With Future in Question, Titans Prepare for the Worst

The final score from the Silver Bowl in Las Vegas Saturday was UNLV, 33, Cal State Fullerton 16. That much we know.

What we don’t know:

How final a score was it?

Cal State Fullerton President Milton Gordon will provide the answer some time in the next two weeks, and for those huddled Titan football supporters out there--the Silenced Minority--the outlook certainly isn’t brilliant.

Best-case scenario: Gordon brings football back, but downgrades it to Division I-AA “cost-containment” ball. Scholarships are sliced to a dozen or so, the Big West is abandoned for the Western Football Conference and games against UCLA, Georgia and Southwestern Louisiana are traded for games against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara and Southern Utah.

Things-could-be-better case scenario: Gordon calls for a “suspension” of the football program, which means no football in 1993, a reassessment of the situation and maybe--maybe--restoration at a scaled-back level by 1994 or ’95.

Worst-case scenario: Cal State Fullerton Football, 1970-1992.

Part of being a Titan is knowing which scenario to prepare for, so Sports Information Director Mel Franks mailed out his customary football press release last week under a not-so-customary heading:

SEASON, MURPHY ERA & MAYBE PROGRAM TO END AT UNLV

Gene Murphy, the Titans’ retiring head coach, said he spent the bye week after the New Mexico State game “not in preparation for Vegas so much as making out a list of those players who will be eligible next year, in case they do drop the sport. I have been through this before and it’s a sad, ugly thing when a school drops football.”

Murphy cringes at the image of his practice field being turned into Crazy Gene’s Used Linebackers, Cornerbacks and Punters.

“Those players will be eligible immediately,” Murphy said. “It’ll be a meat market here. There will be more coaches on our campus than you can shake a stick at. Some coaches have called me already.”

Murphy also has begun raising money to send his eight assistant coaches to the next NCAA convention in Atlanta, where there are contacts to be made and jobs to be lobbied for.

Is Fullerton football worth saving?

Murphy says yes but concedes, “I’m biased.” He’s also outnumbered, judging from recent events on campus.

--Oct. 31: Fullerton hosts Utah State in what will be Murphy’s last home game at Titan coach. Official attendance is listed at 2,113.

--Nov. 18: The Athletics Council holds open hearings to discuss the future of football at Fullerton. Only a handful of boosters, and a few student stragglers, show up.

--Nov. 24: The Academic Senate recommends to the Athletics Council that football be “suspended indefinitely.”

Next, the Athletics Council makes its recommendation to Gordon. History is not on football’s side. In January, 1991, the Council voted unanimously to drop the sport, only to have Gordon veto the proposal and grant the program two more years--until the school’s $5-million fund-raising drive was complete.

Two years are over, and the Titan fund-raisers came up $3.5 million short.

Gordon, and his university’s athletic department, might not be able to afford another veto.

The biggest blow came in the form of a projected cost-and-revenue analysis for the 1993-94 school year. Keep football at Division I-A for another season, and the Fullerton athletic department winds up $635,000 in the red. Move football down to Division I-AA and the deficit is $265,000.

Drop or suspend football, however, and the budget actually has a surplus--slightly more than $13,000.

Think of what Fullerton Athletic Director Bill Shumard could do with that $13,000.

Maybe send Augie Garrido’s baseball team back to Omaha.

Maybe bring Brad Holland an out-of-state basketball recruit.

Maybe keep wrestling Coach Ardeshir Asgari.

Maybe fund another season’s worth of women’s volleyball, thus avoiding those unsightly lawsuits.

The cost of pretending to play Big-Time College Football has always been prohibitive for Fullerton--$1.2 million per year, or more than half the entire men’s athletic budget--and the returns have been diminishing since 1984, when the Titans were perfect, 12-0, and didn’t go anywhere, not even to the Freedom Bowl.

Louder and louder, the question was raised: What’s the point?

To entertain a few rich boosters whose idea of a fine time is flying into Athens, Ga., getting a 40-yard-line seat in Sanford Stadium, digging out the wine coolers and toasting their boys as they lose, 56-0, to Georgia?

To keep Terry Donahue gainfully employed?

To deliver happy homecomings all across the SEC?

Now, Division I-AA is being used as a last-ditch alternative when it should have been first from the start. Fullerton students don’t care about their football team? Had they been given a few 9-2 seasons in the Western Football Conference, maybe a round or two in the I-AA playoffs, they might have come to recognize Saturday afternoon football games as part of the well-rounded college experience.

And they probably wouldn’t have minded one bit if the losing team was named UC Davis.

Now, it might be too late for that.

Now, a 2-9 last-place team that has been pounded by scores of 56-0, 49-3 and 37-14, isn’t considered worth the trouble, is considered a source of aggravation to the school and is shrugged off by the student body as better off defunct.

So this could be the end for Titan football.

Will anybody miss it?

Sure they will, and that has been the problem all along.

For too many years, far too many people missed it.

* A LOSING CONCLUSION

Gene Murphy ended his Titan coaching career with a 33-16 loss to UNLV. C9