​Rewriting Chapter Six of the weekly summer series on the Spartans’ position groups, this installment shifts the spotlight to San Jose State’s special teams as the 2026 season nears. Here are numbers you can debate, and then there’s one you cannot. In 2025, San Jose State converted 12 of 23 field goal attempts, a 52 percent success rate that would usually invite a benching for anything sub-70, and a season of struggle for anything under 60. The Spartans missed all three attempts from 50 yards or more, went 3 of 7 from the 40s, and somehow left two tries on the table from inside 30. Eleven missed field goals translate to roughly 33 points, a harsh tally for a 3-9 squad that spent October and November losing games by inches.
When the staff reshuffled in January, one name consistently rose above the rest for anyone who has followed this program: Fred Guidici is back. And this time, the timing may matter more than the title Guidici holds. Ask him about coaching titles, and he shrugs them off before the question is finished. “The title thing never bothers me,” Guidici says. “Everybody knows what’s going on.”
Guidici is an alum of 1989, a San Jose State graduate, and this marks his third tour with the program, underscoring how his professional wiring has grown in concert with Spartan football. His résumé reads like a Bay Area football atlas: a defensive assistant under Bill Walsh at Stanford, a season with the Raiders, the SaberCats of the Arena League, sixteen years at Menlo College including three as head coach, a stint at College of San Mateo, and three separate Spartan tenures dating back to 2012. “Every coach or even the guys you work with is a great new learning experience, and you evolve with the times,” Guidici explained of his journey. “Rules have changed, and you know what’s funny? The game’s not complicated. People are.”
Guidici continued, “We make this thing harder than it’s supposed to be, but at the end of the day you’re working with 18-to-23-year-old kids who need guidance. And these kids need us, especially in today’s world. Some come from one-parent homes, some are being raised by grandparents or aunts or uncles. They need guidance.”
Those Spartan chapters are the ones worth rereading. Guidici’s 2012 unit set a school record for kick-scoring points while posting the program’s best single-season field goal percentage. The 2013 team was the co-national leader with seven blocked kicks, three of them in a single game against San Diego State. Then, at Stanford from 2023 to 2025, he helped develop Joshua Karty into a PFF All-American and a sixth-round pick of the Rams, while Karty and Emmet Kenney climbed into the top 10 in program history in field goal accuracy. That’s the technical case. But the human case is even clearer.
Ask around the building or among anyone Guidici has known over the years, and the description remains consistent: patient, prepared, generous with his time, and genuinely invested. Specialists live with their failures in a way that no other position does, and Guidici’s strength lies in how he channels those moments into growth. His approach isn’t just about technique; it’s about mindset, about helping players who are navigating the complexities of college life while trying to master the precision that kicking demands.
Guidici’s presence is more than a resume line or a familiar face returning to a familiar role. It’s a signal that San Jose State is prioritizing stability in the specialty units, acknowledging that reliable kicking and consistent punting can be the difference between a handful of wins and a handful of heartbreaks. The narrative around his return isn’t merely about games decided by a few points; it’s about a broader philosophy—coaching that blends detail-oriented craft with the care and consistency that young athletes need to develop confidence and poise under pressure.
In this chapter, the Spartans’ special teams aren’t just a sequence of attempts and averages. They represent a philosophy of development, a return to a proven approach that emphasizes accuracy, resilience, and the mental fortitude that Guidici has embodied throughout his career. As San Jose State looks toward the 2026 season, the impact of Guidici’s leadership—both technical and human—could shape the trajectory of the program’s kicking game and, by extension, the team’s ability to finish close games and convert opportunities that in the past might have slipped away.