Real Men Wouldn’t Kill a College Football Program

On many subjects, advice from me is absolutely worthless. Auto repair, home maintenance, financial investments, bent and twisted love triangles--in all these areas I’m admittedly of little value as an intervenor. Perhaps that’s why my help is so seldom sought.

But my gift as a human being is that I know I’m ignorant about those things. How many times have you gotten advice from people who profess to be experts in one or more of the above categories and discovered, to your horror, that they were no more skilled than you? You usually find out too late, and then the so-called expert comes up with some lame excuse (“How was I supposed to know she’d have a gun?”).

The results of bad advice can be ruinous.

Therefore, I save mine for the things I really know well. And if I know nothing else, my friend, I know college football.

You scoff. You jeer. For all I know, you may pooh-pooh.

First, a little about my credentials.

I graduated from the University of Nebraska.

That happens to be the extent of my credentials, but that is the football equivalent of saying your doctor did his residency at the Mayo Clinic. But just to gild the lily, let me point out that I attended the U at a time when the school won a national championship. Then-President Nixon came to campus to formally bestow the title on the school.

So, given that background, you can imagine my consternation when I picks up the paper (the U does not offer a strong English program) and sees that Cal State Fullerton is thinking of dropping football.

And while many of my friends had the same response-- Cal State Fullerton has a football team?-- I was deeply touched.

I read the articles and it appears that the problem is budgetary. The athletic department needs to cut back, and the football program eats up lots of money and is a good candidate for saving money.

Oh, alas and alack, as we used to say in Nebraska when we were trailing Oklahoma in the fourth quarter.

But fear not. The answer is so simple.

Don’t reduce the program; expand it.

The Huskers didn’t get where they are today by slashing their athletic budget. Cal State’s football budget is about $1.3 million; Nebraska’s is around $6 million. What kind of players can you buy--I mean, recruit--with a piddling $1.3 million?

Football is the cash cow in Nebraska. Aside from the millions of dollars Big Red generates for retailers statewide--for such essentials as red hats, red ties, red underwear and red suspenders--it also keeps the rest of the athletic program afloat. The football program’s success yields between $10 million and $12 million.

You think Nebraska has sold out its 76,000-seat stadium for every home game since 1962 by worrying about budgets? When the Huskers come to play anywhere in California, the 15,000-member Californians for Nebraska usually can be counted on to swarm the stadium and be as annoying as if they were still back home. If you went to a game in Lincoln, you might see the banner reading, “Alaskans for Nebraska.”

Why can’t Cal State build that kind of support? How about a Nebraskans for Cal State Fullerton? I’d be happy to make a few calls.

The point is, you don’t build loyalty by penny-pinching. Didn’t they get a little suspicious around here a couple of years ago when radio station KMNY in Anaheim broadcast Nebraska football games live and delayed the broadcasts of CSUF’s?

All I’m saying is, let’s give Orange County a college football team it can be proud of. I’d carry the challenge to UCI, but those sissies haven’t even taken up the sport and, besides, could you get behind a team known as the Anteaters?

Yes, I have a vision. Titan Power. The Nevada-Las Vegas of college football.

Don’t kill football. Surely, there must be other places they can cut. How about the humanities department? How many games have they won lately?

I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been there.

That’s why some people who have studied the Huskers commitment to football are fond of pointing out that the N on their helmets stands for Nowledge.