It’s Northridge by Northwest for a Coach With Ambition

Some unsolicited advice for Cal State Northridge’s athletic director:

Hey Bubb, get used to the drill.

If Paul Bubb does a good job hiring coaches he’ll be going through them faster than George Steinbrenner.

That’s the way it works at a university with an athletic program such as Northridge’s.

Good coaches will come, and the best of them will go.

They will move on to greener, as in more lucrative, pastures. They will move on to schools with more scholarship money and better facilities. They will move on to programs where assistants do more coaching and recruiting than classroom teaching.

Dave Baldwin was Northridge’s football coach for two seasons, which shouldn’t be confused with two full years.

Baldwin was a Matador all of 19 months before he left Friday to take over a richer, bigger and potentially much better program at San Jose State.

And who could blame him?

Baldwin got a huge raise, twice as many scholarships to work with, a better situation for his coaching staff and a legitimate stadium (capacity 31,218) in which to pace the sideline.

Northridge, with a home stadium which, after so many renovations, still looks like the converted race track grandstand it is, simply couldn’t compete.

Greed alone was a good enough reason to leave. Baldwin’s salary at Northridge was about $66,000. To match San Jose’s offer, Northridge would have needed to multiply by two and add a car.

Instead, it will look for another football coach.

This, of course, comes as no surprise to Bubb, who knew that Baldwin would find a way to San Jose, if offered.

Did he want to keep Baldwin? Yes.

Did he have a prayer of doing so? No.

When it came to negotiations, Bubb knew his counter offer would hold up like a cap gun against a bazooka.

Bubb will be point man for this next football search, and while he’s at it he might as well start asking around for basketball and baseball coaches.

Bobby Braswell, who Bubb hired as basketball coach last spring, is young, smart, energetic, a renown disciplinarian, a tireless recruiter and has the background of a top Pacific 10 Conference assistant, which is what he was at Oregon when Northridge brought him home.

Braswell has roots in the San Fernando Valley. He graduated from Northridge and was basketball coach at Cleveland High, his alma mater.

Braswell has been Northridge’s basketball coach for four games, and you know what?

He’ll be next to hit the road.

Mike Batesole, the baseball coach, almost became the first phenom to split.

Batesole, hired on an interim basis when Bill Kernen left to pursue a career as a screen writer, led an unheralded Matador team to a Western Athletic Conference championship and into the final of the NCAA West Regional.

Last summer, while Northridge went through the formality of a mandatory search before hiring a permanent coach, Batesole reportedly was a strong candidate for several jobs. Finally, Northridge came through with a solid offer and managed to retain its man.

This is not to say that Northridge is necessarily a bad place to coach. It’s just a bad place for an ambitious coach to stay very long.

It’s a steppingstone, like triple-A in baseball and the Continental Basketball Assn. in professional basketball.

Next up on the football block could be another Northridge alum, Valley College Coach Jim Fenwick.

Fenwick was a finalist for the job when Northridge hired Baldwin, and since then he certainly hasn’t done anything to hurt his resume.

Valley was 10-1 last year, its only loss coming against Long Beach City College in the Strawberry Bowl. Had Valley won, it probably would have been voted national junior college champion.

If the Monarchs defeat Hancock College in the Strawberry Bowl at Valley tonight, they will finish 10-1 again.

Other than winning, one of the things that made Baldwin popular at Northridge was the entertaining offense he installed. Lots of passing.

Fenwick is of the same mold. In fact, Aaron Flowers, Northridge’s record-setting quarterback, came to the Matadors from . . . Valley.

But if Northridge finds a top coach after a little out-of-town shopping, here’s a tip for him:

Don’t buy. Lease.

Mike Hiserman is sports editor of the Valley and Ventura editions of The Times.