UC Berkeley

Biting the bullet: behind the Cal sports decision

September 28, 2010 4:45 pm by Lance Knobel

Athletic Director Sandy Barbour

In a sombre press conference this afternoon, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, Athletic Director Sandy Barbour and Vice-Chancellor Frank Yeary explained their decision to cut five varsity sports: baseball, men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s rugby and women’s lacrosse.

“This is a difficult and painful day for our intercollegiate athletic programs,” Barbour said. “Cal Athletics is not immune to the effects of the recession and the financial realities facing this campus.”

Both Barbour and Birgeneau stressed the university’s commitment to “comprehensive excellence” in all its programs (and the chancellor pointed out that UC Berkeley had been ranked second in the nation for its PhD programs by the National Research Council in a report issued today).

Barbour had been given the task of reducing the university’s support to intercollegiate athletics to around $5 million annually by 2014, Birgeneau said. Barbour said when she first looked at the task, she considered across-the-board cuts and not cutting any teams. “Making sport cuts was the best available option,” she said.

Birgeneau said these cuts were the end of the story: “With this decision, the cutting of teams is over.” Neither Barbour nor Birgeneau offered the prospect of a path back to varsity status for the eliminated teams. Rugby is being given “varsity club” status.

The cuts affect 163 student athletes out of the 814 at Cal. A total of 13 paid coaching positions will be eliminated. The cuts take place after the current academic year.

Both Birgeneau and Barbour emphasized that the university will do what it can to help the affected student athletes. The university will honor current scholarship levels for impacted student athletes, or assist any students who wish to transfer. Student athletes who transfer because their athletic program has been eliminated do not have to sit out a season according to NCAA rules.

In addition to the team cuts, Barbour said her plans also involved other cost reductions, reinvestment for revenue growth where possible, and greater accountability sport by sport.

Following the cuts, Cal will field 24 varsity sports. In the Pac-10, Birgeneau said, only Stanford has more teams. Nationally, only seven public universities will have more teams than Cal.

Birgeneau said the decisions on the athletics budget were an inevitable part of the broader financial restrictions faced by the university. “We certainly needed a more sustainable program, but the financial crisis in California accelerated that,” he said. “The gap was exacerbated by the economic crisis which in turn led to the state’s disinvestment in higher education.

“We could not justify support of intercollegiate athletics at $10, $15 million a year,” he continued. “We just could not do it. I congratulate Sandy in biting the bullet.”

Both the chancellor and Barbour agreed with questioners at the press conference who suggested the decisions taken by Berkeley might be a forerunner of stresses felt in other universities. “ We will begin this conversation [within the Pac-10 and the NCAA],” Birgeneau said. “This so-called intercollegiate arms race is part of the challenge we face.”

“All of intercollegiate athletics needs to take a very hard look at what we’re spending and why,” echoed Barbour.

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  • George Berkeley

    This is an incredibly misleading lead paragraph that will needlessly outrage a lot of people. (The title’s also misspelled — “bitting” — seriously?) You should really correct it.

    Cal is NOT “cutting” it’s legendary, nation’s-best rugby program. Not, not, not. NOT cutting it.

    Rugby is basically being re-classified from “varsity” to a new category of “varsity club” sport. It will still enjoy support from the university in terms of admissions, sports medicine, and training facilities. Rugby has always had incredibly strong alumni financial support, so the impact should not be dramatic. As the university has pointed out, Cal’s was the ONLY “varsity” rugby program in the entirety of Division I. Every other div I team in the country is technically a “club” sport of some kind.

    The only thing that really changes, I suspect, is the University’s Title IX body count. The new categorization means that cal will have “eliminated” something like 30-40 male athletes from that side of the ledger.

  • Mon

    Fine by me. While sports are definitely significantly integrated with the collegiate experience, college is primarily about academics. When you think of the staff layoffs and academic cutbacks that have already taken place, it would be outrageous to deem athletics as part of the “untouchable” budget.

  • Sam Bam

    It is a HUGE misconception that Title IX body count was to blame. Cal may have eliminated 30 to 40 male athletes but it ALSO eliminated 45 female athletes (15 gymnastics, 30 lacrosse). The distribution via Title IX is still largely the same after the rugby and baseball cuts. This cut was due to the budget and the exorbitant spending for the new High Performance Athlete Center Football Stadium. Cal, after making a huge push to get investors to pledge money to that stadium and the tree sitting debacle, paid off that but had none left to sustain itself at the current size when the economy crisis hit. The backers Cal usually asks for money had no more to give or had just pledged to the stadium. This is a case of horrible timing. The athletes should not have to bear the accidents of the administration. Without them what’s the point of having that high performance center? It’s truly a disappointment. With hard work and open dialogue, I think another solution could have been reached that would not have resulted in cutting teams and without compensating the quality reputation Cal Athletes have at the competitive level in all sports. As a former Cal athlete I’m so incredibly disappointed and wary that my sport could be on the chopping block at the next economic recession.

  • George Berkeley

    Sam — aren’t you agreeing with me??

    I’m guessing (actual numbers would be useful here) that if the university HADN’T “reclassified” rugby, then there WOULD have been a Title IX imbalance. More women would have been cut than men, which is a no no. But, as you point out, “the distribution is still largely the same after the rugby and baseball cuts.” That is probably a large reason why rugby got “re-classified.”

    Unfortunately, these types of cuts (I’m talking baseball, gymnastics, lax) are hardly unprecedented. UCLA did the same and worse all the way back in 1994, when they eliminated their national-championship-olympic-caliber men’s swim team.

  • http://www.davosnewbies.com Lance Knobel

    Sam and George, have a look at my post digging deeper into the rugby situation: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/09/29/cal-sports-cuts-the-rugby-puzzle/. No one is saying straight out it’s Title IX, but that’s the subtext to everything. Coach Jack Clark is quoted in the Chronicle saying something like, “I’m not saying that, you are.”

    Rugby represented 61 male athletes. That hugely tips the balance.

  • Sam Bam

    I agree with the points George and Lance make. I guess I’m fueled by worry that blame will always go to women’s sports when something like this happens, especially when a sport such as baseball, with arguably a large following, popularity, and esteemed tradition gets cut. (Same goes for rugby, except they will still have access to training facilities and reserved admission spots for recruits which are the benefits of every other rugby team in the nation. They were the only NCAA Division One team before yesterday) I personally think there are more efficient ways to deal with equal opportunity for women than Title IX states. I believe the rule should be changed so that it prevents the cutting of sports as one option of the three pronged Title IX test. I don’t know how you would make a rule do this but I believe the legislature should try. Cutting sports does not provide more opportunities for women or men. Overall, it’s an unfortunate situation that really has my heart go out to the hardworking coaches out of a job, the athletes who work hard in school and in their sport, and the administrators who could not see any other viable option besides the one they chose.

  • http://www.davosnewbies.com Lance Knobel

    Sam, I agree that it creates an invidious sense that men’s sports are losing position because of women. It’s more complicated than that. But Title IX is clearly a key part of the equation. And it’s succeeding at redressing historic imbalances of opportunity.

    In my generation, very, very few women played sports. Now as many women as men play sports. That’s surely a good thing.

  • elmwood neighbor

    The cuts were a response to the Berkeley faculty who were making a very big deal about increase in students fees and cuts to instruction while the campus was subsidizing athletics.

    The cut teams are sacrificial lambs to placate those faculty.

  • Milan Moravec

    UC Berkeley’s recent elimination of popular sports programs highlighted endemic problems in the university’s management. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians in Sacramento, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.

    A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Compentent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up….until there was no money left.

    It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.

    From time to time, a whistleblower would bring some glaring problem to light, but the chancellor’s response was to dig in and defend rather than listen and act. Since UC has been exempted from most whistleblower lawsuits, there are ultimately no negative consequences for maintaining inefficiencies.

    In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC president, Board of Regents, and California legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, students, staff, academic senate, Cal. alumni, and California taxpayers await the transformation.