Murphy Has Smaller Office, but Greater Job Satisfaction

The games are much closer now, Gene Murphy has noticed.

“San Diego Mesa is the longest trip we’ve had,” says Murphy, the frequent flyer of Cal State Fullerton football seasons past. “San Diego Mesa, a two-hour bus ride. That’s as far as we go.”

Closer by land and closer by final count on the scoreboard, too.

“We had four games in a row where your heart is beating 100 miles an hour, because you didn’t win it or lose it until the very end,” Murphy says.

“We were playing Long Beach State--I mean, Long Beach City College --and the game ended and we’re on the three-yard line and I’m telling my coaches, ‘I need to start working out because my heart can’t take this.’

“At Cal State Fullerton, we were down, 42-0, in the middle of the second quarter to Georgia. You know exactly what’s going to happen. Here, you’re in every game . . . The playing field is even, where you have the opportunity to win every game you play.”

That’s all Murphy ever wanted at Cal State Fullerton, but he had to move across town and down a level to find it. After aching through a mostly unlucky 13 years as head football coach of the brother-can-you-spare-a-shoestring (and a Thomas Bros. guide) Titans, Murphy is now a Hornet, following in the footsteps, if not the same office, as the legendary Hal Sherbeck, who won a national record 241 games in 31 seasons at Fullerton College.

Murphy’s office is but a tiny cubicle--it used to belong to a couple of assistant football coaches--and not even half the size of his old digs up the road at Cal State.

“From North Dakota to Cal State Fullerton to here, they’ve been getting smaller,” Murphy says with a laugh as he leans back in a chair while trying not to kick over the coffee maker.

“But it’s OK.”

Actually, Murphy can’t believe all the elbow room he has been given at Fullerton College.

Look--an 11-game schedule without a single coach-breaker against Georgia, UCLA, Auburn or LSU on it.

Look--five road games instead of eight and not one of them requiring three plane connections, three time zone changes and three medic-and-stretcher teams prepped and ready on the sideline.

Look--a roster of players of comparable size and skill with every opponent Murphy’s team has to face.

In some cases, Murphy has bigger and better players at Fullerton’s community college than he had at Fullerton’s four-year university and one-time Division I-A football program.

“Take, for example, a guy like our quarterback Josh Nelson,” Murphy says. “I mean, if Cal State Fullerton (football) was still in existence and we’re at Cal State Fullerton, we couldn’t get in the back door to talk to him. He’s being heavily recruited; after our season, he’s going to make a trip to Michigan State to see the Penn State game.

“These kind of players, we never got at Cal State Fullerton. We never got the top recruits from Fullerton College. Sometimes we got ‘twos’ but mostly ‘threes.’ Never ‘ones.’ Because we were in the lower echelon of Division I-A schools, as was all of the Big West, except for Fresno and San Jose State.”

And in those final years before last December’s euthanasia, Cal State Fullerton was the Big West’s lower echelon. The Titans’ last three seasonal records under Murphy were 1-11, 2-9 and 2-9, which makes this year’s 3-4 seem just like heaven.

“I’m enjoying the heck out of this,” Murphy says, despite a blown 14-0 lead and three blown field goals against Golden West (the Hornets lost, 15-14) and despite a blown 24-0 halftime lead against Cerritos (the Hornets lost, 31-24).

“Last week was the only time we were beaten decisively,” Murphy says of a 38-16 loss to Orange Coast. “We were beaten physically by Orange Coast . . . We’re not that big a team, which is just because of geography. We have 22 district schools to draw from and right now, you’re not looking at too many big kids in north Orange County.”

So Murphy and the Hornets have tried to get by with Nelson-to-Vince Wilson and Nelson-to-Ryan Roskelly--a high-octane passing attack that reminds Murphy of “ ‘89, the last time we had a decent football team at Cal State Fullerton, when we had (quarterback Dan) Speltz and (tailback Mike) Pringle and those people.”

Murphy also has run into a bad case of elephant’s memory on the part of Sherbeck’s old coaching rivals. “Hal used to beat everybody like a dang drum, see,” Murphy says, “and everybody’s taking it out on us now. Everybody wants to beat Fullerton College because of what has happened in the past.”

So he has been stuck with some outstanding bills to pay. “That’s fine,” says Murphy, who has seen much worse, very recently, in fact. Last year, Murphy watched a football program wither and die on him and then wound up working for six months at a travel agency.

And he was extremely grateful for the paycheck.

“Believe it or not,” Murphy says, “after last season, there was not a lot of knocking at my door. Those people (at the travel agency) wanted me to work for them.”

If it’s football, Murphy is glad to be back coaching it, especially since the prospects for a Cal State Fullerton comeback strike this old Titan as bleak.

“Just to get (football) going again there--throw the scholarships away--you’re talking about at least $300,000,” Murphy says. “Then you put away $70,000 for the head coach’s salary, and then you have to pay for two assistants, and now they’re talking about more budget cuts. It’s going to be tough.”

At Fullerton College, football is a 70-year-old tradition that isn’t going anywhere--except, Murphy hopes, back to a bowl game in the near future. Murphy appreciates the footing, the stability, even if it’s occasionally hard to see.

“We go out on the practice field,” Murphy says, “and it’s 5 o’clock, Daylight Saving Time, and we’ve got one set of lights that has five bulbs and another set that has three bulbs, and we practice for 45 minutes. It reminds me a lot of Cal State Fullerton.”

Except that now, when the lights go out on Murphy, it’s his decision. And all it means is that this round of practice is over. Another session, for tomorrow, is still on schedule.