Peter Kluch / Staff Photographer

Things weren’t always like this at San Diego State. The football team used to be pretty awful. And when Andrew Preston wore his SDSU football gear around campus, students would look the other way.

But a funny thing happened to Preston a few weeks ago. He was wearing his Aztec football T-shirt, when a student came up to him and said, “Hey, good game.”

“It’s never happened like that in the past,” Preston, a senior defensive back, said. “It’s a real positive thing for our team and for the whole community to have people behind us supporting us.”

Getting fans to support Preston and his football team hasn’t been easy. Students at SDSU haven’t wanted to cheer for a loser.

But now that the team is winning, the Aztecs (3-2) and their marketing staff are hoping students will come out to Qualcomm Stadium, dress crazily and cheer as a unit now known as “The Jungle.”

“There are a number of things we did over the summer working with football to help improve the environment at the games,” Associate Athletic Director Steve Schnall said. “We talked about what we could call the student section and we thought “The Jungle’ might be a good thing.”

The football team runs out onto the field to an edited version of “Welcome to the Jungle,” and SDSU’s new mascot is a jaguar, so it made sense to call the new section “The Jungle.”

Now all the team has to do is get fans to fill it up.

During the summer, quarterbacks coach Brian Sipe approached Schnall with the idea to get more students involved at Aztec games. He saw the environment “The Show” created at Viejas Arena for men’s basketball games and wanted something similar at the “Q.”

So Schnall and his crew created “The Jungle,” made a banner and hung it on the wall next to the east end zone. They also put S-D-S-U tarps on the sections directly behind the east end zone’s goal posts in an effort to compact the student section. Then, they began giving out tickets in a way that fills up the area section by section, rather than just giving out tickets to seats in all of the student sections.

“Having good student participation really sets the table for the whole stadium,” Schnall said. “If they’re quiet, I think our crowds tend to be quiet. If our students are into it, like they have been the first two games this year, I think it helps the overall atmosphere.”

Ideally, the football team would love to travel down the path men’s basketball head coach Steve Fisher blazed more than a decade ago. When he arrived at SDSU, the basketball team was abysmal. Schnall estimates there were about “10 students in the student section” in Fisher’s first few seasons with the Aztecs.

Now, however, Fisher’s team draws more than 3,000 students at some home games, most of whom participate in “The Show,” dressing and cheering in wacky outfits such as a banana, a gecko and Santa Claus.

Preston said it would be cool if “The Jungle” can be like “The Show.”

“It all starts with us,” Preston said. “If we win, then more people are going to come. So all we have to do is take care of what we can do and hopefully that atmosphere will come over and have some fun times at Qualcomm.”

So far this season, SDSU has drawn announced crowds of 25,290 and 45,682 in its two home games against Nicholls State and Utah State. The new, compact “Jungle” student section has made an impact on Qualcomm’s environment, senior receiver Vincent Brown said.

“The atmosphere has definitely changed a lot,” Brown said. “You hear a lot of students talk about the game, and talk about, “I saw you guys out there, you guys had a really good game this weekend.’ Everybody’s starting to appreciate us and starting to change how it’s been around here. That’s been something that’s real good for us this year.”