Welcome football fans, both current California college students and football alums of the twenty-six former college and university football programs that no longer exist. This website is dedicated to those former programs and the players who enjoyed their time on the gridiron and practice field in days gone by, and to current students in schools without football who might be interested in reviving the sport at their institutions.

            I have been thinking about these missing programs, once so viable, why they disappeared, and what their glory years were like. How might football be returned to those schools and survive so future football players and fans could enjoy the game that is and was so popular in California and beyond? I have spent hours researching the history of these extinct teams and more hours thinking about how they might return to the sport I so enjoyed as a student-athlete.

            What is my motivation? I was a member of UC Santa Barbara’s Gaucho Football Team in the late 1960s when our famous coach, Cactus Jack Curtis, ran our College Division program. Being a football player was a huge part of my identity in high school and college and later as a football coach. My college attempted to go big time in the early seventies, playing what was University Division football, and couldn’t afford it when a student vote failed to raise fees, so football was dropped for a decade.

            In the 1980s, two enterprising students helped establish a club football team that morphed into a successful NCAA D-III program and then a strong D-II program under the leadership of a former Gaucho teammate. In 1991 the NCAA ruled that D-I schools, which UCSB was in other sports, must field D-I football teams. This necessitated another vote to raise fees to support a huge number of scholarships, plus a similar number for women’s teams. The students were unwilling to pass this proposal, and the university dropped the program for a second time. This ruling affected many of the remaining programs in the state.

            I spent a career as a teacher and coach overseas, working for the Department of Defense Schools and what was the Canal Zone School System. When we returned to California after forty years of living outside the US, I would love to have been able to follow Gaucho football as a supportive alum, but the program had vanished.

            I began to think about what it might be like to bring back football as a club sport, like rugby, lacrosse, crew, or ultimate. Wrestling has held on as a club at UCSB after title nine requirements led the university to cut the sport at the varsity level. Why not have an inexpensive, student-run club program in football?

            The problem with starting a club at just one school is whom would they play at an equivalent level?  It would require at least a few more schools to establish similar club programs to make a viable league. This got me into studying the history of other dead football programs and what it might take to start up a club football conference as they have in the East.

            This website will include essays about those programs that once provided thousands of Californians with a place to continue football after high school or community college. It is a storied history for many of these once-successful teams that should not be lost in the fog of time. Most of the programs that were canceled were because of budget considerations. Football is expensive and has lots of players. For D-I and D-II programs, the cost is largely in travel, coaching staff, and scholarships. A less expensive club team funded by students themselves and coached mostly by volunteers would eliminate those concerns, as long as there are other teams to play within a reasonable commute.

            I would like to include suggestions for how students and alumni might reboot programs at a club level.

            Another important part of this website is the blog section, where former players and interested current students can share ideas and experiences in the sport they so enjoy. 

            I will have a section for each of the 25 schools that still have athletic programs. I will include Cal Western/USIU, which no longer exists in its present form but once was part of California’s football scene. There may be other former college programs I am unaware of. Some colleges no longer exist, were absorbed by other institutions, or were very small and no longer provide sports programs.

            Here is an alphabetical list of former California football teams. Note names have often changed for both the colleges and universities and their mascots over time.

Azusa-Pacific University Cougars

California Baptist University Lancers

California Institute of Technology Beavers

California State Universities:

California Polytechnic University, Pomona Broncos

Chico Wildcats

East Bay (Hayward) Pioneers

Fullerton Titans

Humboldt (now CA Polytechnic U.) Lumberjacks

Los Angeles Eagles (formerly Diablos)

Long Beach Sharks (formerly 49ers)

Northridge (San Fernando Valley) Matadors

San Francisco Gators

Sonoma Seawolves (formerly Cossacks)

Loyola-Marymount University Lions

Menlo College Oaks

Occidental College Tigers

Pepperdine University Waves

Saint Mary’s College Gaels

Santa Clara University Broncos

San Francisco University Dons

University of the Pacific Tigers

University of California Campuses:

            Riverside Highlanders

            San Diego Tritons

            Santa Barbara Gauchos

Vanguard University Lions

Defunct program:

Cal Western (formerly Westerners/ US International University/Alliant University Gulls

I have sections in the blog section for each program where football alums and current students can post comments, sharing their history and ideas for restarting football at their schools.