Impossible not to think of Travioli during football season

It’s just not football season without my good friend Cliff Travioli.

Cliff, to me, was the embodiment of college football.

I’ll always believe that life dealt him a cruel blow. He died 22 years ago at age 48. His son, Colin, and 15-month-old grandson, Leighton, now live in Costa Mesa, a Hail Mary pass from the site of Cliff’s many notable accomplishments.

Colin and his wife, Natsuko, have known each other since the eighth grade. She owns Temakira Sushi Restaurant in Costa Mesa and Irvine.

If you draw a line 500 yards due north from Colin and Natsuko’s front door in College Park, you’ll intersect with a plaque on a concrete pillar in Orange Coast College’s LeBard Stadium honoring Cliff’s service.

Perfect.

“It’s so nice to walk there with Leighton and tell him about his grandpa,” Colin’s mom, Sherry Travioli Hadland of Irvine, told me, “and for Colin to have that connection with the dad he loved so much — and lost too soon.”

The plaque, overlooking LeBard’s south endzone, includes a rendering of Cliff and reads: “In memory of Clifford D. Travioli for his loyalty, dedication and love of Orange Coast College. Stadium Manager, Grounds Supervisor, 1975-1994.”

That was Cliff. And so much more.

Travioli oversaw every game in the facility — hundreds and hundreds of them — for 20 seasons.

“I was with him for most games from the time I was 7 until I was 15,” says Colin, now an administrator for a construction management firm. “That’s how I grew up! Sometimes we’d have four games on a weekend: Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and Saturday afternoon. I helped set things up and tear them down and all the details in between.”

A native of Ann Arbor, Mich., and a big Michigan Wolverines fan, Cliff graduated from OCC in 1973 after an Army tour in Vietnam. He transferred to UC Berkeley with his wife, Sherry, where he majored in exercise physiology.

They returned to Orange County in 1975, and Cliff was hired on OCC’s grounds crew.

He became head of the grounds staff and manager of LeBard Stadium. A perfectionist who took pride in his work, Cliff turned LeBard into a jewel. It became one of the premier natural grass football fields in the region.

Teams loved to play at LeBard because of its smooth surface, even late into a season following two-dozen games.

FieldTurf, a state-of-the-art artificial surface, was installed in 2004.

Cliff was instrumental in attracting his beloved University of Michigan to LeBard several times while at OCC. When the Wolverines came west to represent the Big-10 in the Rose Bowl from 1981 through 1993, they almost exclusively conducted practices at the college.

Michigan head coach, Bo Schembechler, got to know Travioli well. Notoriously cantankerous, Bo appreciated Cliff’s talent for making his gridiron as flawless as a billiard table. Bo preferred practicing there over anywhere else.

Colin, a UC Irvine graduate, is a Michigan fan, like his dad.

“I hope someday to take Leighton to a Michigan game,” he says. “We have to keep the tradition alive. Guaranteed, in a couple of years Leighton will be going to OCC games.”

They’re only 500 yards away!

For years, every Saturday night during OCC’s football seasons, I’d see Cliff as I entered LeBard Stadium. I was P.A. announcer. He’d be standing at his post near the top of the ramp — where the plaque now stands — leading to the perfectly coiffed field. Without fail, we’d spend a few minutes discussing college football results of the day.

He’d, of course, exult over a Michigan victory.

In 1993, Cliff developed a respiratory ailment. It seemed innocuous at first, but turned serious. The condition, called pulmonary fibrosis, dramatically sapped his energy.

Cliff once told me that he’d possibly contracted it as a result of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Or maybe it was due to contact with pesticides.

The disease caused the air sacs of his lungs to turn into fibrous tissue. On May 30, 1994, he took his last breath at Hoag Hospital and was gone.

“Cliff would be crazy about Leighton today were he alive,” Sherry says softly. “He’d love taking him to games.”

Indeed he would!

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JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Tuesdays.