CSUN’s Obstacle Is Cash : Division I Move Requires Funds

Perhaps Cal State Northridge administrators confused a raised hand with one reaching for a wallet. That would explain their disappointment in the sizable disparity between the public’s endorsement and its financial commitment for the school’s proposed move to NCAA Division I status in athletics.

Surveys were mailed to 860 Valley-area businesses and service organizations three months ago in an effort to gauge community support for the move to major college athletics in all sports but football.

Of the 101 responses, 82 encouraged the action. Only 36, however, said they would back the plan with increased financial support.

On the surface, a rather apathetic public appeared to be saying the move was a very good idea--as long as it didn’t have to help pay the tab. But that perception is deceiving, according to a school administrator and several current CSUN boosters. Some have interpreted the survey results as a ringing endorsement.

Jim McDiarmid, the university’s chief fund-raiser, said results of the survey were “generally very positive.” Even the amount of surveys returned--12%--was considered abnormally high. “We’re used to getting a 1 to 1 1/2-percent response,” he said.

For more than one-third of respondents to commit to increased financial support also was surprisingly high, said Lee Alpert, an Encino attorney who is president of CSUN’s Athletic Assn.

“Without having a decision made public or any kind of a product, to have that many people willing to contribute is incredible,” Alpert said. “If you give them a Division I product--when they get something for their money, so to speak--they should be even more willing to contribute.”

Northridge is banking on it. A university committee’s report estimates that an extra $1.3 million per year will be needed for CSUN, a Division II member, to be competitive at the major college level.

According to the report, $500,000 is needed to expand staffing; $308,000 for additional operating expenses such as transportation, lodging, meals and supplies; and an extra $504,000 to add scholarships. Total cost: an estimated $2,891,862 for a competitive Division I program.

Currently, Northridge spends $1,579,862 to fund a program that has won 32 national titles and is generally considered the nation’s best in Division II.

Bob Hiegert, athletic director, said that the move could be made without additional cost, but that the program “would not be very successful.” The extra $1.3 million, he said, would put Northridge “in a position to be competitive.”

Staffing expenses are almost exclusively funded by the state. An increase in coaches, Hiegert said, probably would be tied to the school’s enrollment growing from 30,000 to 40,000 over the next decade, as has been projected.

“A lot of our fund base on campus is tied to the students,” Hiegert said.

Increases in the operating budget are difficult to estimate, Hiegert said because athletic teams should earn more money through increased home attendance and guaranteed income from away basketball games in Division I.

The money currently allocated for scholarships, which puts Northridge in the bottom half of schools competing in the Division II California Collegiate Athletic Assn., would have to be doubled, according to the committee.

During the 1986-87 school year, CSUN granted the equivalent of 83.9 full scholarships for its 16 sports. The Division I limit for the same combined sports is 150.

Ran Railey, director of athletic promotions at Northridge, said the school is embarking on an aggressive campaign to raise $1.5 million over the next five years. The most CSUN has raised for athletics in one year is $150,000.

Les Cohn, an orthopedic surgeon who has been affiliated with the school for 27 years, questions whether that kind of support can be immediately found.

“We live in an area where the fans are fickle,” Cohn said. “No team has support unless it wins and it’s fun to watch. When that happens here, we’ll gather support, but it will happen a step at a time.”

The community’s first test of support could be telling. Elliott Mininberg, the university’s vice president for administrative affairs, said Tuesday that “very preliminary” discussions regarding a multiple-purpose athletics complex have taken place.

“We’re really hoping to get community support in the form of major donors and endowments for major construction,” Hiegert said. An indoor-outdoor arena and a 3,000-foot addition to the athletic offices are priorities.

“Our time is now,” Hiegert said. “If you say, ‘OK, lets do it five years from now,’ there will be some major economic crisis or some other reason not to. If people don’t support it now, at least we gave them the opportunity to try at a time it could be successful.

“The university is the one single thing this valley can rally around.”

Hiegert believes that Northridge should act while it has a very important resource: real estate. Coordinating plans for the arena with the 100-acre University Park development currently under construction at North Campus is essential.

“The facilities are costly, but most important, we have the space to build an arena and we have adequate parking,” Hiegert said. “After University Park is completed, we won’t have that luxury.”

Such a facility should be a boon to the basketball program, which the majority of boosters hope spearheads the drive into the big time.

Steve Weiss, a stockbroker and booster who graduated from Northridge in 1983, believes the school should push its basketball program because of the sport’s high visibility and the quality of local teams such as Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine.

Weiss said the school’s teams will “get bombed a bit in the beginning,” but Division I is “a logical choice for a school that size.”

Cohn recalls UCLA using similar strategy almost 30 years ago, before Coach John Wooden established the Bruin basketball team as a national power.

“I was there in Wooden’s early days when nobody came to basketball games,” Cohn said. “We’d cram into the little gym for a good game, and if it was a so-so game, we’d draw about what Northridge does now.

“Then the good teams came, they brought in good teams, and you couldn’t get in. Then they built Pauley Pavilion and you couldn’t get in there, either. Hopefully, that’s what will happen here.”