EDITORIAL : BYE-BYE BUBB; ATHLETIC DIRECTOR'S OUSTER SHOULD SIGNAL SEA CHANGE AT CSUN.

AS California State University, Northridge, President Blenda Wilson picks up the pieces of the school's shattered athletic program, the time is ripe for her to rein in the out-of-control sports department.

In trying to break into big-time college sports, the university lost its focus, not to mention its mission of educating and providing moral leadership for its student-athletes.

The first, and most appropriate, step was forcing athletic director Paul Bubb to quit. While there were some notable achievements under Bubb, they were far outweighed by the fact that chaos and confusion were rampant in an overly ambitious attempt to put CSUN on the sports map.

Frankly, Bubb fumbled too many balls and what cost him his job was his failure to handle allegations of drug use by women's basketball coach Michael Abraham in an appropriate manner when they first surfaced two years ago.

Now Wilson faces her biggest challenge: the building of a 15,000-seat campus football stadium, as requested by the Big Sky Conference, the Division I-AA league to which the Matadors belong.

But underscoring the opposition from the school's neighbors, who believe a stadium of that size will bring too much traffic into the area, is the question of whether a facility that size is even needed. Fans show up in such sparse numbers that they barely fill the bleachers at the current field where a crowd of 5,000 is about as large as it gets. Many students at the largely commuter college are unaware of the team's existence even though it has been ranked nationally this season.

It seems that campus officials have been so caught up in becoming the San Fernando Valley's UCLA or USC that they failed to sense the lack of enthusiasm on behalf of the students or the community.

Northridge isn't UCLA or USC and nobody wants it to be like them.

If the Big Sky is too big and football is too ambitious, the Wilson administration needs to face it and deflate this overblown dream. It's fun to see CSUN among the top of colleges in its division but it's not as important as having a healthy sports culture, intellectual environment and educational program.

That's why the community values CSUN and treasures it as the region's greatest institution.

The latest scandal provides a creative opportunity for Wilson to reappraise the sports program. CSUN tried to take a great leap forward into big-time college athletics and now it's time to take a step back.