SHINING EXAMPLE : Community Support Buoyed Fresno State in Its Sporting Ascension
If Cal State Northridge is looking for a role model for a successful move to Division I, the school probably need look no farther than the heart of California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley.
Little more than two decades ago, the athletic programs of California State University, Fresno--better known as Fresno State--were competing at the Division II level as virtual unknowns.
In the ‘80s, however, Fresno State experienced an athletic explosion that shows no signs of letting up in the ‘90s. That boom has produced one of the most successful Division I programs in the nation.
Athletic Director Gary Cunningham, 50, oversees the school’s athletics budget. Since he took the post in the summer of 1986, the Bulldogs have won 24 conference titles and on 12 occasions Fresno State teams have broken into the top 25 in the nation. Cunningham, once UCLA’s head basketball coach and a longtime assistant to John Wooden during the Bruins’ string of NCAA titles, has been instrumental in securing many of the national telecasts involving Bulldog sports in the past three seasons, including seven football games shown on ESPN and four ESPN college baseball games of the week from Beiden Field.
“The athletic program has grown rapidly here in the last 12 years,” Cunningham said. “I am just one of several people who has helped elevate the program. It helps that there’s not a lot of competition, but we are the focal point for the community. We are not a program that everyone knows about--we are not high visibility. But we are climbing the ladder.”
Bob Hiegert, Cal State Northridge athletic director, dreams of having a program similar to Fresno State’s.
“I think if you took Fresno State and put them in any state other than California, you would have them at a level of a Penn State, or whoever you think is the best program in the United States,” Hiegert said.
“Their facilities are great, their support is fantastic and they’ve done a terrific job in terms of developing loyalties and facilities that are first class. They’re just stuck in a tough competitive market with some great Pac-10 schools. To think that we would be competitive with them across the board is a little bit out of the question right now.
“I think eventually if we were to get the stadium and arena (CSUN has plans for a 30,000-seat football stadium and would like to add an 8,000 to 12,000-seat arena in the near future) we could parallel what they’re doing because we have a bigger population base.”
Cunningham does not wholeheartedly concur with Hiegert.
“What we are doing here would be harder to do in L. A.,” Cunningham said. “No, we couldn’t do what we’re now doing down there (in Los Angeles).”
The city of Fresno, with a population exceeding 300,000, has been a key ingredient in the mix of athletic success. The community has contributed more than $45 million to the athletic program in the past decade. In the past six months Bulldog fans, known regionally as “The Red Wave,” have generated more than $10 million for scholarships and facility improvements.
Les Snyder, athletic business manager, said the school would not enjoy the facilities it has or its status in the Big West Conference were it not for the magnitude and generosity of “The Red Wave.” Money has made all the difference.
“We have about 5,000 people that we count on to donate every year,” Snyder said.
Three hundred and fifty volunteers raised nearly $4 million in five weeks from those fans last spring. Of that amount, $2.36 million will be used for athletic scholarships and recruiting, the rest for donor season tickets.
The Bulldog Foundation, a nonprofit organization run by a board of trustees and a paid staff of four including one part-time worker, oversees fund-raising and money management. For the fifth consecutive year, this group was ranked first in the nation among college fund-raising entities using the team approach.
Full-scholarship donors account for most of the money raised by the foundation. A full-scholarship donor pays $5,000 a year, entitling him to an unspecified number of football, basketball and baseball season tickets and parking. Every scholarship dollar is raised this way through the foundation, which will mark its 40th year this fall.
Pat Ogle, executive director of the Bulldog Foundation, said the growth of the athletic program would not have been as swift and successful without the support of the community.
“We wanted to be as good as we possibly could be and the community put up the money (for us to do that), because, as a whole, they thought athletics were important,” Ogle said.
Ogle describes Fresno as a “close-knit, family community (that) shows loyalty to the athletic program as well as the university,” and he adds: “Any university can be as successful if it has the community base that wants to support it.”
Of course, the Bulldogs needn’t compete with the Rams, Raiders, Lakers, Dodgers and Angels for support the way college teams in the Los Angeles area do.
Over the years there have been local semipro baseball teams, but none that were a threat to Fresno State’s popularity. Minor league baseball teams have come and gone, unable to draw life-sustaining crowds.
And the first-year Minor League Football System team, the Fresno Bandits (1-4), is losing fans as quickly as the college sports season approaches. The Fresno Falcons, a Pacific Southwest Hockey League team, has remained in town since the 1960s. Neither is as successful as any major sport at the university.
Fresno State, which was founded in 1911, advanced into Division I in 1969 but remained a low-profile competitor through the early 1970s. Things began to pick up in 1976 when the university asked Jim Sweeney to be its football coach.
Sweeney, who had spent five years as head coach at Montana State and eight at Washington State before taking over at Fresno State, inherited a downtrodden program; the Bulldogs had won just 10 games in three seasons.
But Sweeney, now 61, wasted little time. Fresno State won nine games in Sweeney’s second year and won the 1977 Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. title, the school’s first conference championship since 1968.
In a grand show of support of the turnaround, local residents, through pledges and seat-option donations, raised more than $7 million to build Bulldog Stadium in 1980 and an additional $1.3 million for the Duncan Athletic Building, which houses a weight room, a locker room and administration offices.
The Bulldogs repaid their fans with California Bowl victories in 1982, ‘85, ’88 and ’89.
Over the past 13 years, Sweeney-coached teams have been heartily embraced by the community, with average attendance jumping from approximately 12,000 in 1976 to 34,000 in 1989.
Since January, more than $7 million has been raised, in a separate fund-raiser through ticket sales and renewals, to renovate and expand the 30,000-seat football stadium. The $14 million project should be completed by the start of the 1992 season and will allow for 34 self-contained sky boxes and a capacity of nearly 50,000.
The basketball program similarly got a boost from the community after its National Invitation Tournament championship in 1983. Two years after the landmark victory over DePaul, Selland Arena seating was expanded by more than 3,000 seats, giving home games a 10,000-plus capacity. Fresno State also has been the site of the NCAA’s top single-game crowds in soccer (12,224) and softball (3,357), as well as the nation’s leader for average paid attendance (3,000) for baseball at Beiden Field.
Fresno State’s complement of scholarships nearly equals the maximum allowed by the NCAA. The school offers the equivalent of 244 full scholarships; 261 are allowed. Football has 95 full-ride scholarships, and the men’s and women’s basketball programs each receive 15.
The number of women’s scholarships has grown from 21 in 1980 to 67 for 1990. Men’s scholarships have increased from 120 to 177 in the same span.
Scott Johnson, sports information director, sums up the Bulldogs’ success: “Weather, resources and no competition (regionally). We are in a unique situation here and we tried to capitalize and improve on it.”