Football Is Senseless at Fullerton

I’ve been sleeping a lot better, knowing that Cal State Fullerton will be back playing football this fall.

I mean, I was really going to miss:

--Mississippi State 49, Fullerton 3.

--Texas Tech 59, Fullerton 3.

--Georgia 69, Fullerton 3.

--The Titan team shuttle from LAX to Salt Lake City to Albuquerque to Oklahoma City to Little Rock to Shreveport to Starkville.

--”This afternoon’s attendance is 1,247. The Titans and Santa Ana Stadium thank you.”

--Quarterback Terry Payne picking up where Paul Schulte left off, just as soon as the defensive linemen get off him.

--Third-string defensive backs lining up against Pacific quarterback Troy Kopp because the first- and second-stringers are in casts.

--The new Titan cheer: “We’re No. 106 . . . Because There Ain’t No 107.”

--The 1991 Fullerton football prospectus: “It can’t get any worse.”

I can’t think of a better way to spend $650,000.

Don’t tell me about Dick Wolfe, the Fullerton gymnastics coach who nearly had his nationally ranked program sliced from the budget last year. He can live on half his old salary.

Don’t tell me about Augie Garrido. He has already shown you can win NCAA baseball titles at Fullerton with no money at all.

Don’t tell me about John Sneed. His basketball team is 11-9 with a budget that allows him to recruit top players from as far away as Bolsa Grande High School.

Don’t give me any of these meaningless minor sports.

Give me football.

You’re not a man if you don’t play football. You’re not an American if you don’t play football. You know what they call colleges that don’t play football?

Anteaters.

And when I say football, I mean Big Time College Football. None of this proposed penny ante Division I-AAA stuff. We want Fullerton at LSU, Fullerton at Auburn, Fullerton at Georgia--not Fullerton at Occidental. Anyone can beat Sonoma State. Fullerton was undefeated against Sonoma State in 1990. What made headlines was Fullerton going 0-11 against the field in Division 1-A.

Think of everything Fullerton football gives back to the community.

Fullerton football players are role models, especially the ones who haven’t been arrested.

Fullerton’s football schedule creates work for Orange County travel agents.

A Fullerton home game keeps the freeways traffic-free for pleasant Saturday afternoon drives.

A Fullerton home game makes life a little easier for Santa Ana Stadium ushers and ticket takers.

Name another Big Time College Football school where you can show up 10 minutes before kickoff and get a seat on the 50-yard line.

Fullerton also has this massive hole in the ground on the north end of its campus. It’s for a football stadium, to be opened in 1992, which will be able to seat 10,000 spectators, which is almost as many as Michigan Stadium seats behind one of its end zones. Fullerton has waited 15 years and is spending $10 million for this stadium. What’s another $650,000 to make sure Fullerton has someone to use it?

The $650,000 is for the current deficit in the Titan athletic department ($150,000) and the projected deficit for the 1991-92 athletic year ($500,000). That’s the price tag for Fullerton football, ’91. I know that’s on top of the $400,000 the Titan boosters set out to raise every year, and I know that Fullerton will have to raise another million dollars next year, too. Already, $150,000 of donations have been pledged, and those in the fund-raising business assure me that verbal pledges are never less than ironclad.

It’s going to be worth it. Sure, Fullerton had the worst record in Division I-A and the worst record in the history of Fullerton football at 1-11 in 1990. A little bad luck. Sure, Fullerton Coach Gene Murphy lost recruits when the Titan program spent last week in limbo, and sure, it will be hard playing catch-up with other Big West recruiters telling high school seniors, “How can you even think about Fullerton when they won’t have a program by next year?” Murphy can handle it. He already has won at a school that has no stadium, no home games, no fans and no grass-roots support for football.

Now, he just tries it with no players.

We know he can do it.

It would have been too easy to sack football and turn the money over to the other sports to keep Wolfe’s gymnasts in the Top 10 and keep Garrido in the College World Series and maybe start sending Sneed to the NCAA basketball tournament. That would make sense, you say?

We’re not talking sense here.

We’re talking Fullerton football.

So keep signing over the checks and keep teeing up the football. It can be a lot of fun, fooling yourself. At Cal State Fullerton, they know.

They’ve been doing it for 21 years now.