GENE MURPHY was the last head football coach at Cal State Fullerton (CSUF photo).

Reports have it that Texas State University has been invited to become the eighth school in the retooled Pac-12, a development which will allow it to compete (however successfully or unsuccessfully) at the NCAA Division 1 level.

As you may know, the appeal of cold, hard cash led to a tectonic realignment in college football a couple of years ago, with the specific effect of shattering the Pac-12 (previously the Pac-10, Pac-8 and Pac-6).

All that remained were Oregon State and Washington State and a storied name. But playing on that name, the survivors cobbled together a “new” Pac-12 – even with just eight members – and with some fat TV contracts, will be able to keep on keeping on.
Still, it seems like a bit of a reach, adding a school that’s actually as close to the Atlantic as it is to the Pacific, in the Pac-12.

Ah, but if there were only some major four-year schools on the Left Coast left out …

I point in the general direction of Long Beach State (enrollment 36,000) and Cal State Fullerton (41,000), two schools that had football programs and dropped them, strangely.

The 49ers ended their gridiron run their coach George Allen (also a former Rams head coach) died. The Titan program, suffering from the lack of an on-campus stadium, was folded in 1992 while the new Titan Stadium was under construction.

Now it’s mostly a soccer facility and is rented out for high school football contests.
Reviving football programs – the most expensive of sports –is always difficult, and prospering in the shadow of UCLA and USC is doubly tough, but oh, what might have been …