Titan Football History: a Trip Through the Twilight Zone

This week’s fall and rise of Cal State Fullerton football is just one more footnote to a program with a bent for the bizarre. Here’s 20 examples of why pulling the plug on Titan football could have been considered euthanasia:

1. While riding home from a game in Northern California on a Pink Tiger charter bus in 1973, players see a wheel rolling down the road next to them. They turn to see a shower of sparks flying from the front of the second team bus. The entire team crowds on to the remaining bus.

2. In 1975, the Titans’ first year in Division I, the team travels to Southern Mississippi. The wind-chill factor at game time is 20 degrees, but the players have no cold-weather gear. They don’t have a lot of big players, either. During warm-ups, a security guard taps a Fullerton trainer on the shoulder and asks, “Where’s you all’s linemen?” Down, 35-0, at halftime, Coach Jim Colletto tells his team, “If you guys keep playing like this, we’re gonna lose, 70-0.” Final score: Southern Mississippi 70, Fullerton 0.

3. After busing from Ft. Collins, Colo., to Laramie, Wyo., and arriving 35 minutes before kickoff in 1981, Fullerton officials are glad to find out Frontier Airlines is offering jet service to Laramie in 1982. The Titans are aboard one of the first jet flights into the town, and players wonder if the plane really was supposed to continue past the end of the runway and onto the grass. The morning after the game, they also wonder if planes loaded with football teams and their equipment have problems taking off on short runways. The next week, Frontier cancels its jet service to Laramie.

4. The Titans hold their first football banquet at the Inn of Tomorrow in Anaheim in 1970. The fare? Tacos and burritos, served on paper plates.

5. Bumped off a flight out of Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1977 because of weight restrictions, Athletic Director Neale Stoner stands horrified in the terminal and watches the team plane nip off the top branches of trees that border the airport.

6. Talk about an identity crisis. Over the years, the Titans have been referred to as Fullerton State, Cal-Fullerton and Cal Fullerton State . . . and that’s in the NCAA newsletter.

7. The day before the Titans are supposed to arrive in 1984, a group of wealthy gamblers shows up at the Maxim Hotel in Las Vegas. Fullerton is told to look elsewhere for lodging. “We overbooked. We goofed up,” says Larry Feil, Maxim vice president. “We’ve got a big group of high rollers coming in, and we decided to accommodate them. The football team just wants one night and some food.” It winds up in a motel off The Strip.

8. To save money, the athletic departments of Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach decide to co-charter a flight in 1983 that will take the Titans to Boise, Ida., and the 49ers on to Manhattan, Kan., then reverse the route. The overloaded charter has to refuel in Las Vegas after departing Long Beach.

9. In 1984, the 10-0 Titans--the nation’s winningest major college team--drop out of UPI’s Top 20 after beating 20-17 Fresno State. Fullerton’s one week of glory on the elite list ends despite the fact that three teams ahead of them lost and one tied. “Figures,” says Coach Gene Murphy.

10. During three trips to Hawaii in the ‘70s, the Titans’ lodging steadily improves--from the barracks at an Air Force base to a cockroach-infested motel to a hotel with no air conditioning.

11. Rained out of Anaheim Stadium on game day in 1983--the Rams weren’t playing for another week, but they weren’t taking any chances with the field, either--Fullerton distributes maps to Glover Stadium in the Big A parking lot to redirect fans. With no regular phone setup at Glover, Las Vegas radio broadcasters manage to find a dial tone on one line in the press box. The line also happens to be connected to a pay phone across the street, so a Fullerton sports information assistant spends the game standing in the booth to make sure that no one picks up the phone and talks to the folks in Las Vegas . . . over the airwaves.

12. In 1975 or ’76 (no one seems to remember for sure, because when you’re a Titan, these fiascos tend to run together), the team is forced to walk back to its hotel after a practice at Fresno State. Later, the bus driver, who had gone out to dinner, tells coaches, “You said to take ‘em to practice. There was nothin’ in my instructions about pickin’ ‘em up.”

13. Assistant coach Greg Newhouse, unable to obtain a school vehicle to make a recruiting appointment in San Diego in 1980, borrows his brother’s motorcycle, straps on a lineman’s helmet and speeds off down the freeway.

14. To keep the program financially afloat, the athletic administration starts “selling” its conference home games. From 1978-84, the Titans play six consecutive games at University of the Pacific and five in a row at San Jose State. In 1990, conference games that should have been at Fullerton were played at San Jose State and at Fresno State to save the men’s and women’s gymnastics programs. In 11 seasons at Fullerton, Coach Gene Murphy coaches nine games in Fresno’s Bulldog Stadium. “Yeah, I think I’m eligible to vote up there,” Murphy says.

15. With the Titans en route to their first conference championship in 1983, Fullerton boosters decide to hold an on-campus pep rally. At the “rally” the cheerleaders literally outnumber the students.

16. The 1984 Olympics were a boon for many Southland schools. UCLA got new dorms. USC got a new swim stadium. Cal State Dominguez Hills got a new cycling track. Fullerton plays host to the team handball competition. The athletic administration is forced to relocate in the library, and the school gets a check for $5,000.

17. Before one game in 1984, three starters--two defensive backs and a receiver--are hobbled by ankle injuries suffered in practice when they step on golf balls or in divots left by a P.E. golf class that shares the Titans’ practice field.

18. The player who overslept is the lucky one when a six-hour layover turns a 1990 trip to Mississippi State into a 17-hour nightmare. The next week, Murphy decides to have his players spend the night in a Fullerton hotel before an early-morning flight to Akron, Ohio. The coaches have a little trouble counting heads, however, and nine players are left behind.

19. Maureen Reagan and entourage bump Titan officials, sportswriters and one player off a flight from Salt Lake City to Boise in 1984. After a circuitous route and a seven-hour layover in Denver, the seven castoffs arrive in Boise after one player’s father, who had dropped his son off at the school and then driven to Boise.

20. Colletto suffers a breakdown after a game in 1979 and has to be carried to a car. He decides to quit and tells a Titan equipment man, “It’s going to take 10 years for my career to recover from five years at Fullerton.”

Eleven years later, Colletto is named head coach at Purdue.