Sports on CSUN’s Cut List Could Become Fatal Four

This isn’t quite what Coach Marwan Ass’ad had in mind. Not even close, actually.

Based on his soccer team’s success in 1993, he believed Cal State Northridge had a decent shot at competing for the NCAA Division I title last fall. Things didn’t pan out. In fact, Northridge finished with its first losing season in Ass’ad’s 12-year tenure.

“I thought we might even make the Final Four,” he said.

In a manner of speaking, they have. The degree of finality will be determined by a student vote in March.

Last month’s announcement by President Blenda J. Wilson that four teams--soccer, football, swimming and women’s basketball--face elimination if students don’t vote to raise fees in an Associated Students election March 8-9 has athletes and coaches scratching their heads and scanning the horizon.

Final four, indeed.

At Northridge, limbo isn’t a game where folks waddle under a low broomstick. For the affected four, it’s an emotionally painful state of economic affairs.

A projected departmental deficit of $700,000 for 1995-96 has resulted in the need for sweeping change. Pending the student vote, athletes and coaches in the four affected programs are cannon fodder.

Esprit de corps among all athletes, understandably low after a pair of athletic fee measures were defeated by student vote in 1994, is fast approaching rock bottom for some. The student body has spoken. The handwriting on the wall reads . . . Three Strikes and Yer Out.

“The morale of the athletes and coaches, well, things are pretty grim,” said Kim Chandler, women’s basketball coach.

Coaches of the not-so-fab four have been left to sort through the malaise. Recruiting, in most cases, has skidded to a near halt. Coaches of the four programs, unable to predict the future, have been unable to tell recruits about the future of their respective teams.

What’s more, Northridge players have inquired about jumping ship. Such is life on the bubble.

At the end of the month, Wilson is scheduled to announce which of four referendum funding options will be submitted to the Associated Students for inclusion on the spring ballot. The financial hit for each student, depending on which scenario is placed on the ballot, likely would range from $15 to $27 per semester if passed.

For those associated with the four teams in limbo, waiting is the hardest part. After each student election defeat, athletics was forced to consider the elimination of programs. The school’s Division I-AA football team has long been viewed as first in line for the chopping block.

“I’m so sick of it,” said Travis Hall, a junior tight end.

When Wilson publicly outlined the four options Dec. 20, the fall semester already had ended. Some players read the news in the papers. Many, like Hall, still haven’t spoken with coaches. The spring semester begins Jan. 30.

“I have questions that need to be answered,” Hall said. “It’s wrong for us to have to wait this long (for answers about football’s future).”

It’s almost as bad for futbol as football. Ass’ad’s soccer teams won or shared six consecutive California Collegiate Athletic Assn. titles and made the Division II playoffs each year from 1984-89.

Northridge advanced to the Division II championship in 1987 and 1988. In 1993, the school’s fourth in Division I, the Matadors placed second to national power UCLA in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. Last fall, the injury-wracked Matadors finished 7-9-2.

Ass’ad said his jaw hit the table when soccer was targeted for possible elimination.

“I don’t think the people who made the decision know what’s going on in athletics,” said Ass’ad, whose career mark at Northridge is 160-68-21. “I was shocked.”

Not an isolated sentiment.

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Junior forward Keith West, who said he was surprised by the announcement, said it is difficult to gauge how players have reacted because he hasn’t seen many of his teammates since before the holiday break. Again, uncertainty rules.

“I guess we sit tight and make up our minds at the end of the semester,” West said. “I’m not sure what to think, to tell you the truth.”

The referendum options were formulated by a subcommittee of school administrators with no ties to athletics. Mary Ann Cummins Prager, an assistant dean who served on the subcommittee, said the panel’s goal was to reconcile dozens of possible budget cuts with gender-equity compliance.

Wins and losses by particular programs were never a consideration, she said. It was more of an accounting process: Black and white and the almighty green.

“We couldn’t make judgments about what sports to cut (based on performance) because we’re not in that field,” she said.

Unlike Ass’ad, Chandler wasn’t in attendance when Wilson outlined the referendum options to coaches and athletic administrators. In fact, Chandler was in the gym at Santa Clara, preparing for a game when she called the department for a briefing on the meeting.

“I never knew it was even an item for discussion,” she said.

Who would have expected that basketball, despite a record of 0-15 this season, would be served up for possible sacrifice? Northridge Athletic Director Bob Hiegert said that losing women’s basketball puts the school’s stated goal of someday joining a major conference “very much in jeopardy.”

According to NCAA statistics, of the 300 coeducational colleges fielding Division I men’s basketball teams, only seven don’t offer women’s basketball.

Basketball does carry the heftiest price tag of any women’s sport at $219,000 for 1994-95. Discounting self-generated revenue, department officials said football cost $530,000 last fall. Soccer cost $80,700; men’s swimming $53,000.

Swimming Coach Barry Schreifels wasn’t reeling after Wilson enumerated the list of funding options. Men’s swimming has been eliminated at several Division I schools, including UCLA, as athletic departments nationally trim deficits and address gender equity.

“If UCLA can fall, it’s realistic that we could too,” he said.

Some know better than others. Jeff Conwell and Tony Trujillo, both sophomore swimmers, attended Fresno State last year. When the season ended, the Bulldog men’s program folded.

The unlucky pair are getting some funny looks from their teammates. “We know it isn’t us,” Conwell said.

Fresno State waited until year’s end before dropping the bomb. Northridge’s season-ending conference meet is four weeks away.

“We’re trying not to think about it,” Conwell said. “All we need right now is something else to bring us down.”

If men’s swimming is flushed, so is a piece of history. With 11 Division II championships under its belt, it is the most-successful program in Northridge history. Schreifels, a second-year coach, said his recruiting efforts have slowed to a crawl.

“Treading water pretty much covers it,” Schreifels said, mindful of the metaphor. “The situation forces it.”

Ass’ad said he is continuing to recruit and refuses to give up hope. He hasn’t received any commitments, however, and the soccer signing period begins Feb. 8. Chandler, with nine freshmen on the basketball team, has no scholarship money available and said attracting walk-ons is next to impossible.

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Football Coach Bob Burt’s recruiting efforts have been light, which he said is only partly a result of the legislative limbo. Burt said Northridge usually waits until the football signing period ends and then jumps on players who have been passed over by major colleges. Football’s signing period runs Feb. 1 to April 1.

Attracting players might become a secondary issue. In light of the gloom, some are preparing to bolt from the fold.

For players seeking to transfer, matters are more complicated for those in the football and basketball programs. Under the NCAA’s one-time transfer rule, soccer players and swimmers are eligible to transfer with immediate eligibility to another Division I school. Hiegert has given the affected Northridge athletes permission to explore their options with other schools, a key provision of the rule.

However, the one-time transfer rule doesn’t apply to football or basketball. Unless their programs are canceled, players must sit out one season before becoming eligible. Players leaving programs that have been discontinued have immediate eligibility--but the election is six weeks away and scholarships are being gobbled up daily.

In short, while members of the swim and soccer teams may shop around, football and basketball players must await the election outcome unless they want to camp on the sideline in 1995-96.

“That doesn’t leave us much time to find another place to play,” said Dan Lazarovits, a freshman defensive lineman.

Of the four options under review for the ballot, only one includes retaining football. First, Wilson must choose the option that includes keeping football. Students then must vote for its passage.

“If I could look into a crystal ball and find out that it was going to fail, I think I’d prefer that she didn’t pick (the option that keeps football alive),” Lazarovits said. “I want her to pick it, but if it’s going to lose, it’ll be that much tougher.”

Burt said players and assistants have permission to plot their own courses as far as he’s concerned.

“We’re fairly helpless right now,” Burt said. “I can’t be upset with people for looking at their options. . . . People on staff have families to feed.”

Hiegert said this week that two football players, whom he declined to identify, have requested and received permission to talk with other schools about transferring. Perhaps more would have beaten a path to his door, but some are in the dark about NCAA transfer regulations.

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Hall said football players he has spoken with over the past month seem confused about their options and haven’t had much luck finding the coaching staff over the winter break. Ignorance isn’t bliss.

“I’m not hanging around,” Hall said. “This isn’t good.”

Hall, who has not secured a release, said he was told by a coach at a Division I school that scholarships are fast running out. Though he ranked third in the American West Conference in receptions last fall and is considered one of Northridge’s best players, Hall might have to play as a walk-on.

In the four affected programs, only Burt has a contract that runs beyond the end of the school year. However, it becomes moot if the program is canceled, Hiegert said. Coaches, to varying degrees, are wisely keeping their eyes open.

Football assistants Scott Norton and Mark Banker attended the American Football Coaches Assn. convention last week in Dallas. On the personal agenda? “Trying to find me a job,” Norton said.

Burt and Ass’ad each said they will wait until the referendum issue is decided before aggressively pursuing other positions. Schreifels will remain as coach of the women’s swim team. Chandler has an ear to the tracks.

“If the boss comes in and says layoffs are coming, you have to pay the bills,” Chandler said.

Norton and others in the department believe Wilson will select the scenario that gives students the chance to retain football. That is, unless Wilson places football on the ballot, she’ll be viewed as the administrator who killed the sport.

A blow to the rationale:

“If I was an observer, I’d make no assumptions at all on which option she’ll pick,” said Dean of Students Ron Kopita, who has been actively involved in the formulation of the March referendum.

Last week, Wilson enlisted the help of the Associated Students Senate, which was asked to survey various Northridge clubs, fraternities and the like to determine which referendum option has the best chance of passage. Senators were asked to spell out the four options to their student brethren and measure the response.

The senate is scheduled on Jan. 24 to report their findings to Wilson, who then will select one of the four scenarios. To underscore the feeling of alienation among athletes, even the solicitation of senate assistance sounds potentially dangerous.

“I think it’s unrealistic to expect that (the senate) will present these options in an unbiased way to the student body,” said Marshall Evans, a sprinter on the track team and president of the Student Athletics Congress. “I think they’ll just pick whatever’s cheapest.”

Yet despite the bunker mentality in some quarters, blithe optimism exists in others.

Ass’ad, always an effervescent sort, said he continues to assure players and recruits that things will work out for the best. He’s keeping his fingers crossed and a smile on his face.

“I have a lot of confidence in the American spirit,” said Ass’ad, who was born in Israel. “Sports are such an important part of life here.

“I can’t imagine that (we won’t be around next year). I just can’t think in those terms.”