THE RACE FOR THE WFC FOOTBALL TITLE : Sacramento St. : Long Hours in the Weight Room Have Transformed Sad Sac Into the Conference Hornet Nest

Before we get started on this, it should be made clear that Coach Bob Mattos once called Cal State Sacramento “the absolute worst place in America to be.”

Worse than Cleveland. Worse than North Jersey. Worse than West Texas.

At least for a football coach.

When Mattos took over at Sacramento State in 1978, the Hornets were coming off a season during which they scored four touchdowns in 11 games. They lost by scores of 75-0, 56-0 and 48-0. “That ’77 team was the worst Division II team in the country statistically,” Mattos said recently. “The administration wanted to drop football. They didn’t want the heartache. And athletes didn’t want to come here because they were getting embarrassed every week. This was a burial ground for coaches.”

After finishing 0-10-1 that year, Coach Glenn Brady got the heave-ho.

This was the grim scenario when Mattos came aboard, his mouth flapping with wild promises about upgrading the program and bringing in big-time football. Many people familiar with CSUS sports figured Mattos might as well be straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.

Nine years later, the coach and his team are in the middle of the Western Football Conference race with Cal State Northridge and Portland State. The Hornets are 5-3-1, 4-1 in the conference. If they beat Northridge next week, they will win the WFC title in their second year in the league.

“I predicted a month ago that we--Northridge and us--would play for the conference championship,” Mattos said. “The difference between them and us is we’ve played a tougher schedule.”

Northridge (3-1) needs a win today over Portland State to have a chance to win the conference title next week at Sacramento.

At times during the ’86 season, Sacramento State has looked as if it belonged in Division I. At other times, though, the team has come off like the bottom of the Division II barrel.

The schizophrenic Hornets beat Santa Clara, 38-7, Portland State, 52-20, and Southern Utah, 48-31. But they lost to Pacific, 31-7, Chico State, 44-38, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, 26-6, and needed a late touchdown against Cal Lutheran to pull out an 18-17 win two weeks ago. The loss at Cal Poly last week was the only conference loss so far this season.

Sacramento relies on a big offensive line and two of the best running backs in the WFC--Don Hair and Rob Harrison. Harrison is second in the league in scoring and rushing, averaging 127 yards a game and 7.9 yards a carry. Hair is fourth in scoring and averages 5.1 yards a carry.

In their wins over Portland and Southern Utah, the Hornets rolled up a combined 1,284 yards total offense. Harrison gained 268 yards and Hair ran for 120 against the Thunderbirds.

“Our offensive line is most important to us,” Mattos said. “We like to get tall, rangy guys, redshirt them and throw them in the weight room for four years. We build our teams around the offensive line and then fill in the running backs because there’s a zillion of them out there.”

This year’s line is anchored by 6-5, 280-pound tackle John Gesek, who Mattos predicts will be picked within the first three rounds of the National Football League draft. Two Sacramento linemen were picked in last year’s draft: Greg Robinson, fifth round to New England, and Mike Black, ninth round to Seattle.

The weight room is the hub of activity for the CSUS team. Even though the room is spacious, it barely provides enough room for rows of equipment. “We’ve got a lot more equipment than what we have room for here,” Mattos said. “We had an additional $50,000 worth of weight equipment donated to us last year. An alum who is in real estate had a health club that went under, so he called and asked if I wanted $50,000 worth of weights. I had an orgasm.”

The fact that the alumni is now not only interested in the football program, but donating funds, is one of the reasons Sacramento has been able to improve dramatically. In 1980, Mattos and a group of others formed a booster club called the Stinger Foundation. The group started with just five members and now has a 40-member board of directors.

With Mattos leading a political crusade in 1983, a year after the Hornets had an 8-3 record, the administration announced that Sacramento State would begin offering scholarships by 1985. “That was pivotal,” he said. “I knew we had a chance to build this program then.”

This year, two more important developments have come forward. Last month, the CSUS students voted in favor of paying an additional $8-per-student fee for athletics. The fee could bring $250,000 a year to the Sacramento athletic department. And recently, the Sacramento city council approved a prposal to build a multi-purpose stadium north of the city.