SAN DIEGO — Waves lap into Coronado Island hours before sunrise and Sean Lewis already is awake, fidgety with nervous energy.
He knows right now that Jeff Sobol is at the beach, setting up for San Diego State football’s first ‘Finish Friday.’
Equally important, Lewis knows this day represents a chance for his Aztecs to embrace the paradise paradox.
With the regal Hotel del Coronado a few hundred yards south of their spot and along same shores that United States Navy SEALs candidates are preparing for ‘Hell Week,’ San Diego State’s 2026 football team, the program’s third under Lewis and replete with eight returning starters on offense and 10 defensive players who logged at least 200 snaps last season, is building a concrete foundation of toughness here in the sand.
“These guys build men and you can’t find what they’re doing in data,” says a current U.S. Navy SEAL, a friend of the program now running up for the Aztecs workout whose name is withheld per his request. “They hold the standard every day.
“Coach Lewis, he could lead a (SEAL) Team right now.”
The focus for Lewis, however, is on this San Diego State team that carries confidence like wet trunks carry sand; it’s everywhere, and with good reason.
The Aztecs, between returnees and the No. 2 NCAA Transfer Portal class per 247Sports, bring with them nine all-conference players into the ’26 campaign.
They talk openly of chasing a conference championship and of dreams to become the first West Coast Group of Five team to land a College Football Playoff berth.
This day, sunrise coinciding with the players’ arrival for their sand session, talk is cheap.
Action through obstacles speaks. Up-downs and agility drills, the chilly Pacific Ocean crashing closer, include barrel runs, planking from atop sand berms and even closed-quarters, one-on-one flag-football competitions.
“We’re not going to be soft, so that’s a big dichotomy there, you know, because it is, we do live in paradise,” says Lewis, his program’s year-over-year improvement from nine losses to nine wins in 2025 among college football’s best. “Like, we’re not going to be known as the school at the beach. Like, I don’t ever want, regardless of what the call is, you know, stage of the game, I don’t ever, ever want anyone to ever put our tape on and say, that’s a soft team. Like, you’re never gonna describe one of our teams in that way. And so then just being acutely aware of how easy it is to be complacent and to become soft in a spot that is paradise.
“We have to be very, very intentional in our talent-acquisition process of who we were bringing in, what their priorities were, why they were interested in us because, you know, when we bring people here for official visits now, like the city shows off and our hit rate is really, really high. But, you better do a lot to make sure people want to come here for the right reasons. And it’s not just to be on scholarship to live at the beach and live the easy life, right? Like, we’re gonna take advantage of all of that. Sure. But after the work is done. And we’re gonna then use what we have in the manner in which we have it to build a tough-ass football team that loves to physically impose their will.”
Which is why Sobol, Lewis’s strength coach for all of his years as a head coach, both Kent State and San Diego State, is demanding action on the shores.
“Today is a day to actually show us what you got inside,” says Sobol, first a Lewis colleague at Eastern Illinois in the early-2010s and now at his side in 14 of the past 15 college seasons. “Not say it. Show it.
“Everybody wants to win. Show it.”
Time at the beach already is showing in Lewis’ program. In 2024, Year 1 in the transition, the Aztecs spend one summer conditioning day at the beach around the July 4 holiday.
By season’s end, a disappointing, disjointed 3-9 campaign, the team delivers a key message to their coaches.
“In exit interviews, players asked us for more beach days, more challenges like that,” Lewis says. “The vast majority of the guys we’re like, ‘Coach, you know, the evolution and the exercises that we did at the beach, that was really impactful, and we should do that more times.’
“So, then going into Year 2, you know, again, kind of that was one of the few times in my career where kids flat said directly, like, ‘We want more of that challenge.’ And that was a really cool moment for me, kind of a tiny moment for our program, like, hey, you know, as much as all this has changed, you know, they still crave … they still crave doing hard stuff together, being held accountable, needing discipline. And yeah, you still have the benefits of all the other things, right? Right. Go for it. Then we went all in last year with it.”
Fortifying the San Diego State program with teaching elements, including a full-team trip last year to meet with five active SEALs for a ‘Masterminds’ team-building event, does not extend only to players.
The SEAL on the shores this morning is the same one who remembers a casual invitation to Lewis in the nascent months of the lifetime Midwesterner’s arrival to California’s golden coast.
“I texted him around Memorial Day 2024 and said, ‘Me and a few of the guys are going to do a ‘Murph’ workout on Monday (Memorial Day) if you want to join us,’” says the SEAL, closing on 20 years’ service. “There were no guys. It was just to see.
“He not only shows up, he brings basically their entire coaching staff.”
Lewis remembers well, his familiarity with the workout honoring fallen former Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy predating his San Diego arrival.
He’s golfing with college buddies in Wisconsin, where he had played his college football first as a nationally acclaimed quarterback prospects from the Chicago suburbs who becomes a contributor as a tight end for the Badgers.
“Long story short, it was like the SEALs have been way more than more gracious than they ever should be with us, and it was like, how do you how do you say no to that invitation,” says Lewis, son of a lifetime law enforcement officer. “How do you say no to that opportunity? And, you know, like, how many times is that opportunity presented? So, it was like, hell yeah, right? I reached out to Sobol, because we had done the ‘Murph’ workout a couple times, then it’s kind of snowballed. Like, hey, we’re in, like, let’s go do it. And so, yeah, I mean, unbelievable experience where you’re suffering, you’re hurting, and, you know, like, (the SEAL who issued the invitation) is obviously an elite operator who’s in active doing and doing his deal. Like he’s literally running laps around us, right? You’re just like, all right, well, I ain’t going to be a wimp. Kind of like the stuff we did this morning, we’re creating new bonds, we’re creating new friendships and like what better way than, okay, let’s go do something that’s pretty shitty. But also, it’s an honor. It’s nuts. The SEAL community has opened their doors to us and, you know the least that we can do is this on a day where we’re to remember all the people who have given the ultimate sacrifice for us to live our dreams and then we get to coach young men and to play a game? Yeah, let’s go do it!”
Adds Sobol, his first time to the city of San Diego only after accepting the offer from Lewis to again orchestrate the Aztecs strength program, “What an opportunity, like, with, with (the SEALs) giving us the opportunity to do that, actually run by where the SEALS, you know, are living and training and it was an unbelievable moment, because, like, right at 7 o’clock in the morning, when the national anthem started playing on base, like, we’re struggling through our 2nd mile in the back half of the ‘Murph,’, and just, like, one of those moments where, a lifetime experience that you’ll like never get to do, that normal people, or, like, people that don’t get to experience that, but because of where we are and what we get and where we live, and the connections that we made, man. It was, like, really special, and (the SEAL) is out here with us this morning, and all the stuff that he helps us do, and the connections he helps us form. It’s unbelievable.”
Players know better than to believe that this day is over after an hour on the sand and stops at the various training stations.
The session is designed to replicate a game, and the fourth quarter is most important.
It’s also when tug-of-war contests unfold. Winners battling last, longest, stretching the clock nearly two minutes, digging for footholds in the sand.
Notably, Amari Comier – a senior defensive lineman – earns the opportunity to shed his plain, white T-shirt; it is replaced with the red, Nike San Diego State garment with the F.A.S.T. acronym printed across the back that signifies the wearer possesses the trust of the team.
“Hey, we’re gonna suffer a little bit together because we’re gonna ask these guys to really, you know, to get entrenched in this and go hard all summer to get ready for training camp and all the things we’re gonna ask them to do,” Sobol explains of the approach and the focused, accountable, smart, tough mind-set. “It’s meaningful to me to make sure that we’re, that we back up what we say, and we’re actually about action, and we’re not just speaking words to them.”
No chance, says Caleb Davis, the San Diego State general manager and former top personnel assistant to Chad Bowden at Notre Dame.
“Coach Lew is the fourth different head coach I’ve been around,” says Davis, a Cincinnati grad with work under Luke Fickell, Marcus Freeman and Gerad Parker. “First of all, I think Coach Lew is the best offensive play-caller in college football. But all four of those head coaches are different but very successful.
“And they’re all four similar in the way they attack the day. They’re the first guys into the building to get a workout in the morning. And Coach Lewis is extremely accountable in his own right, which allows him to be demanding of the expectations when needed.”
“He lives to his standard,” Davis adds.
Thus, Lewis returns to campus following the beach day and in spite of it being a mini, five-day vacation for the Aztecs staff on the heels of the final national signing day, the Portal additions and onset of the winter program.
He pads barefoot around his office, the one with family photos, helmets from his playing and coaching stops, as well as a poster in a nod to famed SEAL Jocko Willink’s “Extreme Ownership” book.
“Regardless of how you feel, like, say what you mean and mean what you say and do it,” says Lewis, tugging slightly at the ‘Blood in, blood out’ rubber bracelet that carries the words of the Aztec warrior creed on his right wrist. “And that’s, again, that’s probably clearly and concisely what we’ve learned from the SEALs that we’ve tried to carry through. Like, if we say we’re gonna be these things, that we’re gonna be focused, that we’re gonna be accountable to our standards, that we’re gonna be smart, we’re gonna be tough. Well, then you don’t just do it when it’s easy. You don’t just do it when it feels good.
“You do it all the time, each and every single day.”
Just another day in paradise.