CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE FOOTBALL: AT A CROSSROADS : Financial Viability Questioned : Economics: Panel to study all Matador sports programs, but emphasis will be given to football.

In a sense, Cal State Northridge athletics officials have seen a wish come true. Among faculty, staff and student leaders on campus, the school’s football team finally has become a hot topic.

Unfortunately, it was not in the manner they had hoped.

On Monday, a blue-ribbon advisory commission, formed to study the school’s athletics program, will tour the campus and conduct interviews this week for a report due in January. Based on the study, the school will chart a course for its sports teams.

As budget shortfalls wreak havoc throughout the Cal State university system, Northridge athletics has come under increased scrutiny. Football, the largest and most expensive of Northridge’s 18 sports, is at the forefront of a controversy that cuts directly to the bottom line.

The school’s $3.7-million athletics budget for 1992-93 derives from three sources: an estimated $1 million in revenue from home games, road-game guarantees, sponsorships and donations; $970,000 in income from the Northridge Foundation--a campus subsidiary--and student fees; and $1.75 million in state funds for the salaries and benefits for coaches, staff and administrators.

About $1 million of the state funds for coaches’ salaries came from the $74.4-million in state-generated instructional funds Northridge received for this academic year.

The bottom-line cost for football this year was less than $190,000. Obviously, dropping football or otherwise scaling back the athletics program would do little to solve the university’s massive budget problems.

But at a university where classes have been slashed and students have been turned away, any six-digit expenditure is subject to meticulous examination.

“The real question is,” said John Clendenning, a Northridge English professor and one of 17 Northridge Foundation trustees, “what are we getting for that money?”

FOOTBALL’S PRICE TAG

On the field, Northridge’s investment in football has resulted in a solid Division II team. The Matadors, 5-5 in 1992, have had only one losing season in Coach Bob Burt’s seven seasons and shared a Western Football Conference championship in 1990.

By mandate of the NCAA, the football team must join Northridge’s other athletics programs in Division I by the fall of next year. Northridge is expected to play in a cost-containment Division I-AA conference beginning next season. The new conference plans to adopt a scholarship ceiling lower than the 40 of Division II.

Several faculty members believe that money invested in football might be better spent on other, less-expensive sports. Said Louise Lewis, president of the Northridge faculty: “Given the population in the San Fernando Valley and the student population and the cost of some of these sports . . . if we’re looking for a whiz-bang impact, I’d say let’s go with soccer.”

Bob Hiegert, Northridge’s athletic director, said if extra funds were made available by eliminating football they probably would be spent on starting a women’s soccer team, increasing the pay of some coaches to lessen their teaching load, and boosting scholarship levels.

“But there is an assumption there that there would be additional money,” Hiegert added. “I don’t think that’s accurate.”

Hiegert fears that if Northridge is forced to drop sports teams, athletics revenues will drop accordingly. For example, the athletics program this year will receive $495,000 from student fees. With no football team, the student committee charged with delegating the funds might decide sports programs need less money.

Paul Bubb, director of athletic fund raising, said, “a stigma is attached anytime you drop a sport.”

“People are leery,” he added. “There’s a whole healing process involved.”

Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach, potential members of the cost-containment Division I-AA conference, have shelved, perhaps temporarily, their Division I-A football teams.

Fullerton, which announced Monday that it was suspending football operations until 1994, expects to save $290,000 in coaches salaries by taking a year off. However, because the athletics department faces a $350,000 shortfall, the loss of football did not balance the budget.

Long Beach saved $289,000 in coaches salaries by eliminating football before last season but still faced a significant budget shortfall. To balance the budget, the school cut an additional $173,000 from other athletics programs.

Northridge already has slashed football expenses. In 1990 the university spent $365,245 on scholarships, salaries, equipment, meals and travel related to football. Despite a small annual increase in salaries, only $298,572 was earmarked for football this year. By comparison, Fullerton spent $1.2 million on football this fall.

Bubb said dropping football would eliminate Northridge’s most popular sport in terms of attracting corporate sponsors. For example, the cost of broadcasting Matador football games on radio currently is underwritten by two corporations.

“You start talking to businesses and they all want to be tied in to the football team,” Bubb said. “Football provides a means of cultivating donors for all our programs.”

Were basketball to play more home games and improve its standing among Division I teams, Bubb said, it might be able to replace football in terms of winning major donations.

Football, with its $298,572 budget, compares favorably to other sports at Northridge. Among projected expenditures this school year are $210,411 for men’s basketball and $152,819 for baseball, the two other most expensive sports on campus. At the other end of the spectrum, Northridge will spend $35,965 on women’s tennis.

Debby De Angelis, Northridge’s business manager for athletics, projects this school year’s approximate bottom-line costs: $190,000 for football, $110,000 for men’s basketball, $120,000 for baseball and $32,000 for women’s tennis.

“We would like this university to be the model for what cost-containment football can be,” De Angelis said.

The goal is much the same for all Northridge sports. This fall, athletics sustained a 9.2% cut in funding, as did the school’s academic departments. To make ends meet, a hiring freeze was placed on 2 1/2 open staff positions within the athletics program. Almost $9,000 budgeted for operations and equipment also was eliminated.

SHAKY FOUNDATION

The Northridge Foundation manages surplus funds generated by such operations as the student bookstore and food services. Athletics’ share has increased from $210,000 in 1989-90 to $475,000 this year--more than half of the foundation’s distribution of $800,000. An additional $500,000 is promised in each of the next six years.

However, the foundation’s 10-year, $4,495,000 commitment to the athletics program is being challenged in some quarters of the school’s academic community.

In the past three years, almost half of the foundation money earmarked for athletics has gone toward increasing scholarship levels as Northridge made a transition from Division II competition to the NCAA Division I level in sports other than football. The other portion went to salaries, equipment and other operating expenses.

Last spring, the university’s academic senate recommended the foundation reconsider its obligation to the athletics program. A public hearing to gauge support for the current arrangement drew a crowd estimated at 200. Athletes and other supporters of the Northridge program turned out in force and boisterously expressed their opinions.

But the debate continues. More hearings and discussions are expected.

Clendenning warned, “we need to make sure our expenditures are wise and prudent.” He said the school’s athletics program monopolizes available funds.

Supporters of athletics always have claimed that surplus funds, by the charter of the foundation, cannot be funneled directly to academic programs. But Don Queen, director of the foundation, said surplus funds are available “for whatever purposes the trustees deem necessary.”

Queen acknowledged that even an extra $500,000 per year would not come close to curing the campus-wide ills caused by state budget cuts. Conversely, Hiegert said a drastic reduction in foundation funds to athletics would result in athletics making “a reduction in the programs we offer.”

The potential for either the elimination or reduction of foundation funds for athletics is menacing enough that school officials have told Hiegert not to sign football contracts that include penalty clauses if games are canceled.

Also, De Angelis, the business manager, was asked last summer to calculate the one-year cost of eliminating football. She said Northridge would spend $278,000 to drop the sport based on commitments for coaching salaries, athletics scholarships and other contract obligations.

Hiegert considers any serious talk of eliminating the sport premature. “This is not the first time people have talked about dropping football here,” he said.

THE IMAGE QUESTION

Proponents of football contend that the accomplishments of the team can be tallied in places other than on a balance sheet. They say students benefit from football’s social aspect, and the university profits from publicity the team generates in newspapers and on radio.

Northridge, which has an enrollment of 29,000, drew an average of 3,488 spectators to North Campus Stadium this fall for each of its five home games. Subtract a homecoming crowd of 6,217 and the average slips to 2,805. About 1,000 of those per game were students admitted free using school activities cards.

Ron Kopita, vice president of student affairs, acknowledged that such crowds were “a drop in the bucket” compared to those seen on televised games on any given weekend. “But it does show a certain level of commitment by the community to support football,” he added.

As for publicity, Northridge football games were broadcast live on KGIL radio. The team also receives regular coverage in the sports sections of Los Angeles’ two largest newspapers.

“We put the university’s name in big, bold headlines four or five times a week, every week, for the first three months of school,” Burt said. “What other program can say that?”

Lately, however, some of the headlines have been less than flattering.

Last March, a leader of Northridge’s Black Student Union accused the athletics program of “racial insensitivity” and called for Hiegert’s resignation.

A university task force formed to investigate the charges found that some Northridge football players were in such dire financial straits that a coach sent them to scrounge for leftovers from a local pizza establishment. The committee substantiated some claims of racial inequity within the athletics program but found no evidence that officials had racist intentions.

The same month, a Times story chronicled the double life of Barry Voorhees, a starter at offensive guard on the Matador football team in 1988-89. Voorhees, who was arrested six days after the final game of his senior season, is a convicted cocaine dealer. According to court records, he sold cocaine, steroids and other illegal substances between games, practices and schoolwork.

“If we are relying on building an image based on the reputation of the teams we’ve got, we’re in sorry shape right now,” Lewis said.

Clendenning, a faculty member for more than 30 years, considers the image factor “a double-edged sword.”

“Our image can be impaired by programs if they continue to be second- and third-rate,” he said. “I think we get more bad press than good press.”

Burt, Northridge’s most successful football coach, bristles at such remarks. When he took over the team in 1986, Northridge was a perennial also-ran. Since then, the Matadors are 42-33 despite a budget that is substantially smaller than those of its competitors. (See accompanying story.)

“I’m tired of football being the whipping boy,” Burt said. “Why is it that the football program has to defend its right to exist on this campus? Why is it any less defensible than band or choir or drama or the art department or anything else that isn’t tied directly into the academic process?”

Two reasons: exposure and cost.

“Athletic programs are easy to attack because we’re right out front and everyone knows what kind of money is involved,” Hiegert said.

Added Clendenning: “Everybody knows football is the most expensive sport, so when they start talking about where to cut that is the most convenient place to start.”

DEVELOPING A PLAN

Students at state universities have a track record of supporting athletics through fees and referendums. In the early 1980s, Northridge students passed a referendum that sought a fee of $4 per student, per semester, for athletics. In the past two years, students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal State Chico and San Francisco State also have voted for student fees in support of their athletics programs.

Sal Danji, Northridge associated students president who also acts as student trustee on the foundation board, acknowledged past endorsements by the students but added: “That may change given the budget crisis.”

“We need more budget information and we need to know what some of the ramifications are (of dropping football),” Danji said. “Does it develop a sense of pride in the community? Does our alumni respond better?”

To provide answers, Blenda J. Wilson, the school’s first-year president, organized the blue-ribbon advisory commission chaired by Ira Michael Heyman, former chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.

During their visit this week commission members are expected to interview students, athletes, faculty members, coaches, athletics administrators, boosters and community leaders. The panel’s report is due by the end of January. Athletics administrators expect Wilson to follow suggestions offered by the commission.

Key among those recommendations will be a direction for a football program that is at a crossroads.

Northridge currently is involved in discussions that might lead to the formation of a new, low-budget football conference. In addition to Fullerton and Long Beach, Hiegert said that St. Mary’s, Santa Clara, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal State Sacramento, Southern Utah and Northern Arizona have expressed interest in an alliance that is considering an athletics scholarship limit of 30.

The NCAA maximum for Division II teams is 40, and Division I-A is 92.

According to the NCAA scholarship apportionment formula, which includes need-based aid paid by the state, Northridge awarded the equivalent of about 35 full rides during the past season. Of those 35, need-based financial aid paid for 18; the athletics program paid for the other 17.

Hiegert is hopeful that such a geographically desirable, cost-containment alignment will spark greater fan interest while also cutting travel expenses. With the exceptions of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah, the other schools are within seven hours’ driving distance.

FIELD OF SCREAMS

If Northridge football does survive, school officials hope the Matadors won’t have to play home games at rustic and decrepit North Campus Stadium--at least not as it now stands.

Known as Devonshire Downs in the 1940s and ‘50s when it was a horse racing track, North Campus Stadium is the single biggest detriment to the football program, according to athletics administrators.

Compared even to modest college facilities, the Matadors’ 6,000-seat home field is a plow horse among thoroughbreds. The lighting is poor, the scoreboard antiquated, the seats uncomfortable and the press box, parking and restroom facilities inadequate.

“On a Saturday night around here there are an awful lot of choices people have of things to do,” Hiegert said. “I have to think the prospect of coming to North Campus Stadium, even to see a good football game, can’t be very appealing.”

Northridge had plans for a 20,000-seat outdoor stadium to be constructed between the gymnasium and the baseball field until the developer of the project backed out last summer because of financial difficulties.

Hiegert says the existing football facility can be given “a quick face lift” at a cost he hopes can be covered by donations.

Kopita, the vice president who oversees athletics, said a solution to the North Campus problem should be a chief consideration. “If you’re going to have a football program, be it in Division I-A, Division I-AA or in Division II, you need a viable stadium,” he said. “I think the community is eager to have a nice stadium.”

But does the community care if a football team plays in it?

“The people I’ve talked to do,” said Kopita, who was hired this summer from Moorhead State in Minnesota. “My contacts are with boosters and other community people and, from my own experience, there is a certain level of support.”

With other sources of revenue shrinking, Northridge might soon need to test the resolve of that support.

Kopita predicted “boosters lying in the weeds” will emerge once the school develops a plan for its athletics programs.

“But first,” he added, “we need to lay some of this athletic controversy to rest.”