Board Sacks Canyon’s Bid for Football

The debate is over at College of the Canyons. The issue was: Should the college resurrect its football program?

The college district’s board of trustees met Thursday night to consider that question during its regularly scheduled meeting.

Danny Brown, a former Canyons assistant coach, is an advocate of bringing back the sport. A football team, he said, would generate income. He claimed the college could have made money by having a football team again. The board disagreed, and after a short discussion, the issue was dropped. Football will not be reinstated this year.

Canyons had a football team from 1967 to 1982, but it was dropped in a massive budget cut.

A recent report submitted to the board by district superintendent Ramon LaGrandeur said it would cost $77,869 to field a football team next year. The report said that offering one football class of 60 students for one semester would bring in an extra $42,950 from the state.

Total loss: $34,919.

Brown, who was an assistant at Alemany High last year, disagreed with those figures. He said football would bring Canyons more than $100,000.

Brown based his figure on a team of 75 athletes enrolled in three classes--football, the fundamentals of football, and weight-training. The fundamentals and weight classes would have been offered during the off-season.

State community colleges are subsidized according to their average daily attendance. Brown says one ADA is worth $2,637 to Canyons, and he estimates the football team would generate 40 ADA by adding three full classes. Multiplied, the revenue reaches $105,480.

Gate receipts at the community college level would not have been a major factor. The last three years that Canyons fielded a team, it averaged 500 people at $3 each for five home games per year--$7,500 before expenses. One game during that period drew 4,500 people, however.

“There simply isn’t enough money to start a football program again at this time,” Benton said. “If there was, I’d be the first to say go ahead.”

Benton was a member of the board when football was canceled, and he authored an amendment then passed unanimously that stated football should be the top priority when sufficient funds were available.

“We wanted to make sure that five or 10 years down the road football was not forgotten,” Benton said. “Well, no one has forgotten, but we’re simply not in the position financially to start up a program right now. We’re still working with obsolete microscopes and typewriters in classrooms. We need to bolster the programs we have already before we look into anything new.”

Benton said that an assembly bill passed three years ago limits the growth of ADA money the college receives to 2.5%.

“The first year after the bill passed our enrollment went up 11% and we got a 2.5% increase,” Benton said. “We ended up taking in all those extra students and we didn’t get paid for them. What good does it do to market a program, when you’re not going to make money with it? We can add all the students we want and they would still only give us 2.5%”

Brown says he has a list of names with phone numbers for 198 players from Canyon, Saugus and Hart high schools who said they would have been interested in playing football at Canyons. “It’s not like there’s not enough interest and no quality players,” Brown said, in an interview before Thursday night’s meeting. “In the last three years those schools have combined for three (Southern Section) football championships. OK, so maybe that many won’t really come out, but when I was a coach there (1979-81) we’d have 120-130 kids out at the start. The first game we’d have about 90, and by the end of the season we’d have about 75.

“Either way, that’s a substantial amount of players. The interest is there. The only question is whether the administration wants a football team.”

For now, the answer is no.