Football Boosters Criticize Officials for 49ers’ Demise

Cal State Long Beach football boosters held a news conference Tuesday and criticized university President Curtis L. McCray and several of his aides for dropping the sport.

McCray, citing the state’s worsening budget crisis, eliminated the school’s Division I-A football team last week. A review committee appointed by McCray last summer had recommended maintaining the sport. McCray said he would study bringing back football on a lower level.

The Touchdown Club, a booster support group, had proposed an ambitious fund-raising drive that it contended would have created a $6-million endowment fund over a 10-year period. “It was a very workable plan,” club President Jim Stangeland said. Stangeland coached the 49ers from 1969 to 1973.

Boosters said that McCray, Vice President of University Relations Jerry E. Mandel, and interim Athletic Director Dave O’Brien conspired to drop football several years ago, but gave the impression to boosters that they wanted to save it. The state budget crisis provided a good excuse for them to drop the $1.3-million program, boosters said.

Boosters also claimed that their fund-raising plan was turned down, not because it wasn’t plausible, but because McCray feared that it would conflict with other multimillion-dollar fund-raising efforts already under way. For example, the university needs to raise about $6 million to complete a new basketball arena that is expected to open sometime before 1995. Said Stangeland: “The university had all this in the back of its mind and they were afraid to turn us loose.”

Stangeland called McCray and his aides “Johnny Come Latelys,” who plan to use the university as springboards for better jobs.

“They will be gone and we’ll all be left (here in Long Beach) with the tombs of football,” he said.