With New Title, Coach Expected to Win Another

From his new office at San Jose State, Dave Baldwin, the man who last year engineered the resurrection of Cal State Northridge football, doesn’t mince words.

“I foresee a national championship with Jim Fenwick there,” he said.

A nice compliment for Fenwick, who was hired by Northridge on Friday.

Also a substantially fat monkey for the former coach to heap on his successor’s back.

Perhaps realizing as much, Baldwin, his words hanging in the air like a quarterback’s wounded duck pass, quickly attempts to clarify.

“Of course, the obstacles he’s got are huge,” he added, “but he can make it happen.”

It is 12:30 Friday afternoon, only an hour or so after Fenwick received Northridge’s offer and still an hour and a half before he will be introduced as the Matadors’ coach.

Already, talk of a national championship.

Fast forward approximately two hours. Fenwick and Northridge athletic director Paul Bubb are answering questions from reporters.

Bubb is asked what his expectations are for the new coach.

“Win that national championship,” he said without hesitating.

Bubb chuckled as he said it, but the comment obviously is not made entirely in jest.

A year ago such talk would have drawn howls of laughter. Not anymore. Not after a 7-4 season. Not after a third-place finish in the first year of competition in the toughest Division I-AA football conference in the nation.

Northridge is expected to be good next season. Good enough, a few players opined at last season’s end, to challenge for a national title.

Record-setting quarterback Aaron Flowers, who played one year for Fenwick at Valley, will be back for his senior season.

All but one of Flowers’ top receivers is back.

The running backs are back.

Many of the best offensive linemen are back.

Several top defensive players, including linebacker Marc Goodson and all-conference defensive back Bennie Herron, are back.

Only Baldwin, or somebody like him, was missing. Until Friday.

Now many of those same players are talking again, and listen to what one of them is saying:

“With the nucleus we have on the team, I don’t expect anything less than a journey to the national championship. . . . I think Coach Fenwick can do that.”

Those are the words--don’t they sound familiar?--of Jerome Henry, a Northridge receiver.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. An educated guess is more like it. Now, back to reality.

Chances are, Northridge won’t be playing for the national championship next fall.

The Matadors probably won’t so much as win the Big Sky Conference championship.

Such dreaming might be classified as pie in the Big Sky.

There will be a road game at Montana State and another at Montana, which has played in the I-AA title game each of the past two seasons.

Winning on the road in the Big Sky is always a tall order, especially when scholarship limitations leave your team susceptible to being severely weakened by only one or two key injuries.

Baldwin knows this as well as anyone, which is why he furiously backpedaled after letting that “national championship” phrase slip out.

The old coach talked about Northridge still being well short of the maximum 63 scholarships allowed in Division I-AA. He also talked about the need for the school’s football facilities to be upgraded and that the Matadors won’t have the advantage of sneaking up on teams anymore.

“Everybody in that conference knows what to expect from Northridge from now on,” Baldwin said.

And thank goodness for that.

One of the reasons Fenwick was hired is that he believes in a wide-open, entertaining passing attack similar to the one Baldwin installed.

Just take what Baldwin did last season, add a few more wrinkles, and go without a huddle.

That’s Fenwick.

Those who focus on whether Northridge will actually win a national championship with its new coach are entirely missing the point.

The most important thing is, under Fenwick, the chase is still on.