New Conference Would Give CSUN a Quick Fix, Chance for Hasty Exit

Al Palmiotto says Cal State Northridge wants to join the American Conference, a proposed NCAA Division I affiliate for basketball.

Not exactly true, says Bob Hiegert, CSUN’s athletic director.

What Northridge is most interested in, Hiegert says, is a preset schedule of basketball games to fill January and February.

That plain. That simple.

But who could blame Palmiotto, the athletic director at United States International University in San Diego, for jumping the gun?

In the past few years, Palmiotto has devoted a great deal of time and energy in an effort to find a conference for USIU’s athletic teams. The school has played as a Division I independent since the fall of 1980--which is the same long-term situation Northridge is hoping to avoid.

Beginning this fall, CSUN will compete at the Division I level in all sports except football. However, men’s volleyball is the only sport in which the school belongs to an existing Division I conference.

This is where Palmiotto enters the picture.

He has found several schools from across the nation facing similar predicaments. The American Conference, Palmiotto hopes, will be the thread that ties them together.

Initial talk was of a conference that would encompass any sport a member school might field. The majority of schools, CSUN included, were not interested. So Palmiotto, organizer of the proposed alliance, changed the focus. Flexibility became the key.

The American Conference, should there ever be one, will now be an association for basketball teams only. And a temporary one at that.

“We wouldn’t want our hands tied if another opportunity to join a conference should present itself,” Hiegert said. Chicago State, Southern Utah State, Wright (Ohio) State and Northeastern Illinois, all of which have expressed interest in the new conference, wholeheartedly agree.

For that reason, the American Conference might become something more appropriately referred to as the American Alliance.

A conference needs a commissioner. A conference needs a publicity staff. A conference needs to pay NCAA dues.

An agreement is all that is needed to form an alliance. So far, eight schools, including Cal State Sacramento and Missouri-Kansas City, seem to have one. They have agreed to play one another--one game at home, the other on the road--in the winter months beginning in the 1991-92 season.

Beginning that season, Division I basketball teams will be limited to 25 games, excluding those that might be played in the NCAA Tournament. The tentative agreement among schools would provide 14 of those games.

And should the NCAA return to its current 28-game format, it has been proposed that the alliance might then hold its own eight-team, single-elimination postseason tournament.

The winner would advance . . . to next season; the conference champion would not automatically qualify for the NCAA Tournament.

“This is a quick fix for basketball and an opportunity to give each school a chance at proving itself as a Division I basketball program without tying itself in,” Hiegert said of the agreement. “Every institution has its options open.”

Whether the American Conference actually will be created probably will be decided in January, when athletic officials from each school are scheduled to meet again in conjunction with the NCAA convention.

The NCAA dues to form a conference would be minimal, Hiegert says, if split eight ways.

“It is probably as effective of a way as we can (find to) solve our basketball scheduling problems,” Hiegert said.

CSUN would be matched against schools with athletic programs in similar stages of transition. Three other schools--Cal State Sacramento, Southern Utah and USIU--combine with Northridge to give the formation a Western flavor.

CSUN would end up taking two two-game trips to the Midwest to play conference opponents.

True, it is a cheap setup.

But for Northridge, it is an almost ideal setup--for now.

Two liners: Craig Clayton and Scott Sharts of Northridge were among six players cut when Team USA trimmed its baseball roster to 24 last week. Clayton has left to play summer ball in Liberal, Kan., and Sharts has returned to Wichita, Kan., where he played for a team that won the National Baseball Congress World Series last summer. . . .

Joe Harper, Cal Lutheran’s new football coach, has routinely checked in at 11 a.m. this summer and spent the afternoon formulating his staff and strategy. Putting together the staff reportedly has been much easier than coming up with a game plan for what is left from last season’s Kingsmen team. . . .

Dorian Manigo, CSUN’s top basketball recruit, will play for the North team today in a high school all-star game at UC Irvine. Manigo, a guard, helped San Francisco Riordan reach the state large-schools’ championship game. . . . Ruben Montano, a right-handed pitcher from San Bernardino Valley College, has signed a letter of intent to play baseball at Northridge. He was 4-4 with a 2.10 earned-run average and 119 strikeouts in 104 innings last season.