Boosters Are ‘Over the Hill’--but Not Out of the Game : Football: A small but loyal group of fans regularly watches 49er practices. They argue and analyze the team’s fortunes and misfortunes.

Cal State Long Beach booster Bud Oberg got the attention of football Coach Willie Brown last week when he appeared before a practice with a book from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Brown, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984, thumbed through the book to the delight of Oberg.

“Gawd, Bud’s got one of those books with him,” said Bob Goudy, a retired security officer who has twice made the trip to the Hall of Fame. “You should see that place. They got a high school football stadium there that seats 25,000. Why can’t we get one here like that for Long Beach State?”

That was all it took to ignite a spirited discussion among several loyal boosters who regularly attend football practices. For the next hour and a half, the men discussed a myriad of subjects, the most significant of which was the condition--and future--of their beloved 49er football team, which may soon be eliminated.

Walt Novak, a retired aerospace technical writing manager and illustrator, has been coming to football practice for more than three years. “Some guys hang out in doughnut shops,” he said. “Well, we hang out here. I’m trying to keep my cholesterol down.”

No subject is taboo during their good-natured bull sessions. On a recent day, Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell drew their wrath.

“Does he even know we have a college football team here?” asked Oberg, a retired telephone company technician.

Another day their attention turned toward second-year 49er men’s basketball Coach Seth Greenberg, whose policy of locking the gymnasium doors during practice has been unsettling to the boosters.

Dubbed “The Over the Hill Gang” by Oberg, the group of no more than eight men is a loyal lot for most 49er athletic teams, but particularly football, despite it having only two winning seasons in the past eight years.

“They’re there every day, watching practice, win or lose, rain or shine,” said Dave O’Brien, interim director of athletics.

O’Brien met the group during his first day on the job in mid-September when he made an unscheduled visit to a football practice.

“I was very impressed with their commitment to the football program and their long-term knowledge about the program,” he said.

All of the men live within walking distance of the campus, but they prefer to ride bicycles there. Most moved to Long Beach decades ago from strong college towns in the Midwest or East. They found that Southern California lacked the college football fervor they knew back home, with only USC and UCLA garnering headlines. Each discovered the 49ers in his own way.

Said Oberg: “For years I lived right back (of the Long Beach campus) and never paid attention to it. I was strictly an ‘SC man.”

Novak and Oberg figure that they spend about $500 a year on the university in donations and tickets. What others can’t give from their wallets, they give from their hearts. Buck Mitchell, a retired firefighter, volunteers to work in the 49er weight room.

The longest-running 49er football fan among them, however, is Gordon Wright, a retired contractor who moved into his east Long Beach home in 1950 from a small town in Rhode Island. The east side of the city was mostly farmland then, and the biggest football rivalry in town was the annual high school game between Wilson and Poly.

When Cal State Long Beach started its football program in 1955 (the 49ers were 5-2 playing a schedule that included the University of La Verne, Cal Baptist and Caltech), Wright began making daily treks to practice.

“The university had only a few buildings and the first football team practiced out back of those buildings just west of Palo Verde Avenue,” Wright said. “It was the kind of thing to get away from everyday business, to relax and spend some time around football.”

Oberg, originally from Eureka, Calif., suffered a knee injury in 1985. As part of his rehabilitation, he began riding a bicycle. One afternoon he rode to the practice field, where he met Wright.

“I took a look around and saw all these old bastards standing around talking,” he said. “So I called us The Over the Hill Gang.”

Wright took offense to that.

“I’m on the hill but not over it,” he said.

Mitchell moved from Canada to Long Beach with his family in 1923.

“We didn’t know where we were going,” he said. “But my dad took one look at the town and said, ‘This is the place.’ It was a pretty little town.”

Goudy moved from Madison, Ohio, to Long Beach in 1952 and became acquainted with 49er football seven seasons ago. Last summer he delivered a petition signed by 180 people to the Pro Football Hall of Fame asking that the late Coach George Allen be inducted there.

All of the men greatly admired Allen, who encountered the group on his first day at Long Beach and immediately put them to work as volunteers doing odd jobs. Allen sought their advice on many issues.

Said Wright, who has known all nine 49er football coaches: “George Allen did more to upgrade this program than any single coach I can recall. . . . I hate to see it go down now because so many people have worked so many years to maintain it.”

This fall, the group has become more perplexed with the plight of the 2-8 team.

“I’ll always support football,” Oberg said. “But there is something missing from the program, and it has nothing to do with the kids (who play).”

It is not easy to create interest in the 49ers. Just a few blocks from the campus, on the corner of Palo Verde Avenue and Stearns Street, there is a popular doughnut shop where many retired men congregate daily. On a recent visit there, Oberg and Novak were rebuffed.

“They ask us why we bother going over to the school,” Oberg said. “We can’t get the other over the hill people to come out here.”

On a foggy afternoon last week, Oberg and Novak pedaled their bicycles from the practice field to a neighborhood bar a few doors down from the doughnut shop. Over beers, they discussed the 49er program. Oberg pointed to a man who had acknowledged him and then left.

“See. There’s a neighborhood guy. I tried to talk him into coming out to watch the team, but he won’t.”

Novak noticed that the walls of the bar, just blocks from the campus, were lined with football schedules of the Rams, Raiders and other colleges, but not Long Beach.

“Hey, Bud, you’ve got to get one of ours up here for next year,” Novak told Oberg.

Like many, they are awaiting a decision on the future of the football program, one that could send them back to the doughnut shop for good.