeney's teams would go 84-21-2 at Bulldog Stadium -- the facility's seating capacity was increased from 30,000 to 41,031 with a two-phase expansion in 1991 that included 22 sky suites.

From gun-slinging quarterbacks Jeff Tedford to Kevin Sweeney to Mark Barsotti and Trent Dilfer, Fresno State packed the stadium with fan-pleasing teams that routinely advanced players into the NFL.

During Mr. Sweeney's final season, in 1996, the Bulldogs were represented by 18 players in the NFL. And the 1992 team alone would produce seven draft picks, including first-rounder Dilfer.

Jim Sweeney Field at Bulldog Stadium was named in the coach's honor in 1997: "A monumental occasion, the highlight of my coaching career."

But it did follow a painful finish, on and off the field.

His last teams went 5-7-1, 5-7 and 4-7. His last home game -- Nov. 16 -- was a 44-38 overtime loss to Air Force on a day his team led 31-3 at halftime. And the last game of his career was a 31-21 loss at San Diego State, the program against whom he had delivered several monumental victories -- counting a Dilfer and Ron Rivers spectacular 63-37 shootout over the Marshall Faulk-prized Aztecs in Fresno on Nov. 20, 1993.

"I told the team in the locker room after the game, 'This is the best team I've ever coached,' " Mr. Sweeney said.

He did so in discomfort during a stretch in which he experienced seven surgeries, virtually from heart to toe, in his final six seasons.

Still, all the while, the man with an affinity for boxing bounced off the ropes and made a statement for his players, continuing to climb -- step by perilous step -- a 50-foot tower from which he observed practices often in his career.

But then, three days before that final curtain call on Nov. 23, 1996, at San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium, he made a concession incomprehensible to those close to the master motivator: "My emotional tank is empty. I can't give pep talks anymore."

Following the game, he elaborated: "I've been waiting for (the end) to happen. It's been a long, hard grind.

"My only regret is not winning at least six games in (each of) the last three years. I feel like I've let a lot of people down, and I'll have a lot of regret and remorse for that. I'm thankful I stayed at Fresno State for so long, but the last three years, that's an awesome thing to carry."

Until then, he carried on his mule-like back a community starved for major-college belonging.

It all began in 1976, when he arrived from Washington State of the then-Pac 8 Conference, where he had gone a humbling 26-59-1 in eight years following a rousing career start at Montana State.