CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE FOOTBALL: AT A CROSSROADS : Program Tries Not to Trip on a Shoestring

The first time fullback Jim Warren saw his new home at Cal State Northridge he was shocked. Potholes blocked the dusty road to North Campus Stadium, home of the football team, and the dilapidated, trash-strewn stadium paled in comparison to his high school stadium. The stark, uninviting locker room was no match for the colorful, carpeted locker room of Edison High in Huntington Beach.

Warren’s friends at Arizona State made matters worse. They bragged about the big-time atmosphere of Tempe and their first-class facilities. Why, they even stayed at hotels for home games.

Warren, now a senior, wondered what he was missing then put it out of his mind.

“This is all I know now,” Warren said. “A dirt parking lot . . . Devonshire Downs, an old horse racing track. It says a lot about the players at Northridge, that they come to play, (that they don’t come) for the facilities.”

The Matadors’ evening practices are an eerie ballet played out under a lighting system that produces a dim glow. Despite having the smallest budget in the NCAA Division II Western Football Conference, Bob Burt, the coach, has tried to keep the program’s lights from going out.

He has succeeded. In seven seasons his teams are 42-33, and his 1990 squad won a share of the WFC championship.

The big things hurt:

* A tiny scholarship budget.

* A recruiting budget funded solely by donations.

* A coaching staff that cannot devote all of its time to film study, game preparation and recruiting because all of its members teach or have day jobs.

* A practice field that needs to be resodded.

The little things hurt, too:

* Uniform pants that don’t match.

* Practice jerseys that are ripped or too small.

* The absence of a working water pump in the midst of a heat wave. To save the grass on the practice field from dying, Burt watered it nightly with four hoses.

* Hand-me-down cleats.

Despite this legacy of woe, Warren believes that none of the shortcomings are a factor when the game begins.

“The bottom line is that once you’re on the field, whether it’s Ann Arbor, Mich., or North Campus Stadium, both fields are 100 yards,” he said. “You just gotta go out and play.”

Offensive tackle Charlie Williams, a transfer from Houston, does not miss the Division I life style. His most pleasant surprise was the level of voluntarism.

“Some of the assistants spend 10 to 11 hours here every day,” Williams said. “They cut grass. They clean up the stands. Everybody helps out to keep this place going. I’ve found a real closeness here.”

Marlon McBride, who transferred from Texas El Paso after the coaching staff eliminated his tight end position by switching to a run-and-shoot offense, believes the Matadors are tougher because they make do with less.

“We don’t have a silver spoon in our mouths,” he said. “So we learn to accept things the way they are because we can’t do anything to change them.”

Burt urges his players to dismiss the dismal surroundings. He tells them that once they put on their practice gear, their worries must be left in the locker room.

Northridge football expenditures fall into three categories: coaching salaries, athletics scholarships and operations.

The operations budget accounts for uniforms, equipment, phone calls and supplies, fall camp (including dorm lodging and meals), videotaping, pregame meals, road trips and a stipend of $9,000 for assistant coaches Pat Blackburn, Dennis McConnaughy and Scott Norton.

The budget does not include ground transportation or home-game management. The athletics program foots the bill for buses, ushers, security and referees.

At $66,500, the operations budget reflects a 30% cut from last season, a trickle-down effect from state budget cuts.

The Matadors stretch those dollars by going on the cheap. When they traveled to Edmond, Okla., earlier this season, they spent $18,166.50 for air fare, food and lodging for 47 players, 11 coaches and two trainers, an amazingly low $302.78 per person.

The secret? Airline meals for breakfast and lunch the first and last days of the three-day trip, early purchase of tickets from a corporate sponsor, low-priced hotel rooms off a freeway and, in some cases, three players to a room.

The travel budget alone of Central Oklahoma, which defeated Northridge, 14-0, exceeds Northridge’s operations budget, $75,999 to $66,500.

As part of the 30% cut, equipment manager Ruben Avila was not budgeted for the Oklahoma trip, so the coaches struggled to fix helmets and repair shoulder pads during the game.

Burt, offensive coordinator Rich Lopez, defensive coordinator Mark Banker and quarterbacks-/receivers coach Dale Bunn are paid out of a coaching salary budget of $111,200.

In addition to their salary from football, Burt, Lopez and Banker receive a teaching salary from the kinesiology department. Burt’s combined salary is $70,000, Lopez’s is $58,000 and Banker’s is $46,000. Bunn, a 35-year-old bachelor, coaches full time for only $12,000.

Yet that is more than the $9,000 that Blackburn, McConnaughy and Norton divide. Blackburn has a teaching salary from Alemany High to fall back on, but McConnaughy and Norton have no other sources of income. McConnaughy, a former CSUN player, is still working toward his degree. Norton, a CSUN graduate, is living off the profits he made from a business he sold so he could devote himself to coaching.

Defensive backs coach LeRoy Irvin, offensive line coach Dan Barnes and volunteer assistant Jim Clausen work for free.

Along with volunteer coaches, the program is complemented by volunteer orthopedic surgeon Dr. Lester Cohn, volunteer manager George Halladay and volunteer custodian Tony Myles.

Booster Chuck Treibatch, whose son Eric recently completed his college career as Northridge’s all-time tackling leader, contributes money and time, shooting and developing photos for each player. Another fan, Bob Clark, videotapes end-zone shots for the coaching staff.

The scholarship budget of $120,872 limits Burt to dividing 17 full scholarships among 50 players.

In contrast, WFC foe Portland State has a scholarship budget of $259,000, an operations budget of $479,000 (including stadium rent, a fee CSUN does not incur), a coaching salary budget of $255,000 for seven full-time coaches and a recruiting budget of $16,000.

Unlike the other WFC schools, Portland State is not joining the I-AA cost containment conference planned for next season.

Northridge? It invented cost containment. The cost of its program, subtracting revenue from expenses, is only $188,572.

When the Northridge athletics program moved up to the Division I ranks in 1990, football was left behind in Division II.

It became a stepchild. Other sports were fueled by funds at the expense of football. While nine of the 12 men’s basketball players receive full scholarships worth $7,200, football players receive $2,000 each.

Because of its size (70 players, including 20 walk-ons, and an 11-man coaching staff) football is the target of a faction on campus that views the sport as too expensive and would like to see it dropped.

Burt and his staff seem to be forever scrounging. Until the 11th hour, when development director Paul Bubb found a donor, the team’s pregame meals for the Portland State and Sacramento games were not secured.

Avila, Halladay and Blackburn could not travel on the team bus to the Southern Utah game because of their day jobs. So they drove all night, arriving in Cedar City at 1:30 a.m., less than six hours before the first pregame meeting.

Banker wishes he could bottle the team’s Homecoming triumph over Cal Poly San Luis Obispo this season and present it to every faculty member who opposes football or begrudges the program its sorry budget.

The old horse track overflowed with a standing-room only crowd on that October night. The band played with emotion, fireworks lit up the sky and the team was so compelling in the final two minutes that even the crowd in the beer garden watched the Matadors move 80 yards with a no-huddle offense to score the winning touchdown on fourth down with 14 seconds left.

When Joe Jezulin’s extra point--from 35 yards because of a celebration penalty--wobbled through the uprights to give the Matadors a one-point victory, the place went wild.

Perhaps they should have passed the hat.