DIVISION I STATUS FACTOR IN CUTS; COSTS OF RUNNING SPORTS PROGRAMS PROVE TOO MUCH.

Byline: Daily News

Wednesday's announcement that four men's sports at Cal State Northridge are to be dropped immediately can be traced to the university's decision to move to Division I seven years ago.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association classifies intercollegiate sports programs into three divisions. Division I offers the most scholarships, features the best athletes, has higher prestige and more media exposure, and costs the most money.

Division II is a scaled-down version of Division I, offering less scholarship money (and in some cases none at all) and typically attracts a lower-caliber athlete.

Division III, of which there is little tradition on the West Coast, offers no scholarships.

In the late 1980s, NCAA rule changes mandated significant penalties for Division I teams that lost to Division II programs in power ratings that determine postseason qualification.

Division I schools, such as UCLA and USC, had in the past scheduled Division II opponents because the games typically provided easy victories. Those schools were therefore less willing to play Division II teams because of the new risk to their own teams for postseason play.

That in turn made it increasingly difficult for Division II programs to fill their schedules. When the statewide recession hit in the early '90s, a number of Division II schools eliminated or vastly reduced their sports programs - hindering scheduling opportunities further for the Division II programs that remained.

While Division II remains strong on a national basis, there were so few teams on the West Coast that filling a schedule against other Division II teams would have made travel costs for most California schools prohibitively high.

Moving up

As a result, a number of strong Division II programs such as CSUN made the decision to move to Division I, even though they lacked facilities and resources comparable to established, major programs.

When CSUN decided to upgrade, university officials aimed at gaining entrance into one of three Division I leagues - the Big West Conference, the West Coast Conference or the Big Sky Conference.

Membership in a league is necessary to guarantee opponents, postseason opportunity, media exposure and broadcast revenue. Television, for example, makes broadcasting deals with leagues, not with individual schools, except in rare instances such as Notre Dame football.

One goal for universities when they seek conference affiliation is to group themselves with schools that share similar goals, financial resources and academic standards. That ensures they pursue similar athletes, coaching staffs and field teams that are comparable on the playing field.

Joining a conference

The WCC, which includes Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount locally, consists entirely of private universities. WCC officials were not interested in Northridge, a public institution.

Northridge, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, Southern Utah and Sacramento State in 1993 formed their own conference - the American West - with the specific intent of creating a cost-conscious league that traditional Division I powers would be nonetheless willing to play as they had when they were in Division II.

Sports fans, and the schools themselves, widely regarded a four-team league as a joke, and it became clear the teams must move again.

Initial hopes of the four schools merging en masse with either the Big West or Big Sky failed to pan out, as the four schools could not unanimously agree on molding their programs to the requirements laid out by either conference.

The Big West, which includes Long Beach State and Fullerton State, eventually decided to add one school. Cal Poly-SLO and CSUN competed for that spot, and the Big West chose Cal Poly because it felt it offered a better financial commitment to its sports program than did Northridge.

That left Northridge with the Big Sky, which it joined in 1995 when American West disbanded.

Title IX

As CSUN groped for Division I conference affiliation, two other issues hit the campus - gender equity and financial hardship.

The entire Cal State University system was sued by the California chapter of the National Organization for Women for allegedly violating provisions of Title IX, federal civil rights legislation that guarantees equal opportunity for female and male athletes.

The two sides settled out of court in 1992 and agreed that by 1998, CSU campuses would reflect, within 5 percent, the same proportionality of intercollegiate athletics participation as the undergraduate population.

That meant Northridge needed to either add more women's sports - which it began to do in the past two years with the addition of soccer and golf - or slice men's sports.

Budget problems

Continued budget problems meanwhile made it increasingly difficult to pay for all of the university's sports programs.

In 1995 the student body passed a $27-per-year fee-hike referendum - after it shot it down twice the previous year. This additional money was supposed to put the athletic department in solid financial footing and, specifically, save the football program.

Had the referendum been defeated again, officials would have been forced to eliminate football and three other programs to balance the budget and meet gender-equity requirements.

Among other programs that faced possible elimination were women's basketball, men's soccer and men's swimming.

What the administration did not anticipate was the Big Sky's requirement that CSUN increase its football scholarships from 20 - the American West maximum - to 45 by this fall. Northridge agreed to that number when it signed a contract with the Big Sky.

That additional cost, plus the extra money for travel for all of CSUN's sports that were members of the Big Sky, gave Northridge a budget deficit.

Long Beach and Fullerton foresaw the dilemma several years ago and both consequently dropped football. That eliminated their most expensive men's sport and a large number of male athletes, bringing their overall programs into gender-equity goals.

Northridge has opted to keep football, which is required in order to be a member of the Big Sky, to distinguish itself from other CSU schools in Southern California.