A `CONQUERED' COMMUNITY.

Byline: Kevin Modesti

Saturday night, with their team on the greatest roll in its history, the Cal State Northridge football fans show up early. The fans, in this case, being Norm Flowers and Betty and Bill Ackerman and a dozen relatives and friends.

An hour before Northridge's season-capping, 49-27 victory over Eastern Washington, theirs is the only tailgate party in the North Campus Stadium parking lot.

They are decked out in red and black, gobbling sandwiches and potato salad out of the back of a Jeep Cherokee, and offering hot cider to one of the only other people around not wearing bullfighter costumes. You accept the cider gratefully. It is getting toward winter in the San Fernando Valley.

The band warmups and the automobile traffic on Devonshire and Zelzah form the background noise. The stadium lights soon will take effect. As will the neon sign at the Drive Thru Lube shop on the corner.

Norm and Betty are the Northridge quarterback's dad and mom. And they remember when few outside the players' immediate families shared their enthusiasm for Northridge football.

``When we first started coming,'' Norm says, referring to this season's first game, which marked quarterback Aaron Flowers' arrival from Valley College, ``they were just sitting and watching, not realizing the improvement they were seeing. Now they're excited.''

Nearby, Ron and Pat Klinker sit in their car, eating off paper plates. High school friends of Norm, they drive from Orange to attend Matadors games, and made their road debut last week at Idaho State.

They have felt the atmosphere change in the stands as surely as it has in the locker room, where the Matadors brim with confidence after a one-season improvement from 2-8 to 7-4.

``When we first started coming out,'' Ron says, ``there weren't that many fans. But by the time they played the Montana State game (a month ago), it was really rocking. I think everybody is coming for the same reason - to see a program develop.''

And they are not coming only from the players' family trees. More and more, as the Matadors acquire the sheen of a legitimate 1-AA team, their fans come from the Valley.

From Chatsworth, from San Fernando, from Sepulveda or whatever it's called these days. From Sherman Oaks, from Van Nuys and, yes, from the unsettled soil of Northridge.

The fans aren't just relatives and alumni anymore - people who would drive in from Fresno and San Diego and Riverside to watch their boys play. The fans aren't just sophomore bullfighters anymore.

Closer to gametime Saturday, across the parking lot, another tailgate party has broken out. At its center is a 40-year-old man with a blond goatee and a black T-shirt with a red ``N.''

Tom Anderson is an air-conditioning contractor who lives a few minutes away in Winnetka.

Anderson hadn't been to a Northridge game until this season, the Matadors' first at this higher level of competition.

``We just live here locally, and I wanted to get my boys out to see some football,'' he says. Luke, 12, and Jake, 10, play nearby as their dad speaks. ``When Northridge went to (Division 1-AA), I decided, we'd better get out here.''

All sorts of people are coming to that conclusion. I guess I'm one of them - a nearly lifelong Valley boy who had never, until Saturday, watched a down of Northridge football.

When coach Dave Baldwin speaks of wanting to ``conquer the community,'' he is talking about people like me.

So, this must be how it feels to find gold in your backyard. Silver, anyway.

Against Eastern Washington, the Big Sky Conference's other pleasant surprise, the Matadors trade touchdowns for a half and then bomb away. Aaron Flowers, a junior, passes for 500 yards (breaking his own school record) and five touchdowns (tying a school record) despite bruising his throwing shoulder in the first quarter.

It is a chilly night - hot chocolate sells out in the third quarter - and maybe that's why the 3,108 fans are the fewest of the Matadors' season. But these fans stay for the final gun.

Afterward, it seems that half of them mingle with Northridge players and coaches, one of the perks of rooting for the little guys.

``The people we do have here are really supportive of us,'' Aaron Flowers says in the locker room. ``It used to be that you couldn't hear a roar when we scored a touchdown. Now you do. I think at the beginning of the season, people came out because they were curious about this team with all the new guys. Now they're here because they support us.''

The Matadors have the slimmest hope of gaining a 1-AA playoff berth. Failing that, the season is over, and I have only one question: When is next year's '97 home opener?

``Fun, wasn't it?'' Norm Flowers asks afterward.

Yes, it was. And do you have any more cider?

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Photo

Photo: (color) CSUN's defense, led by Herman Santiago (19) and Seepoleto Imo (50), bring down Eastern Washington quarterback Griffin Garske in the first half.

Tina Gerson /Daily News