College Athletics Finances

They slashed his salary in half and they're trimming his team's budget, but life goes on for Dick Wolfe, who this week begins his 23rd season as the Cal State Fullerton men's gymnastics coach. "I still feel betrayed by the whole system and how it works, but I'm paying my bills and coaching my team, same as I did before," Wolfe said. "It doesn't feel right, but I'm getting it done."

Its member schools account for more than 200,000 students and a million living alumni, but the Big West athletic conference has traditionally been stuck in the shadow of the powerful Pacific 10, home to USC and UCLA. Now the Big West wants a bigger share of the collegiate sports revenue pie. The little-known NCAA athletic conference has hired a big-name sports marketing guru to promote its image among potential corporate sponsors.

David Stow, the men's gymnastics coach at Cal State Fullerton, passed women's volleyball Coach Jim Huffman on the way to work Tuesday morning and said Huffman was "waving and smiling" as he drove by. Not for long. Shortly after Huffman arrived at his office, he was informed by Athletic Director Bill Shumard that the women's volleyball and men's gymnastics programs were being eliminated for the 1992-93 school year.

Chuck Ferrero fondly recalls an era when the Valley College athletic program's wish list was short and student enrollment was high. Those were the days, muses Ferrero, Valley's athletic director. The days before the implementation of Proposition 13, when funds were plentiful and Valley offered almost every sport a junior college-bound athlete desired. "At one time, the school offered everything on the books," Ferrero said. "We had it all, even wrestling. But it hasn't been that way in years.

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.

UC Irvine, a university known more for its quirky nickname than its athletic teams, turned to its students to try to change that. They voted this week to raise student fees, which will bring back baseball, add two women's sports and breath financial life back into existing Anteater programs. Students voted for a $33 fee hike per quarter, beginning in the fall of 2000, which will put the athletic department on even better footing than it was before the 1992 budget crunch decimated its programs.

Mike Gullo got the call Thursday night and learned that all his work had not been in vain. Football would not be dropped at Cal State Fullerton. In 1989, Gullo came to Fullerton to study business and decided to play football. For two years, he lifted weights, practiced and hoped. He was rewarded this past spring with a scholarship. Then, just when everything was working out, the school's athletic council recommended last week that Fullerton drop the football program.

A group of influential, longtime boosters has persuaded UC Irvine to guarantee that the school's water polo program will compete next year with Ted Newland as its coach, even if the program fails to raise the $74,000 it needs to stay afloat. Irvine recently announced that because of a projected $526,000 budget deficit, five sports will no longer receive university funding, and could continue to compete only if they paid their own way, including the coach's salary.

When John Altobelli became the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, one of his priorities was to replace "the major eyesore at the field." What drew his ire was a dented and rusting manual scoreboard next to the visitor's dugout. "I think I had it taken down by the maintenance crew the second day I had the job," he said. Next came the true challenge. Finding a way to replace the aging board with a nice electronic one.

The announcement last week that UCLA's water polo program was one of three sports being eliminated because of budget restrictions sent shock waves through the aquatics community. And not only among former Bruin players and fans. Some of UCLA's main rivals--coaches from Stanford, Cal and USC--are equally concerned about the fate of the Bruins' program. That is because the demise of UCLA water polo could eventually result in the sport's loss of sanctioning by the NCAA.

Irvine businessman and crew lover Henry T. Nicholas III gave $1.28 million to UC Irvine athletics Tuesday in a ceremony at the university's crew facility at Newport Beach's Shellmaker Island. It was the largest athletic gift in the school's 34-year history and will be used to build a boathouse for the crew team and to create an endowment designed to raise the competitive level of the group. Nicholas, 39, was a member of the UCLA crew team in the early 1980s.

UC Irvine, a university known more for its quirky nickname than its athletic teams, turned to its students to try to change that. They voted this week to raise student fees, which will bring back baseball, add two women's sports and breath financial life back into existing Anteater programs. Students voted for a $33 fee hike per quarter, beginning in the fall of 2000, which will put the athletic department on even better footing than it was before the 1992 budget crunch decimated its programs.

Welcome to the real world, Anteaters. The world where money means the world and raising money separates winners from losers, separates the CEOs from the people in the cubicles. Thursday, athletes from all the UC Irvine sports teams became politicians. They sat at tables, they ran around the ring road, the road that encircles the campus, wearing their volleyball uniforms, their basketball uniforms, their track suits.

A proposal to help fund athletic scholarships at UC Irvine by raising student fees will be voted on by students May 10-13 after it was approved this week by the student legislative council. The referendum will offer three choices for quarterly fee increases--$33, $19 and $13--as well as an opportunity to vote against any increase. Approval of the $33 fee would bring back baseball, which was dropped in 1992, and introduce women's water polo and another as-yet-undecided women's sport.

The masses are still buzzing about THE YEAR THAT WAS in college football, arguably the most exciting in the sport's history. OK, so what can we do to fix this mess? You'd think the smart money would want to leave stupendous-enough alone, declare last Dec. 5 a college football national holiday and move onto more important matters such as intercollegiate game-fixing.

The UCLA and USC athletic departments spend significantly more money on men's sports than women's, the California chapter of the National Organization for Women said Thursday in announcing it intends to soon file civil rights complaints against both schools. Though spending on women's teams is on the rise at both schools, budgets remain skewed toward men's sports, NOW spokeswoman Linda Joplin said. USC, for instance, allocated $683,692, or 20.6% of 1997-98 operating expenses, to women's sports.

The Cal State Fullerton fencing and men's gymnastics teams, clinging to life in the face of a proposed budget cut that would eliminate the programs, have a little more hope to hold on to. The school announced Monday that a coordinated effort by the campus and the community has been launched to save the programs, which the Athletics Council recently recommended be dropped to balance the 1990-91 athletic budget.

While the Cal State Northridge football team played in front of its fans for the first time this season, a few former players carried signs implicating Coach Bob Burt as an overseer and a pimp. "That made us look bad," said wide receiver Saadite Green, an African-American. "That is saying we are slaves and hookers." The signs, carried by members of the Black Student Athletes Assn. on Saturday night at North Campus Stadium, protested the lack of financial support for Northridge student-athletes.

Wayne Thobe grew up in a family in which his three athletic brothers received college basketball scholarships. Now Thobe's son is a wrestler at Mater Dei High, and his daughter is a junior high softball player. And basketball player. And thinking about trying some other sports too. Who can blame her for keeping her options open? By the time 12-year-old Elaine Thobe is ready for college, she will have a smorgasbord of sporting opportunities to choose from.

June 11, 1997 is a day of infamy in the history of Cal State Northridge athletics. Never did I imagine my alma mater would do the unthinkable--drop baseball, men's volleyball, men's soccer and men's swimming from its athletic program. The arrogance of the decision--and the lack of consultation of community members--left me embarrassed and angry.