Facing a Fourth and Hopeless, Titan Football Refuses to Punt

Every season, for some reason, the Titans of Cal State Fullerton get this burning desire to field a football team. It’s crazy, really. It’s not enough for this school to have a good accounting program and baseball team.

Nope, the Titans have to play football. They do it against all odds, against all hope. They do it on Saturday nights against Utah State, in front of homecoming crowds of 4,007 at Santa Ana Stadium.

They do it without a budget.

They do it with blinders on. They do it and do it and do it, and though the players sometimes get better, the situation never does.

The Titans can never win, really. It seems to make no difference that they have a great coach in Gene Murphy and annually send one or two players to the National Football League.

It doesn’t matter that the Titans beat the Aggies Saturday night, 33-0.

It doesn’t matter that, two years ago, Murphy and his Titans turned the college football world on its ear, winning 11 games and cracking a few top 20 polls in the process.

It may have been the best story of the college football season.

So the next year, in their first home game at Santa Ana Stadium, the Titans drew a crowd of 6,317.

Who loves you, baby?

Did you say no one?

The Titans talk daily about the need to establish tradition. Well, guess which local team has strung together three consecutive winning seasons since 1983?

That’s right, the Titans.

And guess which team was warmly greeted by 3,722 fans for their home opener earlier this season?

Right again.

The problems at Fullerton have little to do with coaching, talent or scheduling. They have little to do with Fullerton’s 2-6 record this year.

No, this is a logistics problem, pure and simple. Fullerton is a commuter campus, a school where students come and go. That’s not a crime, just a fact.

It’s difficult to generate the ol’ rah-rah spirit when you get in your car at the end of the day and drive 25 miles home.

The plight of the Titan football program is only complicated by an already saturated sports market.

It has been made impossible because of the team’s vagabond existence.

The Titans do not have a stadium to call home. They don’t even play their home games in their home city.

For this reason, and the lack of home support, the Titans have found it more profitable to play on the road, where the gate split is always better.

The Titans play only three home games this season.

They have gone as far as to sell their own homecoming game to the highest bidder. Saturday’s homecoming game was originally scheduled for Nov. 1 against Fresno State.

But when Fresno’s people called Fullerton’s people to say that they could get the game on ESPN (translation: $$$$$) if the Titans came north to play, well, it was time to call a travel agent.

It’s difficult to imagine that things were once worse, but they were. There was a time when Titan players erected their own home stadium around the school track. It was the world’s largest tinker toy. It was also embarrassing.

There is no law that states that a university must field a football team. Plenty of schools get along fine without them.

But there is a stubbornness in Fullerton people that is unrelenting.

“Football gets your spirit up,” Fullerton Athletic Director Ed Carroll said. “The year we were 11-1, well, that was the biggest thing that ever happened on campus.”

If only he had the attendance figures to prove it.

“Obviously, it’s not easy at Fullerton,” Carroll said. “We’ve got problems, but we can overcome them.”

Carroll and the Titans think the answer to their problems came last Thursday, when the school’s Academic Senate approved a 10,000-seat, on-campus stadium. Construction, barring any delays, is supposed to begin next spring.

And a school rejoices.

“Our problem has been a lack of tradition and a lack of a home field,” Carroll said. “We’ve been known as a commuter campus, but that’s changing. We’re building more dorms on campus. More students are living locally.”

But the Titans already have proven that winning isn’t the answer.

And what if the new stadium isn’t the answer either? What then? A bigger stadium?

Will the Titans ever give up?

Probably not. In the meantime, they live to survive. Next year, the Titans travel to Baton Rouge to play Lousiana State University.

The Titans will be walking into a football slaughterhouse.

But there’s always that $200,000 gate guarantee.