The 2004 Sacramento State football season was supposed to a coming out party for the program and give second year head coach Steve Mooshagian a chance to show that these Hornets would be around and they wouldn’t be taken lightly anymore.

However, this year’s team only won one more game than last year, going 3-8, 2-5 in Big Sky play.

There were some bright spots to the season. The Hornets won their home opener for the seventh-straight season with a win over Southern Utah. They had two impressive home wins in Big Sky play, beating Weber State 31-12 on Oct. 16 and then-No. 17 Montana State 38-28 on Nov. 6.

The victory over Montana State was the biggest upset in the conference during the season as it helped crush any hopes the Bobcats had of making the Division I-AA playoffs after they were beat by the two Big Sky schools that did make the playoffs.

After the Sac State’s win over Montana State, the Bobcats lost to Eastern Washington and Montana to finish up their season. Wide receiver Fred Amey called this the biggest win in his four years with the program.

Amey was once again the star. He became just the second player in school history to be named first team all-Big Sky three times as running back Charles Roberts was the first.

The senior from Union City led the team with a career-high 1,186 receiving yards on 76 receptions. He closes his career with 4,049 receiving yards, 248 catches and 27 receiving touchdowns. His career yardage is the fourth-best in the history of Division I-AA football and the top career mark in the Big Sky. His reception total ranks tenth in I-AA and second in league history.

Despite all of his individual achievements Amey says all he will remember wins and losses.

“To me the biggest number is 12, which is the amount of wins I’ve had in my time here. The individual achievements are great, but I’ve only been considered with helping turning this thing around and getting us to win more ballgames.”

After the surprise victory over Montana State, the Hornets were unable to build any momentum for next season after getting trounced by Montana and Cal Poly. Each of those teams finished 9-2 as Montana received a high seed in the I-AA playoffs. Cal Poly barely missed the playoffs despite finishing as the inaugural champions of the Great West Football Conference.

Mooshagian does see a model program in Cal Poly as it only two years ago was a 3-8 team, too.

“That’s a team (Cal Poly) that’s gone trough some of what we’re going through right now,” he said. “They had their 3-8 year and they slowly-but-surely built up and got better. I looked back and studied their history and it made me feel a little bit better as they have gone from 3-8 to 7-4 to 9-2. Hopefully we can follow that lead. There’s a lot of hard work and a lot of things we have to do though.”

Despite losing first-team All-Big Sky performers in Amey and cornerback Ramon Payne, Mooshagian is optimistic his young players will be guys who he can build around for next season.

“We have a lot of good young players and we have to continue to recruit and get some guys in here who can contribute and build around,” he said. “We had nine true freshmen and seven junior college kids that started for us. So we got 16 starters out of are recruiting which is something you don’t want to do, but we had to do. We should be better off next season because of this.”

Running back Ryan Mole was one of the players who stood out most from the recruiting class. He was named Tri-Newcomer of the year after he rushed for 858 yards in only nine games.

Three of the four second team All-Big Sky performers were also newcomers this season. Defensive end Jacob Houston and linebacker Jimmy Ellingson are junior college transfers and safety Brett Shelton is a freshman. They were joined by junior linebacker Matt Logue on the second team.

Houston led the conference and finished 10th in Division I-AA with 10 sacks during the year. The junior’s total is tied for the sixth-best in school history.

Ellingson led the Big Sky and was fifth in Division I-AA in total tackles. He tallied 132 total tackles (including four sacks), intercepted two passes and recovered a pair of fumbles. Ellingson’s tackle total tied for the third-best single-season mark in school history and was the most since 1999.