THE COLLEGES / FERNANDO DOMINGUEZ : Ventura Playing for National Title Only a Hoop Dream

So basketball season is here and the Ventura College men’s team again is top-ranked in California.

Some things never change, right?

The Pirates, the defending state champions, are loaded with returning players and plenty of hotshot newcomers who would start on other teams. They have a new coach, Virgil Watson, but the same old firepower that could carry them to another title.

What they don’t have, and might never get, is a national championship.

Not that they couldn’t win one, because they certainly have the talent. They might have done it last season, for instance, when they finished 37-1. They might have done it in 1987, when they won the first of two state titles under Philip Mathews, now the coach at the University of San Francisco.

But the Pirates don’t get to trot out their stuff in the national playoffs. That’s because California schools are not among the approximately 520 members of the National Junior College Athletic Assn., which since 1937 has governed sports at two-year schools in the United States.

Instead, the 100 schools in this state that have sports programs fall under the jurisdiction of the California Community College Commission on Athletics, an autonomous group established in the late 1940s. California, therefore, has independent rankings and state playoffs and is not included in the NJCAA rankings.

The motto of the organizations apparently is that the two shall never meet.

“Right now, I have no driving interest in changing things,” said Joanne Fortunato, who in the summer became head of the Commission on Athletic, replacing Walter Rilliet. “We have such great competition within our state.”

Nobody questions that. For example, 12 of the top 25 teams in one national football poll not connected with the NJCAA are from California, including top-ranked Valley. But, as in NCAA Division I, there are no national playoffs for junior college football teams and California has its own system of bowl games.

In football, which operates differently than other sports, it’s still possible for California teams to win the mythical national championship because it’s done by votes. Besides, the top two or three nationally rated teams are frequently from the state and often face each other in a bowl game.

But California schools are shortchanged in other sports that have national playoffs. They never get to see how they would fare at that level.

Last season Okaloosa-Walton of Niceville, Fla., won the junior college Division I men’s basketball national championships in Hutchinson, Kan. The Raiders finished 31-6. And only three teams among the top 30 in the NJCAA’s 1995-96 preseason poll had fewer than four losses last season.

Could Ventura and other California teams have challenged for the national title?

You bet. They probably would have won several by now. In fact, Pasadena was the 1945 champion, followed the next two seasons by Sacramento and Compton. Los Angeles City, in 1950, was the last national champion from California.

Yet, it might never happen again, not only because the NJCAA and the COA don’t seem eager to work together, but because of economic constraints. Many California junior college athletic directors say that travel expenses to participate in national playoffs would be prohibitive for schools already strapped financially.

And some coaches claim California teams would be at a disadvantage because schools in other states offer scholarships, meals and other perks.

Perhaps, but athletes always want to face good competition, so it’s unlikely that California players would balk at the opportunity to face the leading teams in the country.

Maybe there ought to be a compromise. Maybe they ought to take the top four California schools in each sport other than football, determined by their finish in the state playoffs, and include them in the national tournament to determine the real champion. They could alternate sites, with California schools playing host every other year.

Even Fortunato could be swayed.

“It’s not really a national championship if California is not a part of it,” she said.

The Ventura men’s basketball team, among others, would agree.