CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE : Goal-Oriented Burt Bullish on Prospects of Talented Matadors

Football coaches and players tend to focus on the positive during the preseason. After all, every team is undefeated, every player a potential starter.

For Cal State Northridge, such optimism is particularly understandable.

Since Bob Burt became coach of the Matadors in 1986, winning has become a habit. Northridge has a school-record four consecutive winning seasons and Burt, whose CSUN teams are 27-17, needs only four more victories to pass Tom Keele and become the winningest football coach in school history.

The likelihood that Northridge’s success will continue this season starts with two important words: Albert Fann. The Matadors’ senior tailback is 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, fast, strong, an All-American last season, and considered by many to be the top professional football prospect playing at the NCAA Division II level. Enough said.

At quarterback is Sherdrick Bonner (6-4, 190), an agile fifth-year senior who threw for 1,817 yards and eight touchdowns in ’89. He and Fann mean double trouble for defenses, especially because the Matadors are well stocked with fleet wide receivers.

On defense, CSUN has the biggest, fastest, nastiest group of hitters Burt says he has had in his tenure.

Indeed, there is much for which Burt should be thankful as the Matadors prepare for their opener Saturday at Northern Arizona.

Yet Northridge seems to be more consumed by things that it doesn’t have to its credit--a Western Football Conference championship and a victory over UC Davis.

In Burt’s four seasons, Northridge has finished second in the WFC three times, including last year when the Matadors went 3-2 in conference play (6-5 overall), and has yet to win its annual nonconference battle with UC Davis. This year, as in seasons past, the game figures to be crucial to CSUN’s chances of advancing to the Division II playoffs.

Two weeks ago, before the Matadors started summer training sessions, Burt stepped in front of a chalkboard and posed a question: “What are our goals this season?”

Winning a conference championship was mentioned first. Defeating UC Davis and Portland State cropped up shortly thereafter. Portland is the three-time defending WFC champion.

“There were about 20 things written up there,” said Tom Berry, a 6-4, 255-pound tackle and co-captain on defense, “but those three were the major ones.”

Burt seems cautiously confident that this could be the year Northridge scores a hat trick. “I think this is the most talented team we’ve ever had, but I’ve also been around long enough to know that what you have now isn’t necessarily what you end up with later,” he said.

Quality depth at the Division II level always is difficult to achieve, but the Matadors seem better off than usual. “There are two or three guys who can play at every position,” Berry said.

If there is a place for concern, it would be on the offensive line where Northridge’s starting five is likely to include only one returning player. “We’re probably weakest there from a depth standpoint,” Burt said, “but overall we’re probably still better there than we were last season.”

Berry, who should know firsthand from practice scrimmages, says the offensive line is at least 10 players deep this season as opposed to six or seven last season.

Don Goodman, a 6-8, 315-pound right tackle, provides Northridge with a hefty anchor on the offensive front. Playing on the opposite side will be either Art Espino (6-6, 255) or John Chase (6-4, 260). One guard will be Rodney Menzel, a part-time starter last season, and the other will be either Anthony McClellan (6-2, 260) or Matt Nicolo (6-1, 250). Ed Allum (6-3, 255) will be the center.

There seem to be quality backups at every other position, especially on defense where the standouts are expected to be Berry, inside linebackers Terrell Taylor and Kenny Vaughn, outside linebackers Ken Wallace and Mario Hull and safety Clayton Bamberg.

Bamberg, the other captain on defense, got an unusual perspective of the defensive unit last week when he sustained a pulled muscle and had to watch a five-on-five drill from the sidelines.

“I just couldn’t believe the striking going on, people flying around everywhere,” Bamberg said. “We have more total speed on defense than any team I’ve ever seen.”

Bamberg, also CSUN’s ace punt returner, has been particularly impressed by Hull, a 6-4, 225-pound junior who played on the same Cleveland High team as Fann.

Hull played safety at Santa Monica College, but he has made the switch to outside linebacker at CSUN where he will be asked to replace David Benefield, a first-team all-conference selection last season.

“He’s like a clone of Benefield, maybe even a little better,” Bamberg said.

Burt has been careful not to make such claims, choosing a low-key approach. Most compliments about the team’s personnel are followed by a “but” or are preceded by a “so far.”

Privately, Burt acts a lot like a card shark with a stacked deck and an ace up his sleeve. There’s a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eyes and a bounce in his step that exudes a confidence he clearly feels he shouldn’t express.

For the record he says, “The confidence they feel in themselves, I feel in them. If you feel confident about a person doing their job, you just let them do it. Right now, they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”

So everything, for now, appears in place, even the schedule. The Matadors will play Portland State (Oct. 6), Cal State Sacramento (Oct. 20) and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (Nov. 3), the WFC’s upper echelon, all at North Campus Stadium.

“We’ll have them far away from their 13,000,” Bonner said, smiling at the thought of not having Portland State’s partisan home crowd drown out his signals.

Not that it would matter, of course. “I’ll go down an alley with any of these guys,” Bonner added.

Northern Arizona, a Division I-AA team, is the first bully on the block.