Casting Call for ‘Matador Madness’

Somewhere in the Cal State Northridge athletic department. . .

Paul Bubb: All right, coaches, it’s time to choose the school year’s top sports accomplishments for our highlights video.

Marwan Ass’ad: We had highlights?

Bubb: Hey, fella, don’t get cute. As athletic director at this here fine institution, I can red-card your men’s soccer team faster than Bill Gates can make money.

Blenda Wilson: And next time, don’t come crying to me, Marwan. I’ve had it up to my hair ribbon with sports hassles.

Ass’ad: Isn’t that part of your job? You’re still the school president, right?

Wilson: Sure, until somebody makes me a better offer. I mean, I give to Northridge everything I have to offer.

Ron Ponciano: People, can’t we all just get along?

Barry Schreifels: Give me some of your football budget, Ron, and I’ll be your pal forever. I could barely afford swimming caps for my men’s team.

Bubb: Did you hit the garage sales like I asked you? Anyhow, you’re lucky we got yours and those three other men’s programs reinstated, so let’s get back to business.

Bobby Braswell: Speaking of resurrections, I nominate the baseball guys as the Northridge team of the year. Finishing 37-19 after being axed, and regrouping with a bunch of new guys was awesome. Coach Batesole deserves a hand.

Mike Batesole: I also deserve a raise. Seriously, the kids surprised the heck out of me.

Bubb: I’ll tell you what was surprising, the men’s basketball team pulling an el foldo, that’s what. A 12-16 record when you’re expected to challenge for the Big Sky Conference title, Bobby?

I don’t think we should even include your team in the video.

Janet Sherman: My softball team should get the most footage after baseball. We had the same record.

Gary Victor: What about us?

Lian Lu: Who are you?

Victor: I’m the women’s tennis coach. We were 17-6, which is the team’s most victories and best winning percentage since moving to Division I. We couldn’t have done it without those five foreign players.

Who are you?

Lu: Women’s volleyball coach. Also an expert on getting foreign players with limited English in on scholarship. The name Nancy Ma ring a bell?

Bubb: It hasn’t stopped ringing for Judy Brame, our associate athletic director.

Brame: And how. I’m still drained from that intense, look-under-every-rock investigation on whether Ma committed academic fraud. Anyone seen my company-issued shovel?

Lu: She was cleared. That was a nasty media campaign. But maybe it’s best if we are not in the video. You know, stir things up.

Ponciano: I don’t want us in the flick if Lu’s team is not. The football coach last season was Jim Fenwick, not me. I had nothing to do with those ineligible players that forced us to forfeit two victories.

Bubb: That reminds me not to use those drawings of the proposed football stadium we just canned. Let’s replace them with a shot of the fabulous Matadome, home to Coach Michael Abraham and his exciting women’s basketball team.

Abraham: We’ll take it. When you win 14 games after going 21-138 the previous six seasons, you should get a medal.

Ponciano: Coin one for me, too. I’ve been here four months and I’m already going WAC-ky.

Schreifels: Good one, buddy. But don’t hold your breath on Northridge pulling out of the Big Sky in football and joining what’s left of the WAC in 1999.

Forget Tulsa, El Paso, Honolulu. Think Pocatello, Bozeman, Missoula.

Brame: I say we get Dick Enberg to narrate. Maybe he’ll do it for free, being that he was a baseball assistant here in the 1960s.

Bubb: I can’t even get Enberg to send two bucks for the program.

Braswell: Hey, we could use the video in our ESPN commercials.

Sherman: Yeah, the ones that run three days after the event they’re promoting is over.

Batesole: It’s settled, let’s do lunch. Ponciano is buying.