CSUN to Disclose Football Program’s Fate Within a Week

Cal State Northridge President Blenda J. Wilson said Monday that she has reached a decision on whether to disband the school’s football team and will make an announcement within a week.

Wilson’s comments came after she listened for 90 minutes as students, athletes, faculty members and Valley business owners voiced strong opinions on the possible end to the 31-year-old program.

The public forum was to be the last chance, Wilson said, for such input. Moments after the session ended, she said a decision on the football program’s fate has been reached. An announcement will be made on or before Monday, she said, when athletic department officials must inform a newly created NCAA Division I-AA conference whether the Matadors will join it for the 1993 season.

“I have made my decision,” Wilson said. “My opinion has been finalized.”

Football coach Bob Burt, who attended Monday’s session but did not speak during the proceedings, said he will be relieved, whatever Wilson’s decision is.

“The finality of her decision means we as coaches and players can get on with our business, whatever that business is,” said Burt, who has coached the team for seven seasons. “To have an answer, finally, will be good.”

Wilson opened the public forum by saying that her decision will be the final word, that there will be no appeal process from either pro or anti-football factions at the university.

“This has been an issue of long standing on this campus,” said Wilson, in her first year as president of the school. “My decision will be the decision for the university. After it is announced, there will be no more debate. The issue will be over and done with on that day. It has been a divisive issue and it cannot continue, year after year.”

A blue-ribbon panel commissioned by Wilson to address the issue of whether to continue funding for the football team returned a report earlier this month that largely endorsed continued support for the team by the school. But Wilson then stunned athletic department officials by saying she may not heed the advice of the panel.

Nearly 150 people packed the school’s theater for a last chance to offer their views on the issue. The group, more than half of which was composed of athletes at the university, pleaded for Wilson to keep the team intact and guide it from its current Division II status into the Division I-AA program.

Pauletta Shafransky, a professor in the department of kinesiology, urged Wilson to view football and all athletic programs at the school as more than just a piece of the school’s financial pie. “The athletic department and the student-athletes are the spirit of the place,” Shafransky said. “The coaches and the administrators work harder for the student than anyone else. They are the saints of this university.”