Full Ahead on Stadium--City : Construction: Stopping work on the sports complex makes no sense, Fullerton officials say. And the football program isn’t officially dead.

Whether or not Cal State Fullerton’s football program survives, city officials said Monday that the sports complex on campus will go forward as planned.

“It’s sort of like trying to stop a ship two weeks before launching,” Fullerton City Councilman A. B. (Buck) Catlin said. “The machinery is there. It would cost more to stop construction than to finish the job.”

Catlin said that from the start, the 10,000-seat stadium complex was envisioned as a multipurpose facility, to be used by local community colleges and high schools, as well as for other civic events.

Financially, there is no reason to stop the project because it is funded by lease fees and taxes paid to the city and university by the 225-room Marriott hotel on the Fullerton campus.

“The city will eventually get its money back,” Catlin said.

As for the Titan football program, city officials and other boosters believe that football should continue this fall and that the Titan Athletic Foundation should be able to raise the necessary funds by tapping alumni and other Orange County donors.

Word of the Cal State Fullerton football team’s possible demise surfaced last week after the university’s athletic council recommended scrapping the program to achieve a 15% budget cut in the athletic department. The athletics division is only one of several departments grappling with a university deficit of at least $14 million in its projected budget of $125 million for the 1991-92 academic year.

Fullerton President Milton A. Gordon has said repeatedly that he has not decided the football program’s fate. But last Friday, several recruits were told that the program was dropped and that they should pursue other schools. Current Titan football players, too, were reportedly told that the program was over.

Gordon has called these moves “premature” and said he hopes to find a way to keep the Division I-A football program. But with its $1.3-million annual budget, the president has said the program would need to raise $650,000 to $700,000 from private donors. Gordon is scheduled to consult with members of the influential University Advisory Board, the athletic foundation and city officials this week and early next week.

The university’s funding problems are not expected to hamper the stadium project. Although Cal State Fullerton has yet to contribute its share of at least $1.5 million to $2 million for the $10.2-million construction project, a fund-raising plan has been drafted to remedy that.

Fullerton City Councilman Richard C. Ackerman said the university and the Titan Athletic Foundation have a plan to raise $4 million to $5 million over the next 18 months for the sports complex. Gordon must still approve it.

Most of the money would go toward construction. But about $1.5 million would support athletic programs, including football, said Ackerman, a member of the athletic foundation.

“My feeling is that we should go forward with that fund-raising effort because it did include a component for the athletic department programs,” he said. “I don’t think it’s too late to save the football program.”

Part of the university’s problem is that it has not had an aggressive fund-raising effort, say city officials and university boosters.

“A few years ago, somebody discovered they didn’t even have a computerized list of their alumni,” Ackerman said.

That has been remedied since Gordon’s arrival last August, and the university is launching a major alumni fund-raising drive.

“One of the things we also are trying to do is sell the naming rights of the sports complex,” Ackerman said.

He said he and other foundation members have had some discussions with potential donors and that others will be contacted once the complex fund-raising plan is approved by the university president. He declined to name prospective donors.

Buck Johns, a prominent Orange County developer and longtime member of the Titan Athletic Foundation, said he believes that people in Orange County will donate money to save the football program.

Johns pointed to the recent successful effort to save Cal State Long Beach’s football program through a similar fund-raising drive a few years ago.

“I’m of the opinion, having watched what Long Beach did, that an effort could be made to do a substantial fund-raising job at Fullerton,” said Johns.