BRAHMAS SEEK TO REGAIN : Old Glory : Pierce College Lays Foundation for Football Program’s Renaissance

Bob Enger was hired by Pierce College to resurrect its football program and also teach real estate courses.

So it was interesting that after accepting the head coaching position last winter, one of the first lessons Enger learned was that rebuilding a football program in the San Fernando Valley probably will be easier than purchasing a home in the area.

“I tried like crazy to buy a condo out here last spring, but I wasn’t fast enough,” said Enger, who lives in Covina. “I had two agents working for me and I must have made four offers on places, but I was always a day or two late.”

Enger put his house-hunting plans on hold so he could get an early start on a major fixer-upper--the once-proud Brahma football program, which fell like a house of cards after the 1985 season.

On Saturday night, Pierce will end its two-year hiatus from competition when the Brahmas play host to East L. A. College.

Enger’s challenge is to once again make the Brahmas the best junior college football team in the Valley area and the realigned Western State Conference.

The event marks the end of a two-year journey through bureaucratic red tape that was spurred by the departure of Coach Jim Fenwick and the administration’s subsequent decision that a football program cost too much.

“Throughout the entire time that we did not have a team, we were looking forward to bringing football back,” Pierce President David Wolf said. “We’re back in for good.”

Which means for better or worse.

“When you come back, you don’t expect to blow people off the field,” Wolf said. “There’s going to be some real adversity. But I have no doubt that, at the very least, we’ll be representative. We’re not going to finish last, I’ll tell you that.”

Community knowledge about Pierce athletics reached new heights after football was eliminated, according to Pierce baseball Coach Bob Lyons.

“I talked to a lot of people who didn’t know what was going on at the college, but they knew the football program had been dropped,” Lyons said.

The majority of Pierce administrators, campus employees and students seem excited about the return of football. However, widespread apathy toward athletics, the bane of almost every commuter school, is also evident at the Woodland Hills campus, which had an enrollment of 18,316 in the fall of 1987.

“I like football, but I’m sure there are some people that are excited about it and some that couldn’t care less,” counselor Nan Ramirez said. “If there are some outstanding players, if they win and there’s a lot of good publicity, it could be something to rally around. Unfortunately, I think support will follow success. I don’t think the support will be there first.”

Proponents of the comeback believe that football allows Pierce, which won three consecutive conference championships before eliminating the program, to offer its students a more traditional college experience.

“If you start eliminating these things, we really don’t look any different than an adult school,” said Bill Norlund, vice president of administrative services. “It’s the ‘Gray Wall’ syndrome, so to speak, without any kind of college atmosphere. Kids spend their time going from their car to their classes and virtually no time mingling with other students.”

Jess Craig, an all-conference running back at Pierce in 1967 who is the assistant dean of admissions and counseling, said football also benefits the college as an instrument to help students continue their education.

“It can cost $50,000 to $60,000 for two or three years of education at a four-year school,” said Craig, who transferred with five other teammates from Pierce to Idaho State. “Having a football program offers potential for continued education for many of the students who may be somewhat disadvantaged in one way or another. It’s nice for Pierce to be associated with any kind of success because that’s what our business is--education.”

Mike Watrin, a campus gardener who graduated from Pierce, said the football team is a rallying point for his co-workers.

“Without football, they didn’t have any real sports to care about,” Watrin said. “Football is a sport everyone can get into.”

Well, almost everyone.

“I don’t see too many people interested in it,” said Scott Miller, a student who works in the campus bookstore. “It doesn’t seem to make a difference one way or another to them. Students would be here regardless.”

Marian McWilliams, who replaced Bob O’Connor as the Pierce athletic director shortly after football was eliminated in 1986, said she is determined to keep the program afloat regardless of its initial performance. She spent $23,000 for a state-of-the-art video system--a symbol of her commitment to the program.

“It’s a long-range thing,” McWilliams said. “Once you start a program, you hope it’s there forever. Everyone went into this with the idea that it’s going to be a permanent thing.”

Fenwick, a former Brahma running back, coached at the school for 12 years, the last five as head coach. His record was 35-18, including a 28-5 mark his last three seasons when Pierce won three consecutive Southern California Conference championships.

But, in February, 1986, Fenwick resigned to become a volunteer assistant at Cal State Northridge.

Three months later, in the wake of district-wide budget cuts that included layoffs of full-time physical education instructors, the Pierce administration, like those at L. A City College, West Los Angeles and L. A. Southwest, decided there was not enough money to fund football and basketball and dropped both programs.

The 1986 football season was lost, but there was speculation that football might return for the 1987 season. The school earmarked funds to reinstate the program and had a coach in mind to replace Fenwick.

Steve Butler, who had been a head coach at Crespi High and Valley College and was then an assistant football coach and physical education instructor at West L. A., was contacted by administrators and was eager to take over the Pierce program.

There was only one problem: West L.A. also wanted to bring back its football program and was unwilling to allow Butler to transfer.

Wolf could have asked the district to make a special exception, but in January, 1987, he decided there was not enough time.

“We thought we were close to a deal,” Wolf said. “but we couldn’t put all the pieces together. Had that worked out we never would have missed the 1987 season.”

The 1988 season might also have been jeopardized if John Farhood, Pierce’s dean of academic affairs, had not contacted Enger about the position last winter. Farhood, who played on the same team with Enger at UCLA and coached with him at East L. A. for five years, asked if he was interested in the job. Enger initially turned down the offer but later reconsidered.

Enger, 52, a former coach at Cal State Los Angeles, East L. A. and several high schools, experienced some difficulty selling local recruits on Pierce football.

“Everyone was saying to players, ‘You don’t want to go there and play on a team that isn’t going to win any games and get humiliated,’ ” Enger said. “That feeling is pretty much what people in the area expressed.

“After next year, when they see we’re not going to be embarrassed and have a good nucleus coming back, we should be pretty close to being on par with people.”

Coaches of other sports at Pierce hope the return of football also will help bring their own programs to prominence. They believe a successful football program, or any football program for that matter, can be instrumental in a college athletics program’s overall success.

Lyons said his baseball program was adversely affected when Pierce dropped football because the opportunities for two-sport athletes were diminished.

“I spoke to several high school coaches who said they could not recommend Pierce to their players because they didn’t know what the status of any of the programs would be,” Lyons said. “There’s no question that we lost people. Now that the football program is back, there are several talented kids out there that will play both sports.”

Swimming Coach Charlie Hugo extols the virtues of a football program.

“I don’t think we lost any swimmers because there wasn’t a football team here,” Hugo said, “But the program still felt the impact. You want your teams to stay together and be unified. It’s hard to keep everyone together if there is no function to go to. Football games on the weekends provide you with an opportunity to do that.”

Junior college football, however, rarely presents a school with the opportunity to make money from game attendance.

Teams in Southern California compete against the Rams, Raiders, UCLA and USC for entertainment dollars and, without exception, come up short in terms of attendance. Most are break-even or deficit operations. El Camino College, the defending national champion, draws between 3,000 and 5,000 at its home games.

“If we were undefeated or 8-2 along the way, we would be lucky to average 4,000 a game,” Enger said. “Bakersfield makes money on football. I don’t know of any other school that does.”

Despite the lack of revenue from the gate, Pierce and other junior colleges can realize a financial profit by fielding a football team. The state allocates funds to school districts based on average daily attendance. A full-time student--one who carries 12 units or more--is worth about $3,300 to the district, of which about $2,600 is allocated to the school that student attends, Norlund said.

Athletes must be full-time students to be eligible for competition. Therefore, if 100 students enrolled at Pierce solely to play football, they would generate about $260,000 for the school in state funding.

“The football players are coming back and bringing some friends with them,” Craig said. “It definitely helps enrollment and creates revenue.”

During the summer, the players stirred interest around the campus simply by being there. Local residents often watched the team go through drills and offered their encouragement to a team that will consist mostly of freshmen.

“People see us in our T-shirts and they come up and give us a lot of support,” said Larry Hatley, a redshirt freshman center who transferred to Pierce from UCLA. “They say, ‘Hey, you guys are looking really good. Win a lot of games for us.’ I think we’re going to surprise a few people.”

Enger is not worried. The school has its program back, the players are enthusiastic and he has a tape deck in his car that plays his favorite Tchaikovsky compositions during the 90-minute commute from Covina to Pierce.

“The people at Pierce have given me everything I’ve asked for,” Enger said. “As long as they’re happy with me and I’m having a good time, I’ll coach football. Anyone who’s worth a damn should be able to hold his own at a place like this.”