CSUN Coach Grapples With Offensive Line, Not Wrestling

By his own description, Scott Norton is a pacifist, a relatively normal 27-year-old former athlete whose passion has always been football.

Once a two-year starter at fullback for Cal State Northridge, Norton is now a first-year assistant on the school’s football coaching staff.

He would prefer to be known and treated as such.

But a reputation precedes him. Norton, a ruddy-faced, 270-pound fellow, is a former champion freestyle wrestler.

You’ve heard of tall tales? Norton is the subject of tough tales.

It is said that a running bet exists between Norton and members of the Northridge offensive line, which he helps coach. The boast is that he can pin any of them in less than 10 seconds.

Reportedly, he once had a taker: Barry Voorhees, at 307 pounds the biggest and strongest player on the team.

According to a witness who requested anonymity--perhaps in fear of Voorhees--the informal match lasted all of three seconds before the challenger bowed out because of a back injury.

Norton, who would much rather talk football than wrestling, says everyone “lies or exaggerates” about his prowess as a wrestler.

“Wrestling is over,” he says. “It was what I did when I was skinny and athletic and could see my feet.”

Norton wrestled, in the beginning anyway, to improve as a football player.

“It was the greatest thing I could do to get in shape for playing football,” said Norton, who has added 25 pounds to his already stocky frame since playing fullback for CSUN in 1981 and ’82. “In terms of improving stamina and agility, it’s the best. You find out more about yourself in one wrestling match than you do in a year of football.”

What he liked best about the sport was that he alone was accountable, win or lose.

“You go out there alone,” Norton says. “You beat a guy and you get all the accolades. It’s not really that the winning was the best thing, it’s that losing is the worst.”

Oddly enough, Norton chose to accept a scholarship offer from Northridge largely because the Matadors did not have a wrestling team. He was ready to walk away from the sport at the top of his game after then-President Jimmy Carter ordered a U. S. boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

Norton had only recently won the 220-pound freestyle class at the Olympic Trials in Hawaii when the boycott was finalized.

“I’m a Republican for life,” he says pointedly when asked if he supported the move.

From that point on wrestling, which already ran a distant second to football for Norton’s affections, was all but ignored.

“I was lucky,” says Norton while caressing a bottle of “mother’s milk”--a beer--at a Northridge restaurant. “I have a knack for wrestling. After ‘80, I’d wrestle at the state (Amateur Athletic Union) finals and just show up at the Olympic Trials and do well.”

Norton narrowly missed making the U. S. team in the past two Olympic Trials. He last wrestled at the 1988 trials in Boca Raton, Fla., where he competed as a heavyweight in the Greco-Roman class.

He had been a freestyle wrestler throughout his career, but the Greco-Roman style--in which contact below the waist is prohibited--was better suited to his physical limitations.

“I just don’t have any knees anymore,” Norton says.

By placing third and failing to gain a berth on the team, Norton figures he got what he deserved.

“I went in there thinking I could go on my past performances, but those young guys just picked me up and put me down,” he said. “I didn’t train hard. That’s why I got crushed.”

But even if the commitment to train had been there, Norton would have been hard-pressed to find a suitable opponent against whom to practice.

“That’s one of the sport’s drawbacks,” he says. “You can find a pickup basketball game anywhere. It’s ‘Hey, want to go play some basketball?’ But you don’t get the same response when it’s ‘Hey, want to go do some takedowns?’ ”

Of course, he no longer has to worry about such things.

Foremost on Norton’s mind now is the play of CSUN’s offensive line, particularly at tight end, which is his primary responsibility.

“Football has always been my first love,” he says. “I love wrestling, but it’s not fun. It’s work. . . . And it’s old. Football is fun. And it’s where I want to leave my mark.”