Football Survives at CS Long Beach : Boosters Raise Enough Funds to Keep Program Alive

The football program will continue at Cal State Long Beach.

That was announced Monday after a series of meetings between athletic boosters and university officials.

At issue was whether the boosters met a challenge by university President Stephen Horn to raise $300,000 in cash by Dec. 31 or lose the football program. Horn had later agreed to an extension of the deadline and to accept the final $50,000 in pledges rather than cash.

Horn, struggling under a heavy budget deficit, made the challenge in late November, sending football supporters scrambling to meet his demands.

Monday, at a press conference in the office of Athletic Director John Kasser, about a dozen fund raisers presented Horn a check for $253,000 and pledges of $62,000 more.

“We are a university that faced up to its deficit and did something about it,” Horn said in accepting the check. “There are dozens of Division I-A schools in this country that haven’t done that.”

Earlier in the day, Horn and athletic officials had met to arrange for continuing support. That arrangement calls for football boosters to maintain the support level at $500,000 a year for the next three years.

Said Horn in a prepared statement about the deal: “We are confident that the newly raised level of community support can be sustained to achieve our mutual goals.”

Kasser said that increased attendance at football games next fall will help provide a new awareness in the community, and in turn, should help raise more money. He did not say what plans he has to increase attendance, although Sam Breuklander, president of the 49er Athletic Foundation, a campus-directed fund-raising office, said he believes it could be done.

“Attendance and community support will build on each other,” he said.

Long Beach, which does not have its own field and plays its games at Veterans Stadium on the campus of Long Beach City College, averaged slightly more than 4,000 spectators in four home games in 1986.

Long Beach has struggled recently in Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. play. It last won a football title in 1980 and the program suffered a blow Dec. 24 when third-year Coach Mike Sheppard resigned to become coach at the University of New Mexico.

Kasser moved quickly, replacing Sheppard with assistant coach Larry Reisbig, but since then five other assistants have left.