Teed Off At Kickoff

It didn’t take long for Jim Fenwick, Cal State Northridge’s first-year football coach, to size up the situation.

After spending two days here at the Big Sky Conference summer kickoff convention that ended Tuesday, Fenwick came away somewhat dejected and frustrated.

“I feel we are not being taken very seriously,” Fenwick said. “We should be able to get the same kind of respect as those other teams.”

Fenwick also was jolted by the realization, driven home through talks with his counterparts, that the gap in funding, facilities and scholarships between Northridge and virtually every other Big Sky program is too large for his comfort.

But throughout the meetings in this resort town that will stage most of the skiing events during the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, Fenwick never acted like a guy about to embark on his most ambitious and difficult coaching endeavor.

He tried to fit in and made everyone know he welcomes the challenge.

“I’ve got a real genuine respect for the conference,” Fenwick said. “I feel it’s one of the best in America.”

At the Division I-AA level, the Big Sky is arguably the premier football conference in the nation and hardly anyone at the convention, from coaches to administrators, missed the chance to point it out.

The conference has made three consecutive appearances in the I-AA championship game, with Montana winning in 1995 and finishing second last season.

Northern Arizona, top-ranked in the nation in the Sporting News’ preseason poll, is expected to make a run for the title this year.

It is a conference where, with the exception of Northridge and Sacramento State--each with 45--every school has 63 players on scholarship.

It is also a conference where tradition runs deep and teams enjoy substantial fan support, with stadiums that hold 15,000 and sometimes 20,000 people often filled to capacity.

All of which was reinforced here for Fenwick, leaving him yearning for the same.

“Northern Arizona already has two booster buses sold out for our game [at Northridge on Nov. 22],” Fenwick said. “They think they’ll sell out two more by then. How do we compete against something like that?”

In their first Big Sky season last year, the Matadors finished with a 5-3 record and tied for third place. They were 7-4 overall which, Fenwick believes, would have been reason to celebrate in other Big Sky towns.

But Fenwick, who spent the past six seasons building a nationally prominent and popular program at Valley College, is bothered by the relative indifference of people in the Valley toward the Matadors.

“This is the first time we’ve been in a legitimate conference and this is our chance to start a tradition and rivalries,” Fenwick said. “We should be able to create those things but the community has to participate.”

Fenwick said people might feel differently about the Matadors and what they are trying to accomplish had they been at the convention.

“They didn’t see what I see up here,” Fenwick said. “They didn’t see the pride they have in Montana and Northern Arizona. . . . They don’t care who they play. They go to watch Montana play and Northern Arizona play.

“This convention has brought together the realities of what were are trying to establish at Northridge and how we fit in.”

Fenwick, who hopes to see improvements made to the football facilities at Northridge, including bringing to higher standards the 6,000-capacity and antiquated North Campus Stadium, would like to attend next year’s Big Sky meetings with a message.

“Everyone knows we don’t have the facilities,” Fenwick said. “Everyone knows they can come down to our area and recruit against us. But deep down inside, they know when we improve our facilities, they are going to have their hands full.”