TIME FOR CSUN TO TAKE ITS FOOTBALL AND GO HOME.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

No matter if you're a comedian with a hit television show or an athletic director with a failing department, timing is everything. Jerry Seinfeld hit the mark exquisitely by choosing to sign off on his sitcom at the end of this season. Now it's Paul Bubb's turn to show the same kind of vision and disband the CSUN football team.

For Bubb to do anything less would be to invite more laughter than one of Kramer's patented entrances on the ``Seinfeld'' show. Through no fault of departing coach Jim Fenwick or his players, the Matadors team that finished 6-6 last season was considered the joke of the Big Sky Conference by the teams who had to play at North Campus Stadium.

It wasn't the effort of the players or the coaching of the overextended staff that provided an easy punchline. Rather, it's the facility itself that continues to invite easy ridicule.

Neighboring high schools have slicker set-ups than the converted Devonshire Downs race track that passes as the Matadors' field. The bulls in the rodeos that used to take place on the grounds no doubt would have kicked up a fuss at having to perform in such shabby conditions.

The substandard facility symbolizes the improbability of the Matadors' pie in the Big Sky dreams. The Big Sky Conference doesn't want any school that doesn't have a football team. But if a shoestring budget is all the school is able to invest in its football program, Bubb simply should throw away the shoes and invest the money that would have gone to football - $280,000 plus the cost of 45 athletic scholarships - toward an independent schedule for the remaining 19 sports.

A playing field that already is tilted against the Matadors is destined to become even more skewed, the slope ever more slippery. The promise of a glittering new facility has been drowned out by incessant speculation about the football program's future.

``It doesn't give you a secure feeling,'' admitted Fenwick, who was swayed by the prospect of more money and fewer headaches to become Rocky Long's offensive coordinator at New Mexico. ``Every other second they're talking about dropping (the program).''

If Fenwick, a San Fernando Valley native, saw the need to pull up his deep roots in the area after one season with the program, what hope is there of CSUN luring anybody else for the long haul? What's to keep the coach who succeeds him from being as mobile as the makeshift trailer office that comes with the title as long as the program itself remains in flux?

We agree with Bob Burt, who coached the Matadors for nine seasons before moving on to greener fields at . . . Temescal Canyon High in Lake Elsinore. ``As far as I'm concerned,'' Burt said on Tuesday, ``they ought to stick a fork in it. It's done.''

CSUN wouldn't be the first do throw out the players with the playbook, merely the latest. In the past five years, 14 universities have eliminated football, among them Cal State-Fullerton (in 1993), Cal-State Hayward (1994), San Francisco State (1995) and Cal State-Chico (1997).

After 91 years of football, Boston University gave its program the boot this year. So the way is well paved for CSUN and its 36 years of tentative tradition. The CSUN Sports Task Force effectively hastened Fenwick's exodus by recently recommending a $40,000 cut in the football operations budget and the loss of three additional scholarships from an already skeletal commitment.

Money woes are not merely the Matadors' cross to bear. Red ink, like the West Coast Offense, can be found everywhere. In 1995, only seven of the approximately 120 Division I-AA football programs turned a profit. The Matadors aren't even the only Big Sky Conference member feeling the pinch, though the thought of having to scrape together schedules piecemeal keeps a lot of schools busy maintaining nice facades, for appearances sake.

College programs are like potential suitors; when courting prized recruits they are expected to provide for them in the manner in which they have grown accustomed. For the Matadors, that has become an increasingly daunting task.

The time has come for CSUN to swallow its pride and admit it no longer can afford the creature comfort that is football. If other schools were to follow the Matadors' lead, they wouldn't need the Big Sky or Big West conferences. They could form their own and call it the Big Gulp.

It's the only way CSUN can avoid being a program about nothing.