San Diego State has lost its No. 1 fan.

Tom Ables attended nearly 800 SDSU football games and more than 1,000 SDSU basketball games over seven decades. He literally wrote the book on SDSU football, “Go Aztecs!” chronicling the team’s most memorable games through the years and highlighting the Aztecs’ best players and coaches.

When the Aztecs played Boise State on Saturday night at SDCCU Stadium, Ables was there — announcing in a pregame video posted on his Twitter account that he was attending his 788th SDSU football game.

Ables died Monday morning at Scripps Mercy Hospital, the same place he was born 91 years ago.


“Obviously, he was as good a fan as there ever was,” SDSU head coach Rocky Long said. “He was close to our program and with us most the time, a lot of time spent on the sidelines. He was in our locker room a lot and meant a lot to everybody.”

Asked what it meant to the players to have such a dedicated fan, Long said: “Every year you explain to the players who he is when you introduce him, because most of the new guys don’t know who he is, the older guys do, and they know his record for how many games he’s seen and that kind of stuff. I don’t know if they relate, but, obviously they honor him and they respect what he did supporting this football team.”

When Ables enrolled at then San Diego State College in 1946 after serving in the Navy during World War II, little did he know that it would start him down a path as the Aztecs’ biggest fan. He began going to football games while sports editor of the school newspaper, continued as the school’s first sports information director and never stopped going over seven decades.

In 1993, Ables was an honorary inductee to the Aztec Hall of Fame.Ables celebrated his 69th wedding anniversary over the summer with his wife Nancy, an SDSU alum who was by his side most of the time at games. Their son Ken, a 1980 SDSU graduate, has joined his father at home and on the road for years as well.


Ables, owner of his own PR and marketing firm the past 34 years, celebrated game No. 700 in Laramie, Wyo., in 2010, when SDSU defeated Wyoming 48-38 to become bowl eligible for the first time in more than a decade.

The Aztecs’ bowl streak stretched to six straight years with a 42-7 win over Cincinnati in the 2015 Hawaii Bowl victory over Cincinnati. That was the first SDSU game Ables ever watched on television. He had seen every game in person since TV was invented. An ear infection grounded Ables, preventing him from flying to Honolulu for the game.

Ables had attended his 600th straight SDSU game just a few weeks earlier when the Aztecs defeated Air Force 27-24 in the Mountain West Championship Game at Qualcomm Stadium.

Last year, Ables joined the Aztecs for their 34-10 victory over Houston in the 2016 Las Vegas Bowl. The victory sparked him to update his book for a fourth time to highlight SDSU’s second straight 11-win season as well as recognize running back D.J. Pumphrey’s NCAA-record rushing performance.


Weeks earlier, Ables was touched when Pumphrey presented him with the game ball following SDSU’s 42-28 victory at Northern Illinois. A more poignant moment came two weeks later when he joined the team at South Alabama.

Navy Stories: Tom Ables

Ables completed a circle of sorts while on the road trip, visiting the ship he served on during World War II. The USS Alabama is a ship museum now in Mobile Bay, located just five miles from South Alabama’s Ladd–Peebles Stadium.

“I can’t tell you how emotional I get when you stop to think what the odds are of something like that happening in anybody’s life,” Ables said a couple days before making the trip. “Almost 70 years to the day I’ll be back on the ship. ... And to have it happen the same day I’m with my Aztecs is unbelievable.


“I’m looking forward to it and very excited about it. I’d like to go on, go down to my old engine room and quietly be emotional.”

Tom Ables got just as emotional when it came to SDSU, although he was never quiet about it. He was an “Aztec for Life” long before the expression was put to words.


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kirk.kenney@sduniontribune.com / on Twitter: @sdutkirKDKenney