Long Beach Sports : Despite Cutbacks, He Wants to Give Athletics a Sporting Chance : Colleges: Dave O’Brien incurred the wrath of Cal State Long Beach boosters by dropping 49er football. But he’s convinced better times are ahead.

It has not been an easy 14 months for Dave O’Brien, although the acting athletic director at Cal State Long Beach manages a smile as he sits inside his office in a trailer next to the antiquated campus gymnasium.

O’Brien is the man who incurred the wrath of school boosters when he dropped the football program a year ago. Now, though, he says, “If we hadn’t dropped football, we would have stopped all athletics in their tracks six weeks ago. We would have shut down every department and we would not have played a single game this year. I would have had to discharge every employee and coach.”

An eternal optimist, O’Brien has nonetheless engineered one of the largest economic cutbacks in collegiate athletics in California history.

Since September, 1991, when O’Brien was appointed for an indefinite stay, CSULB has shed football and its $1.3-million price tag. Some 25 coaches, administrators and support personnel have been fired or reassigned because of the state budget crisis. Donations to the athletic scholarship fund have plummeted to about half the $450,000 received two years ago. (O’Brien concedes that the dramatic drop can be attributed to disgusted football boosters who no longer contribute.) And President Curtis L. McCray has said that the athletic budget may need to be trimmed even further.

Still, O’Brien sits in his office, surrounded by 49er memorabilia and pictures of his four sons, and maps ambitious plans. In September, the college signed a three-year deal with the city so that the nationally ranked baseball team can play at refurbished Blair Field and attract more cable-television exposure. O’Brien hopes to reinstate men’s and women’s swimming and men’s tennis, sports that were cut by his predecessor, Corey Johnson, and he wants to add men’s and women’s soccer. Football might return by 1996, but on a smaller scale, he said.

An on-campus softball field is in the works and O’Brien can’t wait for ground to be broken on his pet project, the $16-million athletic complex called the Pyramid. About a block long at its base, the 17-story structure is expected to include a 6,000-seat arena that O’Brien believes will allow the 49ers to play host to Top-20 men’s and women’s basketball teams, which is virtually impossible now because of the cramped 1,900-seat campus gym.

O’Brien thinks the Pyramid will attract upscale spectators from western Orange County and could be “a catalyst for economic recovery for the city of Long Beach.”

“That kind of exposure,” he went on, “would bring to the city enormous support that it couldn’t afford to pay for.”

Not everyone shares O’Brien’s rosy outlook. For the Pyramid to become a reality, the university must raise an additional $6 million. Some believe that O’Brien, a New Jersey native whose background is in accounting--not hand-shaking--isn’t up to the task.

“I don’t think a year as a Division III basketball coach qualifies him to run a Division I program,” said a college administrator who asked not to be identified.

But most people give O’Brien high marks.

“I don’t know how anyone can do what he is doing,” said longtime golf Coach Del Walker, a former athletic director at Long Beach City College. “In all my years, I never had a (financial) situation like this. It’s almost impossible and he is doing a very good job.”

Coaches say O’Brien, who had no previous experience as an athletic administrator, has been more open with them than previous administrators were.

“He’s honest, upfront and a good communicator,” said men’s volleyball Coach Ray Ratelle. “If you want to see Dave, you can see him. Corey (Johnson) made it clear: You don’t bother him unless it is very, very important.”

McCray, who is expected to extend O’Brien’s tenure in January, has also been impressed. “He’s been steady as a rock,” the president said. “There has not been a single thing that Dave has laid out for himself that he didn’t do. He’s accounted for himself well.”

A graduate of Moravian College in Pennsylvania, O’Brien came to Long Beach in 1989 as an assistant to Bill Griffith, the vice president of administration and finance. Griffith had worked with O’Brien at Montclair State College, a Division III school in New Jersey, where O’Brien was a legal adviser and assistant basketball coach.

“Dave is a very good people person,” Griffith said. “He has very good human relations skills. He’s a good problem solver.”

O’Brien, who was given control over the 49ers athletic budgets, was virtually unknown to boosters when McCray appointed him to replace Johnson, who took a similar position at Colorado State. O’Brien, who was selected over Steve Holton, a popular associate athletic director, was viewed as an outsider--the president’s hatchet man--who would eliminate football and strangle athletic budgets.

“I don’t think that was a fair assumption that he was (the hatchet man),” said athletic fiscal officer Dan Radakovich. “I don’t think people understood what role Dave played with athletics when (Johnson) was here. Dave understood all the financial problems here and he understood the direction he wanted the athletic department to move.”

O’Brien has targeted six sports--men’s and women basketball, men’s and women’s volleyball, softball and baseball--as having funding priority among the 18 sports. But even O’Brien says that more cuts--some estimates range as high as $500,000--are inevitable. That would leave little choice but to fire coaches and drop sports.

On a walking tour of the athletic plant last week, O’Brien detailed what he thinks is needed for the athletic program to survive into the next decade. Fund raising, he said, must increase dramatically. He admitted that would take time, a luxury the 49ers might not have.

“We need to be self-sufficient,” he said. “But we can’t get there overnight.”

O’Brien hopes to have $2.5 million from a corporate donor for the Pyramid by the first of the year. A referendum asking students to pay a share of enrollment fees directly to athletics may go to a vote in a year, he said. Such extra charges are usually less than $50 a semester.

Standing in the sun-drenched parking lot that may become the Pyramid, O’Brien was his usual, upbeat self last week as he spoke about the future.

“You have to think positive,” he said. “This department will survive these cuts and that will allow us to achieve athletic success.”