Keeping Titan Football at I-A Level Would Be Costly, Report Shows : College: Speakers at two open forums express their support for the sport. But turnout is small.

FULLERTON —  Several campus and community members voiced support for Cal State Fullerton football Wednesday, but keeping the program at the Division I-A level does not appear to be a viable option for the school.

The Titan athletic department, after weeks of budget research and analysis, released figures Wednesday showing that if football were to remain Division I-A, the department would run a deficit of $635,324 for the 1993-94 school year.

Combined with a projected deficit of $351,324 this year, that would result in a cumulative deficit of $986,648 at the end of 1994.

If the school downgraded football and joined the Division I-AA, cost-containment Western Football Conference next season, the athletic department projects it still would run a deficit of $264,797 in 1993-94, with a cumulative deficit of $484,121.

Dropping football altogether would leave the department with a $13,176 surplus in 1993-94, but the department would still carry a debt of $59,474 into that school year.

The Fullerton Athletics Council, which conducted two open forums to discuss the football issue Wednesday, won’t make a recommendation to university President Milton Gordon until Nov. 30. Gordon said he will determine football’s fate by the second week of December.

But the numbers seem to indicate that the options have been reduced to playing Division I-AA football or playing no football at all.

“My contract says I have to balance the budget, and I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to do that,” Athletic Director Bill Shumard said. “Football is important to the campus for a lot of intangible reasons, but during tough times, you focus on financial issues.

“There’s nothing I’d like to see more than for this campus to embrace football, though. It would mean a lot to the campus and community.”

While almost all speakers at Wednesday’s forums favored football, there wasn’t exactly an outpouring of community support for the sport.

Only 25 people attended the afternoon session and about 40 attended the evening session. There were few students at either forum, and not one football player showed. A few weeks ago, remember, Titan football players threatened to boycott a game if a decision about football’s future wasn’t made.

“I expected more people,” Shumard said. “It would have been nice to have more faculty and students here.”

Could that be an indication that very few people care about Titan football?

“I’ll let you draw your own conclusions,” Shumard said.

Though a few people stood firm in their belief that Fullerton should play I-A football, the prevailing sentiment was in favor of keeping football, even if that meant a drop to I-AA.

Shumard projects a I-AA budget of $575,000, compared to the present $1.25 million I-A football budget, and he said he believes the Titans, who have won five games in the last five seasons in I-A, can be much more competitive in I-AA.

“I talked to students, and we’d like to watch football, but why do we have to watch them get killed by Nevada and Utah State?” said student Victor Valencia.

Bob Ling, Titan Athletic Foundation member and significant donor to the athletic department’s capital campaign: “I’m not paying $25,000 to watch soccer or high school football. That’s why I feel we have to play football, whether I-A or I-AA.”

Former Titan player Andrew Zepeda: “I’d hate to see football go with that new stadium. If you want to play I-AA, then go for it, make a 110% commitment to it.”

TAF member Matt Schulte: “If you drop football, the stature of the school will drop significantly. We have a beautiful stadium, but for what? To rent it out to high schools?”

Fullerton geography professor Bill Puzo: “I would hate to be the person who says we finally have a stadium, and now we’re going to cancel football.”

James Young, a former Titan football player, worried that eliminating football would reduce opportunities for African-American students to attend college.

“If you look at the team, it’s made up mostly of African-Americans,” Young said. “There are only 500 blacks in this school. How many do you think there’d be if we didn’t have football?”

There was only one dissenter in the group, Titan soccer Coach Al Mistri, who asked the question that so many others seemed to ignore: How are we going to pay for this?

“Perhaps I’m speaking for myself, but for the last eight years, in order to keep football, the growth of my sport has been stunted,” Mistri said. “I still don’t see how we’re going to get $264,000 (to have I-AA football). Before you decide what to do, you must consider the good of the entire department.”