CLOSE-UP : Gamboa’s Mexican Teams Bordered on the Brilliant

Rick Gamboa is one of those coaches who are brought in out of desperation to take on the really tough jobs, when all the options have been exhausted.

In 1978, Gamboa was one of two American coaches chosen by the National Institute of Sports to revive the respectability of football in Mexico. At the time, as far as Gamboa knows, a Mexican college had never won a football game against an American school.

Five months later, Gamboa’s University of Mexico team won all of its 16 games, including several against U.S. teams, and earned Mexico’s national college championship. The following year, it went 17-0 and again won the title.

Now, Gamboa has been hired by Coach Bob Burt to help resuscitate the Cal State Northridge football team. After finishing last in the Western Football Conference, the Matadors are hoping to come to life under a new coaching staff.

Gamboa, who was head coach at Los Angeles Franklin High for the past two years, was hired as the linebacker coach for the Matadors last week.

Gamboa said he will work on quickness with CSUN players. But even more than outrunning other teams, the 29-year-old coach enjoys outsmarting them.

An example: Johnson C. Smith University in North Carolina decided to send its football team to play Mexico in 1979. Gamboa had told the unsuspecting North Carolina coach, who didn’t know that Gamboa had recruited 15 large Americans, that his team was “a bunch of little Mexicans,” and to “take it easy on us.”

On the day the visitors were to arrive, Gamboa did some quick rearranging. He hid Mexico’s American athletes in the locker room and set up the smaller guys in a practice formation on the field.

“I even told them to wear their black dress socks instead of the white athletic socks,” Gamboa said.

As the North Carolina athletes descended into the stadium, Gamboa and the other American coach, Vick Cuccia, were eavesdropping under the bleachers. They were satisfied with what they heard.

“They were so confident,” Gamboa said. “They said, ‘Look how tiny they are, we’re going to kill those guys.’ ”

Gamboa’s conniving prevailed. By halftime, as Mexico was winning, 52-0, the Smith players knew they’d been had.

“It was a short-lived program,” Gamboa said of his two seasons in Mexico, “but it was fabulous while it lasted.”