They Are Trying for Kick-Start at Canyons

There is a movement afoot to resurrect football at College of the Canyons, a crusade that has gathered enough steam that the Santa Clarita Valley Community College District board of trustees is considering it.

They will likely vote on the topic at a meeting tonight at Canyons.

Some people consider having football a dandy idea. Among them are members of a committee that was organized several months ago to study the feasibility of restarting a program that was discontinued for financial reasons after the 1981 season.

The committee concluded that having a football program at Canyons is economically possible and desired by the community.

Al Adelini, a Canyons counselor and chairman of the committee, says there is plenty of emotional support for the concept.

Unfortunately, emotion won’t pay the bills and football programs have plenty of those.

The committee, based on financial data provided by junior colleges in the region that fund football, determined that it would cost about $145,000 to start a team at Canyons and about $250,000 per year to run it.

Adelini said actual costs would probably be less but the committee inflated the figures to ensure nobody was misled.

Canyons has a football stadium, which is used for high school football games and other sports, such as college track.

Funding other essentials is no drop in the bucket. And maintaining adequate facilities, equipment and staffing is especially challenging.

The operating cost for one well-funded junior college football program in the region is about $72,000. That includes meals, transportation to road games, physicals, game-management personnel, lighting, game officials and other expenses.

It does not include the salary for a coach and salaries or stipends for assistants.

At Canyons, newly installed part-time athletic director Len Mohney, the school’s baseball coach, said that the committee’s recommendation for starting a football program hinges partly on the condition that the school hire, among others, a full-time athletic director and a full-time athletic department secretary.

The way the committee sees it, some of the money to fund football would be offset by the state, which gives junior colleges about $3,300 per student. With about 150 new students from football and additional women’s sports the school would have to create to comply with gender equity requirements, an estimated $500,000 would be available from the state each year.

One problem, though.

The money from the state goes into the school’s general fund. It is distributed internally with no guarantees, unless the school administration commits to it, that the athletic department would get a specific or larger cut than other departments.

In most cases, junior college sports programs operate in a constant fund-raising scramble.

That’s why Adelini’s assurance that the Santa Clarita Valley is emotionally behind returning football to Canyons must be on the mark. Otherwise, such a well-intentioned attempt would be headed for disaster if individuals and businesses who pledge their unequivocal support fail to come through in 1998, the earliest the Cougars could start playing in the Western State Conference.

Any junior college athletic director will tell you that having to beg constantly gets old in a hurry.

That’s one reason only 69 of the 107 community colleges in the state play football.

Since 1990, four schools have dropped football, including Taft, a two-time national champion in the 1980s.

Taft axed its program after the 1993 season to save money, the same reason given by officials at East L.A. College when they disbanded their team after the 1992 season.

In the past seven years, only West Hills, in Coalinga, has started a junior college football program in California. The school discontinued the program after the 1989 season.

Even if Canyons is able to finance a football program, the school must deal with perhaps a more difficult situation to manage: gender equity.

Federal and state laws require all California schools to comply with gender equity by funding men’s and women’s athletic programs relatively equal by 2000.

It also means that the number of a school’s female athletes must come within a few percentage points of its number of full-time female students.

The ratio at Canyons, according to 1996-97 fall enrollment statistics, is 53% full-time female students and 41% female athletes, 47% full-time male students and 59% male athletes. Those figures, says one junior college athletic administrator at another school, are relatively good.

But throw a football team into the equation, and the gender equity percentages go awry, even if Canyons adds a couple of women’s teams as a counterbalance. The school offers six men’s and seven women’s sports.

Backers of the football proposal say athletes from high schools around Canyons must travel to Valley, Pierce, Moorpark, Glendale and elsewhere to play junior college football.

Last season, Valley had five players from Saugus and one from Hart. Glendale had three players from Saugus and one from Canyon. There were none at Pierce or Moorpark.

So where do Santa Clarita Valley football players go after high school?

Either to four-year schools or nowhere, apparently.

Why?

Perhaps they simply lose interest.

Those who wish to see football at Canyons would argue that the driving distance to other junior colleges is the real deterrent, but that theory doesn’t wash.

A youngster who wants to play badly enough goes wherever he has an opportunity.

Depending on how the board of trustees votes, that opportunity might soon be at Canyons.