Sacramento Joins Northridge, 2 Others in Football Conference

The deadline passed Friday and only one school was added to the membership list of a new West Coast-based, cost-containment Division I-AA football conference that includes Cal State Northridge.

Cal State Sacramento committed Friday, joining Northridge, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Southern Utah, but officials from St. Mary’s, UC Davis, Santa Clara and Cal State Long Beach did not respond to invitations to join the conference, according to Vic Buccola, Western Football Conference commissioner. Buccola is the acting commissioner of the conference that is using the WFC as its working name.

“We wanted to hear from them by the 24th, but if someone comes to us in three weeks, I’m sure we’ll consider them,” Buccola said. “We don’t want to shut anybody out, but we are trying to bring it to a closure.

“We have to do our scheduling for 1993 . . . but not hearing from them really puts us in a dilemma.”

The schools formed the conference because of an NCAA regulation that requires members to play at the same level in all sports. Northridge and the others were forced to drop football or move to Division I in the sport by 1993.

The cost-containment WFC restricts full athletic scholarships to 20 and a maximum of 38 when athletic scholarship money and federal financial aid are combined.