Northridge’s Woes Have Only Begun

“This is over.”

So proclaimed Interim President Louanne Kennedy of Cal State Northridge last week after releasing a 130-page internal report that detailed more than a dozen violations of NCAA rules and declared former football coach Ron Ponciano persona non grata.

Kennedy’s statement leaves the impression the university has cleansed itself of its football problems and is ready to move on.

It’s another example of the ignorance of the Northridge administration.

The report provides powerful evidence that Ponciano’s superiors were either inept or lacking knowledge of NCAA procedures. It gives NCAA investigators the opportunity to examine the lack of institutional control at Northridge.

Lack of institutional control doesn’t mean a coach who has run amok. It refers to an athletic department and university that is not competently overseeing its personnel.

Northridge is a perfect example.

Lack of institutional control is a serious NCAA violation. UCLA was stripped of its 1995 NCAA softball title and banned from postseason play for one year because of its failure to properly monitor scholarships and coaches’ activities, and for providing extra benefits to athletes.

There has been a consistent breakdown in the checks and balances in the Northridge athletic department.

Here’s one example: Ponciano was accused of allowing players to attend weekly barbecues run by boosters in violation of NCAA rules. Compliance director Kathleen Heitzman said she saw food being prepared before a game in October and warned coaches. She said then athletic director Paul Bubb wrote a memo to Ponciano inquiring about the barbecues and asked if scholarship money would be taken away.

Heitzman said Ponciano never responded to the memo. Bubb was soon ousted in the fallout from the arrest of Michael Abraham, the women’s basketball coach whoallegedly trafficked cocaine. None of Bubb’s successors followed up on the barbecue violations.

No self-report was ever filed with the NCAA. No one looked into the matter until seven months later when the barbecue violations were included in an anonymous letter that led to the school’s internal investigation of the football program.

“More follow-ups should have been done,” conceded Heitzman, who recently left Northridge after one year to become an assistant athletic director at San Francisco State.

The problem is these kinds of blunders have happened repeatedly at Northridge, whether because the athletic department is “terribly understaffed,” as one administrator put it, or because coaches and administrators don’t want to follow NCAA rules.

Heitzman said her job was to monitor and educate Northridge coaches on NCAA rules. She was the school’s first compliance director.

“We weren’t spying on Ron, but he got caught because someone else turned him in,” she said.

Virtually all the violations alleged in the report are minor and correctable. They could have been stopped immediately. Added up, the violations point to a lack of institutional control.

Why did it take an anonymous letter and a university investigation conducted by an accountant to uncover violations most other Division I programs would have discovered long before they caused the firing of a coach?

It could be because the athletic department and university is in disarray. There have been four athletic directors in the last year--Bubb, Bobby Braswell, Sam Jankovich and Dick Dull.

Moreover, Northridge recently has lost four administrators--Heitzman, Judy Brame, Brian Swanson and Michael Rehm--in addition to president Blenda Wilson and vice president Ronald Kopita.

Ponciano is gone, and Northridge would like the NCAA Committee on Infractions to accept its recommended punishment: The loss of two scholarships, a reduction in recruiting visits and a two-year probation for the football program.

But the NCAA needs to closely review the report and make needed recommendations and admonishments.

No more excuses should be acceptable for Northridge. This is the 10th year the school has competed on the Division I level, surely enough time to hire the kind of experienced, competent administrators it takes to run a clean, competitive athletic program.

Maybe Dull, who started last month, can fix things. He has plenty of openings in the athletic department. But hiring Tom Shannon as interim compliance director doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Shannon has been the faculty representative for five years. He was there through all the troubles, from the football team having to forfeit two games in 1997 because it played ineligible players, to the investigation of alleged academic fraud by volleyball player Nancy Ma, to Abraham’s arrest, to Ponciano’s firing.

According to the internal report, Shannon was aware of the illegal barbecues but didn’t follow up with a self-report to the NCAA. Now he’s responsible for the department’s compliance with NCAA rules.

All this and more must be scrutinized by NCAA investigators.

Kennedy can think, “This is over,” but it has only begun.

Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422 or eric.sondheimer@latimes.com