San Diego Union-Tribune reports that longtime Lobo coach will be Aztecs' defensive coordinator.

The 58-year-old Long worked with SDSU's new head football coach Brady Hoke, who comes from Ball State, when the two were assistants at Oregon State in the early 1990s, where Long was defensive coordinator and Hoke worked with the team's defensive line and inside linebackers, according to the Union-Tribune.

Long turned down an offer to become defensive coordinator at the University of Washington, the paper reported.

The hiring of Long and Al Borges, who is expected to be named the Aztecs' offensive coordinator, will be made official on Tuesday, the Union-Tribune said.

Borges, fired last year after four years as Auburn's offensive coordinator, was offensive coordinator at UCLA from 1996 to 2000, while Long was the Bruins' defensive coordinator in 1996 to 1997, before he took over as head coach at UNM, the paper reported.

In 11 seasons at New Mexico, Long created a defense that was one of only three in the nation to rank in the top 30 nationally every season between 2000 and 2004, and in 2007 was ranked 13th in total defense among 119 teams, allowing just 319.9 yards a game, the Union-Tribune said.

Back when long stunned UNM fans with his surprise resignation in November, following an injury-plagued 4-8 season, Long told reporters he had hoped to work again as a defensive coordinator, the San Diego paper said.

"It's a lot more fun being a coordinator," Long said at the time. "You're in charge, but nobody knows it."

"There are plenty of X's and O's left in Long's playbook," Albuquerque Journal sports columnist Rick Wright wrote Sunday in his look back at the year in sports. "Though he has yet to announce his post-UNM plans, it's clear Long intends to keep coaching. Lucky is the school that hires him as a defensive coordinator."

Lucky for SDSU, maybe, but if the Union-Tribune's sportswriter Mark Zeigler is correct, maybe not so lucky for Rocky.

"It's time to drop football at San Diego State," Zeigler wrote in today's Union-Tribune. "Why? Finances, gender-equity requirements and declining community support make it too expensive."