THE LOYAL, THE FEW : Don’t Expect to Find Many Students at the Games, Because Cal State Fullerton Football Fans Are a Rare Breed Indeed

Paul Taylor’s reason for being a Cal State Fullerton football fan is as clear as the No. 93 jersey he wears as he sits in the Santa Ana Stadium stands each Saturday that the Titans play there. No. 93 is Jeff Taylor, a defensive lineman and Paul’s son.

Cindy Miklesh and Cindy Manfull, two of the 2,031 people who went to the recent rain-soaked game against New Mexico State, turned out for an equally obvious reason. Their husbands are John Miklesh and Larry Manfull, Titan assistant coaches.

For others among the average 4,521 fans who have attended Fullerton home games this year, the reasons for showing up to cheer the Titans in Santa Ana Stadium, nine miles from campus, are less clear.

They are part of a group often so small that on game days Titan Coach Gene Murphy sometimes looks into the stands and wonders who these faithful few might be.

“It’s the kind of thing where I joke that we’re going to send (assistant coach Jim) Chaney into the stands to get names and addresses so we can write thank-you notes,” said Murphy, who is in his eighth year as Fullerton coach.

Fullerton, a 24,000-student commuter school that does not have its own stadium, long has had difficulty drawing crowds to its football games. In the 18-year, 6-home-field history of the program, there has been only one home sellout: In 1984, 12,121 came to Santa Ana Stadium to see the undefeated Titans, ranked 20th in the UPI poll, defeat Fresno State, their 10th straight victory in what became an 11-1 season.

There is, of course some correlation between attendance and the success of the team. Last year, Fullerton averaged only 3,828 fans in three home games during a dismal 3-9 season, the Titans’ first losing one since 1982.

Most athletic department hopes for the future are based on plans for an on-campus sports complex to be built in conjunction with an on-campus hotel, scheduled to begin construction next year and to be completed in 1990. But until then, the Titans probably will continue to play in Santa Ana Stadium, their home of the past four years, and--most probably, barring another tremendously successful season--will continue to draw small crowds.

Through last year’s 3-9 season and this year’s 5-6 season, which concludes at 1 p.m. today with a home game against Division I-AA Montana, the Titans have maintained a small core of followers.

Denny York, a Fullerton resident who has no ties with the school, is the sort of community fan Fullerton athletic department officials would like to draw.

“I just like to watch football,” said York, who said he has been a season-ticket holder for “three or four” years. A fan of local amateur football, York also goes to Fullerton High School games, but almost never to see the Rams.

For Chuck Farina, an Anaheim resident and 1971 Fullerton graduate who saw the first Titan football game in 1970, the decision to become a Fullerton supporter came in part from frustration. He used to buy USC season tickets, “but I could plainly see I was never going to get out of the west end zone,” he said. Now he buys Fullerton season tickets--he can pretty much have his pick of seats--and he also is a prominent member of the Titan Athletic Foundation, the booster organization.

Michael Julien, an alumnus who lives in Brea and has been active in the booster organization, used to buy season tickets, but since the games moved from a makeshift field on campus to Santa Ana Stadium in 1984, he has come less often. The Pacific game was his first of the season.

Mark Parker, a senior music education major, and his wife, Deborah, are two of only 382 students and eligible spouses to purchase $15 season tickets or a $40 pass that admits students to any home athletic event. The Parkers, who pay $80 for two of the passes, consider Fullerton football games “cheap dates,” an inexpensive form of entertainment.

Some fans, of course, come to watch the opponent.

“We’d never heard of Fullerton until we heard they were going to play New Mexico State,” said Gerald Sanders, who has lived in San Clemente since June. A New Mexico State graduate, Sanders went to the Titan-Aggie game with his wife, Susie, and their daughter, Stacey.

Robin Malachi and DeMond Hampton, both 15-year-olds from Long Beach, went to the Pacific game to watch Hampton’s brother Dan, who plays for the Tigers.

The typical Fullerton fan, though, apparently is someone with very close ties to the football program and the university--but not typically a student.

Fullerton sold 2,010 five-game season football tickets this year, 1,088 to faculty, boosters and alumni at $35 each. The general public purchased 540 season tickets at $40, and students purchased a mere 382.

Sometimes, apparently, attendance figures do not extend much beyond season-ticket sales and complimentary tickets.

Fullerton officials provide a figure called “announced attendance,” which generally includes all season tickets sold, all complimentary tickets and all other tickets sold.

With a season-ticket sales figure of 2,010 and a complimentary list for family and friends of players, coaches, athletic department personnel and the opposing school that ranges from 500 to 1,000, Fullerton’s theoretical minimum attendance should be between 2,500 and 3,000, even without a single walk-up.

But against New Mexico State (2,031) and Pacific (3,114), the crowds were so obviously small that a higher announced attendance would not have been credible.

Against then-undefeated Cal State Long Beach, however, the attendance was 6,919. Attendance for the homecoming game against rival Nevada Las Vegas was 6,019.

Those were Fullerton’s top two crowds in the past two seasons. By contrast, however, a recent high school game at the stadium, between Mater Dei and rival Servite, drew 8,000.

The apparent lack of student support has become an issue among some Fullerton boosters.

The effects of the low student attendance are debatable, but most people are in agreement that student support is low.

The lack of ticket sales is one of the reasons that Ed Carroll, Fullerton athletic director, scheduled money-making games this year against top 20 opponents Florida and Louisiana State, both of which resulted in embarrassing losses. Some boosters privately have expressed resentment toward the student body for their lack of support.

Barry Westrum, a 1987 graduate, attended games with members of his fraternity during college and still goes to games this year. In college, he said, he was part of a small crowd.

“There were not many of us (football fans),” Westrum said. “We were the crowd that didn’t grow up right around campus and didn’t view college as going to class, going to the parking lot and going home. There was a group of people--some (fraternity and sorority members) and some just die-hard Titan fans.”

Nicole DeFarlo and Mary Campbell, two students who are involved enough in the university to hold positions as student good-will ambassadors, are probably more typical.

“I’ve been to a few games before,” said DeFarlo, a sophomore, at the Pacific game, the next-to-last of the season. “But it’s still pretty early in the season. We still have San Jose State and UNLV to play.”

Both games already had passed.

“Wasn’t homecoming a month ago?” Campbell said. “Aren’t they building a stadium?”

Carroll, the athletic director, has said he believes that a stadium is the key to the attendance problem, and that one of Fullerton’s main goals is to draw what he calls “the casual fans”--those who may follow the Titans in the newspapers but attend games only rarely.

“Once the sports complex is finished, I think we’ll get the casual student, too,” Carroll said.

Murphy, who in his first two years at Fullerton had his players and assistant coaches help him erect bleachers on a campus field for a makeshift stadium, said he no longer worries about attendance.

“They’re just not going to come,” Murphy said. “That’s fine. That’s no big deal.”

Like some others, he is not sure that an on-campus stadium will give Fullerton the sort of following it seeks.

“I’m not convinced,” Murphy said. “Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t. I don’t know.”

The Titans will seek to avoid a second straight losing season today when they play Montana, a Division I-AA team from the Big Sky Conference.

Fullerton tailback Eric Franklin, who has rushed for more than 100 yards in each of the past four games, could break the 1,000-yard mark for the season if he gains more than 195 yards.

The Grizzlies have won three straight, outscoring their opponents, 140-10, in the past three games.