Facing Final Season, Coaches Share Chili Spiced by Opinions

On the field, they are fierce rivals.

But on this rainy Wednesday afternoon, they are on the same team, meeting at a house in Encino to share some chili and some strategy as they take on the biggest struggle of their professional lives.

Jim O’Brien, athletic director and baseball coach at L. A. Harbor College, has been coaching for 23 years. Art Harris, coach at West Los Angeles College, has put in 21 years in a collegiate dugout. Phil Pote, coach at Los Angeles City College, has 20 years of experience. Tim Collins of Pierce College, the baby of the group, is in his first year.

And perhaps his last.

The Los Angeles Community College District, undergoing a major reorganization, has sent out layoff notices to 142 full-time faculty members, including 39 physical education instructors.

Those layoffs still need to be officially enacted by the district’s Board of Trustees in the spring. But all four men in this room, a total of 65 years of experience, expect to be affected. They see their programs facing extinction.

As the four men talk in the den of Harris’ house, the smell of chili wafts in from the kitchen. It is getting hot. So is the criticism of district officials. The officials have deemed the layoffs necessary because of financial considerations, shifts in enrollment and changes in the emphasis of various academic programs.

The layoffs have also generated some angry feelings from a group of men who, in some cases, see their life’s work going down the drain.

“Our own auditors have shown that athletics makes money,” Harris says, a belief not shared by the LACCD Board of Trustees. “Not on gate receipts. But every athlete has to take classes year around. The state pays $2,600 per student per semester for those with a full load of 12 units. That’s $5,200 per year. If we have 45 such students recruited for athletics, they are not going to come to the school if we don’t have athletics.”

O’Brien: “If there is no baseball, they are not coming. If there is no football, they are not coming. If there is no basketball, they are not coming. Athletics is a money maker.”

Pote: “As enrollment drops, they cut down the services. Which cuts down classes, and enrollment dips further.”

Collins: “It’s like a gyro. What we have got to do is have somebody with some pull, somebody who is influential. We’ve got to have somebody stand up . . . and say, ‘You are screwing up.’ ”

Harris: “They are cutting off their nose to spite their face.”

Collins: “Some of them can’t see past their nose.”

Collins: “The district spends all this money for limos and fancy offices. They could have found an empty building or two somewhere on a campus. Those people sit in their chairs like they are on the Supreme Court. The microphone system they have probably costs more than our whole budgets combined. They spent $40,000 to decorate the office of some lobbyist for the district.”

Harris: “They are going to wind up somewhere between a loss of $600,000 and a gain of $2.6 million for the year. So why are they going to cut personnel? This is not a financial consideration. They are just moving in a different direction. They had to do something to get back their credibility, if they ever had any.”

Pote: “They say the best offense is a good defense.”

Harris: “With the enrollment demands getting tougher and tougher at four-year schools, there is a need for a junior college as a preparatory school. There is more need now than there was before.”

Pote: “LACC is the only inner-city school to have baseball. It’s been a hook to get kids who have not had the greatest of opportunities, the greatest motivating factors. How many would have gotten to a four-year school if they did not get exposed to college at a two-year school? If we’re shut down, other schools may not be able to accommodate them. Those kids have been screwed before. This is just another frustration for them.”

O’Brien: “Athletics is a motivating factor for so many of these kids. They are coming for athletics, but we hope to get them interested in school.”

Harris: “We hope that if they walk by enough buildings, something will stick.”

The talk turns to the season immediately ahead, one that won’t be affected since the layoffs don’t start until fall.

Harris: “We are just going through the season burying the dead.”

O’Brien: “I can’t see hurting the kids.”

Harris: “By the same token, if somebody offered me a job now, I’d take it. I like those kids on my team. But I’ve got two kids in this house I like a lot, too.”

Collins: “I say, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re making money.”

While some coaches will lose their teaching positions in athletics, they could reapply in another department where they would have seniority.

Harris: “The toughest part would be getting the academic departments to accept us. They would not be real thrilled at having displaced teachers coming into their departments. There is a certain amount of academic snobbery.”

Collins brings up a plan, suggested at Pierce, in which the baseball program could continue under an official still at the college. That official would be a figurehead while someone like Collins continues to operate the team day to day, probably without pay.

“I guess they want to see how bad we want to do it. You’ve got to survive. It’s bad enough now making $4,000 a year,” says Collins, alluding to his coaching salary at Pierce. He supplements that with a full-time job as a window washer.

Harris: “If the person who is the coach on paper is not there and does not show up, they are going to be open to a lawsuit if someone is collecting coaching pay and not doing it.”

At this point, the chili is served.

Collins stands up.

“I don’t know about you guys,” he says, “but on my salary, I can’t afford to turn down a meal.”

Contacted at his home in Woodland Hills, Arthur Bronson, one of seven members on the LACCD Board of Trustees, refuted the coaches’ contention that athletics is a money maker.

“They can’t substantiate that,” he said. “If athletics did make money, we would have them. We truly need money now because we are in a period of cutbacks. I have no knowledge of a surplus for this year. It is true that athletes taking a full load of classes bring in revenue, but so do all other students. And the cost of these athletic programs simply exceeds the revenue athletes bring to the college system.

“It’s not that I’m against athletics. I think it’s a character builder. I’d like to see all these programs fully funded. But that’s a luxury we can’t afford. We have to be pragmatic.”

Bronson said an athletic program run with a minimum of funds is not necessarily better than no program at all.

“I especially have a problem with the contact sports,” Bronson said. “We don’t have training tables. The kind of care given at a university is not available to our athletes. I’m afraid the helmets we use in football may not be up to standards.”

As to the charges of extravagant office decorations, Bronson said funds for the office of legislative representative Pat Hewitt “are part of our contract. But we have no limos. The chancellor drives his own car. I drive my own car.”