Stadium Size, Football Droppers, and Deemphasizers: California State University, Fullerton

This series reviews the program history and stadium sizes of colleges that dropped or deemphasized football. Click here for the series introduction. The schools included in the review are listed below.

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California State University, Fullerton

An architect’s model of the CSU, Fullerton’s athletic complex, when the construction bids were announced in 1990. (‘Taylor Woodrow Submits Lowest Bid For Fullerton’s Stadium,’ Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1990.)

A number of the schools profiled in this series started playing football in the 1890s or earlier. California State University, Fullerton, is not one of those. The community of Fullerton, California, which sits immediately north of Anaheim in northern Orange County, was little more than a train station and orange groves when founded in 1887.

The massive population growth in the Los Angeles area post-WWII led to the growth of Fullerton and surrounding communities. In turn, the state legislature approved the founding of Orange County State College in Fullerton, which opened in 1957. It underwent several name changes until settling on California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) in 1972.

The student government petitioned the school to start a football program in 1965, and the school agreed, setting aside startup money for several years before the program kicked off for the first time in 1970 when CSUF had 11,000 students. (It now enrolls 41,000.)