NCAA Div. I-A or NFL -- the opponent doesn't matter much to Cal State Northridge.
The Matadors insist they won't be cowed by Kansas.
"We're going in expecting to win this game," interim CSN coach Jeff Kearin said. "But if we were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers, we'd go in expecting to win the game."
The Jayhawks aren't exactly the Steelers, but, then again, the Matadors aren't exactly a perfect picture of stability.
Kearin landed the head coaching job only after his former boss, Ron Ponciano, was fired on July 16 after an anonymous letter detailing several alleged violations of NCAA rules was sent to the athletics department.
An investigation into those possible violations is under way, and rumors about the likely demise of the CSN football team have swirled ever since.
"There are always people saying we should drop the program," said Kearin, the Matadors' offensive coordinator last season who left CSN briefly to become an assistant at UNLV before he returned to replace Ponciano. "No one has said that from the administration here. No one at this school talks about dropping the sport. Hey, we're negotiating to play Nebraska in 2001. Nobody's acting like we're dropping the program."
While Ponciano's forced departure rocked the Matadors early, they have since come to terms with the change.
"Their initial reaction was incredible loyalty to Ron," Kearin said. "They weren't very happy with the way things went down. Everything that Ron ever did was with them in mind, and they knew that.
"But last year, we were about 25 seconds away from winning the darned conference championship. They made the resolve back then that we'd win all the games in our conference and win the championship. They didn't let what happened be a distraction to what they wanted to accomplish this year. They came in with the focus of not forgetting Ron."
So far, so good. Though CSN struggled against Div. II Western Oregon in the opener, the Matadors rallied for a convincing 38-19 win last Saturday.
"Some of that was me getting my feet wet, calling the offense, and the kids getting the kinks out," Kearin said. "I was happy with the way we ran the ball. We had a pretty balanced offense. We've traditionally been a throwing school. We played pretty well, but we need to clean up our mistakes.
"If we show up Saturday like we did last week, we'll get beat 100-nothing. But if we come in and compete and take care of the ball, we have every shot in the world to win."
-- Andrew Hartsock's phone number is 832-7216. His e-mail address is ahartsock@ljworld.com.
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