Kearin’s Job Just Got a Bit Harder

This fall figures to be a season to remember for the Cal State Northridge football team, its final campaign in the Big Sky Conference.

Or one to forget.

Three months before the first kickoff, Northridge already received a boot in the behind Thursday when the NCAA placed Northridge on three years’ probation and banned its football team from postseason play in 2000 because of multiple NCAA rules violations.

The Matadors, scheduled to compete as an independent beginning in 2001, not only will be lame ducks in the Big Sky but will compete without the incentive of reaching the Division I-AA playoffs.

Friday, the sting had yet to be fully absorbed. Northridge Coach Jeff Kearin and a few assistants reviewed videotape in the campus football office but players were nowhere in sight.

Kearin said he has spoken with only a few since the NCAA decision was announced. No one has indicated a desire to transfer or even expressed outrage, he said. Many who live far from campus during the off-season might yet to have learned of the Matadors’ fate, Kearin said.

The news will sink in when the Matadors lay claim to a conference title and find themselves with no reward, Kearin said.

“That will be crushing,” Kearin said. “But we want to win the Big Sky championship and we expect to win the Big Sky championship. I hope on being crushed. I plan on being crushed.”

Thus, Kearin’s focus this fall will be turning a negative into a positive, parlaying punishment into motivation.

Northridge was 5-6 last season, tied for fourth in the Big Sky at 4-4, despite beginning the season under the cloud of an NCAA investigation and with an interim coach hired six weeks before the season.

The Matadors are expected to have several key players returning and remain among the Big Sky’s most skilled teams. Kearin was promoted to full-time in December and optimism abounded during spring.

Kearin hopes it won’t wane.

“This team has overcome greater adversity than this,” Kearin said. “These kids have shown great resilience.”

Sanctions came as no surprise to Northridge, subject of a 10-month NCAA probe into violations committed during the one-year tenure of former coach Ron Ponciano.

The NCAA said Ponciano committed numerous violations involving recruiting and ethical conduct, and Northridge lacked of institutional control. Probation almost always is imposed in such cases.

The NCAA limited Northridge to 75 scholarships this season, 10 below the maximum allowed.

Northridge administrators would have been more pleased with two years’ probation, as the school suggested among a list of self-imposed sanctions in its report to the NCAA. But interim President Louanne Kennedy said the school does not plan to appeal.

Kearin said he doesn’t expect probation to seriously affect recruiting. The most painful provision, he said, is the postseason ban.

“Ninety-eight percent of [the sanctions] was expected,” Kearin said. “We knew that we could get any or all of what we got. But I’m kind of surprised by getting hit in all the areas. The one thing that affects our day-to-day operations is the postseason play penalty. That is most disturbing to me because it affects these kids and the goals they have set.”