Fans’ Anger Won’t Last Very Long

Since virtually everyone is predicting doomsday for the Cal State Northridge athletic program for dropping four men’s sports, here’s a thought:

Don’t count on it.

Sure, people still are angry that the school last week disbanded baseball, volleyball, swimming and soccer--which Wednesday was reinstated for one year--for budgetary reasons and to comply with gender-equity requirements.

The uproar likely will continue for some time, particularly when it comes to baseball and volleyball, programs that supporters believe should be permanent fixtures at every university in Southern California.

There will be more folks vowing to never again contribute money to Northridge, to never attend another athletic event at the school, to carry on with their lives as if the campus has vanished.

Their thunder won’t last.

Eventually, many will forget and forgive. Eventually, their wounds will heal and their interest will return. Eventually, human nature will kick in.

Don’t believe it?

Look at major league baseball.

No matter how often players and owners feud, bringing turmoil to the game and leaving fans reeling, turnstiles at ballparks get pretty steady action when the bickering ends.

Maybe at first there are some holdouts, people too disgusted by both sides to rush back, but there certainly are many among those who pledge never to return who change their tune as soon as stadiums reopen.

That’s what happened on Aug. 9, 1981, for the All-Star game at Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium. The game, the first after a 10-week player strike interrupted the season, drew an All-Star record 72,086.

The baseball labor disputes that followed produced similar fan reaction: anger, promises to invest their cash elsewhere, a cooling-off period and reconciliation.

At Northridge, that process might take two months or two years but it surely will happen.

My guess is that, by Fall, the community and school boosters will put aside the memories of last week’s massacre and focus on the football season under Jim Fenwick, the first-year coach already obsessed with lifting Northridge to new heights.

In the past two seasons, the Matadors rose from mediocrity, playing surprisingly well in the Big Sky Conference last year and generating interest where apathy once ruled.

The same excitement will surface during basketball season, when second-year Coach Bobby Braswell leads the Matadors on another assault at qualifying for the NCAA tournament after coming within 44 seconds of getting there last season.

Will the demise of some sports torpedo others at Northridge? Probably not. Hopefully not.

Some contend that corporate and even private donors will stop supporting Northridge for cutting baseball and volleyball, both highly successful. They argue that the administration goofed by eliminating two popular teams.

Successful? Yes.

Popular? Perhaps, although people had a funny way of showing it.

Northridge seldom had significantly large crowds at home baseball games.

As a Northridge faculty member wrote in an e-mail after the programs were dropped, “As for saving baseball, men’s volleyball, men’s soccer and men’s swimming and diving . . . how many games has the outraged public attended?”

An excellent but mute point at this time.

Three of the programs are gone, with soccer to follow when its reprieve runs out next year, so there’s little to be gained from blaming Northridge administrators for incompetence or the community for largely ignoring those programs until it was too late.

It’s OK to mourn, to make threats in a moment of passion, as many who claim they’ll never dig into their pockets to help Northridge have said the past few days. But there’s a time to get over it.

The athletes on the surviving programs at Northridge no doubt would appreciate it.