He was the real, live version of Forrest Gump — complete with the White House visit.

Or, if you would, you can compare Steve DiTolla to Leonard Zelig, Woody Allen’s fictional character who seemed to be everywhere the action was. But that doesn’t exactly fit either, because the definition of a “Zelig” is “an ordinary, unimportant person who seems to turn up with surprising or unaccountable frequency in a variety of settings. …”

There is nothing ordinary or unimportant about DiTolla and his impact on Cal State Fullerton athletics. Like his fictional comparisons, DiTolla has been where the action is and where the history is being made. You can literally look at most of the significant athletic moments in Titan athletics over the past 35 years and see DiTolla, either in the background or in the foreground.

But unlike Forrest Gump and Leonard Zelig, DiTolla wasn’t an accidental witness to history. As the senior associate athletic director and chief financial officer for the last 35 years, DiTolla was the one making that history. Perhaps all of the athletes, coaches and athletic staff were the Gumps and Zeligs to him.

The new baseball and softball facilities? The $15.1 million, four-year project that DiTolla put off his retirement to this past January to complete? DiTolla was the point person for both, shepherding them from concept to creation.

The new ESPN+ broadcast studio? That was DiTolla as well, employing his limitless adaptability by turning the old gymnastics and wrestling offices into the studio.

The hiring of iconic baseball coach Augie Garrido, not to mention his successors, Larry Cochell, George Horton, Dave Serrano, Rick Vanderhook, and now, Jason Dietrich? Yep, that was DiTolla, in his role as the administrator overseeing baseball. DiTolla took pains to point out he didn’t hire Garrido 1.0. But after Garrido left for Illinois with former CSUF athletic director Neale Stoner, DiTolla was the one who brought him back during his brief spell as the Titans’ athletic director.

The hiring of men’s basketball coach Dedrique Taylor and women’s basketball coach Jeff Harada? DiTolla was a key member of the search committee for both. Taylor just took the Titans to the NCAA tournament for the second time in four years. Harada sparked a turnaround of a women’s basketball program that was the athletic department’s biggest headache for most of this century.

Those are the things you see DiTolla’s fingerprints on in his ubiquitous role as the No. 2 administrator in the athletic department. Along with overseeing event marketing, brand marketing (more on this in a moment), ticket sales and promotions, DiTolla served at one time as the sports supervisor for the baseball, football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer and men’s and women’s cross country and track & field programs.

The upgraded scoreboards in Goodwin Field, Anderson Family Field, Titan Gym, Titan Stadium, the Track & Field Complex and the Tennis Courts? DiTolla’s fingerprints are on all of them.

But this also fell under DiTolla’s endless list of duties: Branding. And this was vastly harder than it appeared.

“California State University, Fullerton is very hard to encompass as a brand,” DiTolla said. “Now, add the fact you’re the Titans and you have an elephant as your mascot makes it more difficult. A lot of coaches wanted to do their own thing and brand their own programs. We felt it was much bigger than that. We took the ‘Titans’ name across the chest because it was recognizable, and the ‘F’ on the cap. We got the coaches to buy in and understand we wear one color of navy and one color of orange.

“The next thing we did was sign a contract with Nike and have all our programs wear the same stuff and the same brand of apparel. That really took us to another level in terms of brand.”

Yes, DiTolla was the point person for that. And it came about during one of DiTolla’s 12 visits to Omaha with the Titans for the College World Series, when he discovered the souvenir shop at Rosenblatt Stadium was selling University of Florida hats and passing them off as Cal State Fullerton hats. The ‘F’s are similar and the folks in Omaha figured nobody would know the difference.

The folks in Omaha didn’t know DiTolla.

“We told them to take them down. That’s not our brand,” DiTolla said. “They asked me, ‘Who do I talk to?’ I said, ‘You talk to me.’ ”

That attention to detail is why Jim Donovan talked to DiTolla one day in 2020. The Fullerton athletic director walked into DiTolla’s office in the midst of the pandemic with an unenviable but important task.

“He came to me and said, ‘Steve, I need you to write a plan on how to bring athletes back from COVID.’ He gave me a blank canvas,” DiTolla said. “This was unprecedented. We had nothing to work with, and we were learning something new every day. We were the first ones in our conference to bring student-athletes back and keep them safe and bring our staff back.

“This was something we dove into and had no experience in any of this. We’d put something together and something would change. The Chancellor’s Office would come back and say, ‘You need to tweak this and change that.’ You’d wait for approval and something would change. We had legal counsel involved because if we didn’t do this the right way, there were tremendous legal implications.”

DiTolla’s 47-page plan, assembled with input from athletic trainer Jamie Potter, among others, took six months to assemble. But when DiTolla and his staff finished it, it became the template for all the other Cal State schools.

None of this was in DiTolla’s crystal ball when he came to Cal State Fullerton in 1985 as the CFO after stints with the University of Colorado and the Denver Nuggets in his native Denver. A former baseball player at the University of Arizona, DiTolla was born into a sports family. His father was a longtime football coach at Denver-Kennedy High. DiTolla played quarterback for Denver-Jefferson.

DiTolla knew he wanted to stay in sports somehow. The underdog, scrappy, overcome-everything mentality of Cal State Fullerton appealed to him on every level. Here was a program that knew where it was in the collegiate food chain, yet often surpassed expectations because of that mentality.

“I’ve been blessed to be a part of so many cool things here, and I have to attribute it to the people at Cal State Fullerton,” he said. “The coaches who bought into the fact it’s OK if we only have one set of uniforms, and it’s OK if we have to drive vans to games and stay in Holiday Inns. That’s who we are. But when we face you on the field, you better be ready, because here comes the Titans.”

Surpassing those expectations brought DiTolla to the White House, a-la Forrest Gump. He accompanied the 2004 national championship baseball team when it visited President George W. Bush.

Yes, DiTolla shares that with Forrest Gump. But again, nothing DiTolla did was accidental.

“Cal State Fullerton Athletics would not be what is today without Steve DiTolla. Steve has been an invaluable piece of this athletic department during his time here,” Donovan said. “He has helped lead this department through the best and most successful stretch it has ever had, and I cannot thank him enough for his work.”

Oh, one more thing DiTolla played a big part in creating. Did we mention the Titan Athletics Hall of Fame?

“I briefly had Steve for a boss. He was inquisitive and genuinely cared about all of the members of his staff,” said Kirk San Roman, a former assistant sports information director and long-time Titan booster. “I hope that someone’s holding a place for him in the Titan Athletics Hall of Fame.”

When it happens, DiTolla will be easily recognizable. Once again.

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