San Diego football coach Sean Lewis gives fan shirt off back to sell season tickets

· Yahoo Sports

With virtually every significant college football game broadcast via traditional TV or some kind of streaming service, it's arguably tougher than at any point in modern athletics to get fans in the stands.

San Diego State coach Sean Lewis will do whatever it takes to market his Aztecs program. Including giving someone the shirt off his back.

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Literally.

During a tour stop along San Diego State's fan-forward coaches' caravan, Lewis was asked by an audience member where he could buy the team-issued Nike polo that Lewis had donned for the occasion.

"It was actually our last question of the night from the audience and he was like, 'Hey, Coach, that's a sharp polo,'" Lewis told USA TODAY Sports on Friday, May 22. "'Where can we get something like that?' It's something we had our equipment guy, Omer (Melzer-Bronstein) make up for our staff for recruiting.

"I told him the shirts will be available in our bookstore on July, but then I asked him, 'Have you bought your season tickets?' He said, 'Not yet, Coach. I said if you buy tickets right now, you can have the shirt off my back. He kind of hesitated and I said, 'I'm dead-ass serious.' I put my shirt on the table, he bought his tickets and it kind of created a little moment there."

Aztecs general manager Caleb Davis caught the shirt-exchange on video and posted it to San Diego State's official X (formerly Twitter) account.

"I'm down one polo, but we're up two season tickets as a program," Lewis said.

The ticket moment hardly was a first for Lewis, entering his third year atop the program and coming off an 9-4 season.

Lewis has been helping the Aztecs ticket office cold-call prospective season-ticket holders, as well as those being asked to renew for the 2026 campaign that kicks off Sept. 5 at home in Snapdragon Stadium against Portland State.

"We brought our staff over when kicking off season-ticket sales to help out and turns out the head coach gets on the phone, it's a pretty good hit-rate," Lewis said. "So after that, I just told our ticket rep, if there's any fence-sitters, shoot them over to me. Since then, I'm averaging 15 to 20 calls a week. This past week I even had a guy say, 'Hey, Coach. I was hoping you'd call. I've heard you've been doing this.'

"Then, we talked about one of his favorite moments from the 2025 season, he told us he was glad we retained (All-Mountain West Conference running back) Lucky Sutton and he bought tickets."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: San Diego coach Sean Lewis gives fan shirt of back for season tickets

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