Questions for CSUN

First, the good news. Cal State Northridge broke ground last month for a biotech park that will be one of the largest public-private partnerships in the San Fernando Valley. The development is expected to generate research opportunities for CSUN students and faculty and lease payments of $800,000 a year for the university.

The last phase of the five-building facility will go where the football stadium now stands--which brings us to the bad news: CSUN’s beleaguered football program.

University officials plan to replace the old stadium with a bigger, better one--or at least they did before they fired football coach Ron Ponciano last week, eight weeks into an ongoing investigation of possible NCAA rules violations. The week before, Ponciano’s top assistant resigned.

CSUN’s new athletic director says Ponciano’s firing is a personnel issue, not a statement about the future of CSUN football. But given the athletic program’s past problems and the challenges ahead--like raising $8.5 million for the new stadium--a forthright discussion of the future of CSUN football is more than needed.

Last season, the Matadors came within a victory of winning the Big Sky Conference championship. Supporters argue that they can come back from this setback like the women’s basketball team did when its coach resigned after being charged with intent to distribute crack cocaine. And we certainly wish these young athletes--who deserve better than the current chaos--a successful season.

But there’s more at stake here than with the basketball program. The proposed new stadium was controversial even before this latest upheaval. Homeowner groups, wary of traffic and congestion, oppose it. Stadium critics question whether a commuter school like CSUN should spend so much money on Division I football when other sports were dropped (although later reinstated) because of budget deficits and the Cal State system is under a consent decree to improve women’s sports.

The Times has supported a new stadium on the CSUN campus rather than the alternative of sharing one with Pierce College in Woodland Hills. But if the university is going to go ahead with its stadium, the community needs assurances that its donations will go to a project that won’t fall apart halfway through. And returning players and newly recruited students need assurances that CSUN, which has been a revolving door for athletic directors, assistant athletic directors and fund-raisers as well as coaches, knows how to run a football team.

Stadium boosters believe that a big stadium and a winning football team will give CSUN the type of high profile enjoyed by such schools as Notre Dame, Ohio State and the University of Michigan. But the university has other ways to make a name for itself. The new biotech park is one groundbreaking example.