Canyons Football Initiative on Hold

Are they ready for some football at College of the Canyons?

Apparently not yet.

That was the message sent by the Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees during a meeting Wednesday night at Canyons attended by about 50 people, most of them proponents of restarting a football program at the school.

After listening to a presentation by members of a football feasibility committee, the board requested more detailed information and tabled the matter.

“There’s some fine-tuning to be done with the financial analysis,” said Dianne Van Hook, Canyons president and a board member. “The next step is to bring back whatever additional information the board requires.”

However, backers of the proposal urged the board not to delay the process too long.

“My only advice to the board is that if you are going to go in this direction [to approve the program], it’s not to drag out this thing forever,” said Al Adelini, chairman of the feasibility committee and a counselor at Canyons.

Several people, including players from area high schools, told the board why it should support the resurrection of the Canyons football program. They included Mike Lyons, a member of the feasibility committee, who assured the board there was resounding interest in the community.

“I talked to the business community . . . and they were all very supportive,” Lyons said.

But the board focused on economic issues and wanted reassurances that the money the committee said would be raised to help fund the program were more than pie-in-the-sky projections. Those reassurances were not readily forthcoming.

The feasibility committee was organized several months ago and recently concluded that it would be possible to revive the football program, which was discontinued because of financial reasons after the 1981 season.

Using information gathered from junior colleges in the region, the committee projected a cost of about $145,000 to start the team and about $250,000 per year to run it.

Some of the money would come from the state, which subsidizes junior colleges with about $3,300 per student, and the rest from fund-raisers.

The committee reasoned that the school could receive about $500,000 each year from the state with an additional 150 students, the number of football players and new women athletes needed to comply with gender equity guidelines.

All California schools must meet gender equity requirements by 2000, with funding for men’s and women’s athletic programs relatively equal.

The requirements also dictate that a school’s number of female athletes come within percentage points of the 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.

If approved by the board, Canyons couldn’t field a team until the 1998 season because Western State Conference rules stipulate that new programs must be in place one year before competition.

Only 69 of the 107 community colleges in the state play football.

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.