Pat Hill is revving up for his 12th football season at Fresno State, ranked No. 25 in the USA Today poll entering its season opener Monday, and the handlebar-mustachioed coach is as feisty and fanatical as ever.

He spoke to The Bee about the impact of Sacramento-area recruiting, the addition of UC Davis to next season's schedule, his frustration with Cal and Stanford declining to play the Bulldogs, how he lived in a van in his early days of coaching and how he'd be "pounding nails" for a living if not for coaching.

You have long maintained that Sacramento is a fertile recruiting base for your program. Will you ever change that stance?

No way. Sacramento has been great for us, huge to our success. The kids know what the weather is like, what the demands are, because this place isn't for every kid. Those kids have been a difference maker for us.

You open at Rutgers, and Fresno State will log more air mileage than any team in the country besides Hawaii. Are you nuts?

(Laughs) Probably. We schedule like that because it's a great challenge, and we have to because we can't get Cal or Stanford to play us. We'd go there to play them, but they're not interested. Stanford will go to TCU but not here. We'd love to play USC every year, too.

Why do you suppose Cal and Stanford avoid Fresno State?

I don't know what the problem is. We've tried very hard. It makes sense to play each other, and we'd bring a ton of fans, like at USC a few years ago when we brought 30,000 fans.

So UCD is on your schedule starting next season.

It'll be great for both schools, and UCD will bring fans. I'd love to get Sacramento State on the schedule again, too. I wouldn't be surprised if one day Sac State and UC Davis are in the (Western Athletic Conference) with us. That'd make a lot of sense.

Do people still wonder why you schedule so ambitiously?

Here they do, and I hear it a lot. It's all over talk radio. People here think we should play a soft schedule and the WAC. I didn't come here to do that. We wanted to make a difference here, and I think we have, and a big part of that is who you play.

The fans can be supportive in Fresno, but they also can be vocal, and I know you passionately defend your players, like (quarterback) Paul Pinegar (of Woodland) a few years ago when fans wanted him run out of town.

Fans can say anything they want about me but not the players. I don't like that. They're just kids. They have enough pressure.

You sound as eager to coach as ever. You ever wonder about leaving Fresno?

If it ever gets to the point that it's not exciting, then I'm done. I'll quit and go to the NFL and be an assistant or a scout. But I don't want to go anywhere. I've had offers. My family loves it here. I love it here, and we have more work to do here. My dad told me, "Don't worry about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. Just make your own grass greener."

Talk about your dad, his impact on you and whether he'd have been impressed with you as a firebrand coach.

My dad (Fauster), lost him in 1989. He was a tough Irish guy who barely made it out of high school. He always wondered why I'd want to be a coach – can't make any money. That was true for the longest time. I lived in a van my first years of coaching (more than 30 years ago). It took me 20 years to make $40,000 a year in coaching. My dad was old-school: work hard, and I am, too. I was an assistant at Utah State in 1977 and made $3,000. Worked as a bouncer in a bar and cooked burgers at a bowling alley for extra money. People talk about making money in coaching. That's not the appeal to me.

If you weren't coaching football, what could you be doing now?

Pounding nails. I'd be in construction. Not as the owner but as a real laborer.

Your roster includes your son, Zak, a safety. You said a few years ago you'd never coach your own kids – too hard.

I never thought I would, but he wanted to be here, and it's been great. I get to see him every day. I love it.

So, as a biology major, the kid is sharper than the old man?

(Laughs) By light years.