We could cut men's gymnastics, and we'd save how much exactly? Pennies.
Photo by Berkely Lab
One on One With Chancellor Christ
Bear Insider had the opportunity to speak further with Chancellor Carol Christ this week, covering a range of topics in greater detail, including the AD applicant pool and estimated hire date (estimated to be by the end of April at the latest), the likelihood of athletic program cuts (not a foregone conclusion), thoughts on changing Cal's philanthropic outreach and more.
Title IX's goal and legal requirements of gender equity in collegiate athletics has schools like Cal, with extraordinarly high numbers of athletic programs, over a barrel. It becomes virtually impossible to cut any women's sports along with men's because doing so brings the university further out of compliance with Title IX. Consequently, the university and Chancellor Christ are committed to rectifying the university's ongoing problems with both compliance and budget deficits by likely moving from Prong 3 compliance to Prong 1, which appears to be the more sustainable model for the university's unique situation.
Much of the talk recently has centered around predictions of significant program cuts in Cal's athletic department but reports of the demise of several potential target programs are premature, to say the least.
"Let me make clear, moving to Prong 1 does not necessitate sports cuts," said Christ. "There's enough latitude to reach the criteria for conformity to Prong 1 just by roster management.
"That doesn't mean that there might not be good reasons to move some sports to club status, but Prong 1 doesn't necessitate that."
When the university cut baseball and moved rugby to club status in 2011 under then athletic director Sandy Barbour, there was a firestorm of backlash within the donor community with strong ties to both programs. Any savings from the cuts were surpassed by lost donations from key large donors that withheld philanthropic contributions as a result.
Both sports ended up being restored after major fundraising within each program.
"From what I've heard, Cal's philanthropic culture is unusually segmented by sport," said Christ. "Of course, people want to give to the sport that they love and the sport that they played, but I don't think it's always the healthiest way to shape a philanthropic program for athletics. People have to understand it's the Cal Athletics program, not the Cal Crew program or the Cal Rugby or Baseball program, as important as those sports are. So I really hope in time, we can move towards a more integrated and holistic sense of fundraising for athletics.
One of the potential solutions floated by Cal rugby head coach Jack Clark was to fully-fund and staff a women's rugby team while also significantly reducing men's rugby's roster spots. Cal rugby also finances several women's sports on campus as well as fully-funding their own program.
"I would depend on the partnership with the new athletic director to think that through," said Christ of the idea. "I know women's rugby is one of the sports in the wings that if we were to stay in Prong 3, they might meet the standards to add it, so there's interest."
The university has long been challenged by the lack of a coherant and unified message in philanthropic outreach and the issue is clearly in the center of the chancellor's radar, both short term and long term.
"Most of our donors to athletics have other interests on campus so they're the set of donors you'd think you'd most like to address in a comprehensive way," said Christ. "We just recently have had a study completed by the firm Marts & Lundy about our readiness for a campaign we hope to launch, probably within the calendar year 2019. And one of the observations the report makes is we've become more decentralized in our fundraising than is optimal for the institution. So one of my goals as chancellor is to have, not just in athletics but generally for the whole campus, a more integrated and holistic approach to philanthropy. Most of our donors have multiple interests within the institution so it's important to work with those donors with a vision of where the campus is going -in the whole and as an integrated way."
The recent reports have touched significantly on altering the university's philanthropical outreach approach and the Cal community can expect to see fairly significant changes in that area in years to come.
"They have lots of ideas and are going to be doing a special study this summer on athletics fundraising," said Christ. "They're a consulting firm, so they're not going to tell us what our vision is but they have lots of strong ideas on our process and how we can more effectively organize our resources to be more integrated and more donor-centric in our approach to philanthropy."
All of the stated issues have been squarely at the center of the discussion with new Athetic Director candidates and all clearly know that getting budgets and rosters in line are major priorities for the university.
"It's absolutely something that's clearly a part of the picture for the new candidate," said Christ. "I'm looking for a partner in all of these things.
"The first thing I'm going ask a new athletic director to do is to develop a strategic plan for athletics," beyond ideas discussed in the interview process, of course.
Despite the challenges Cal's next Athletic Director will be facing, the pool of qualied applicants appears to be far better numerically than it's been in the past in prior AD searches.
"The pool of qualified applicants has been deep and rich," said Christ. "I've been really impressed with how much interest there is in this position. I think people see it as an interesting set of challenges that are, of course, not unique to Cal. They're challenges that exist generally in the world of college athletics."
As for the issue of the potential for making significant strides in tapping into a vast reservoir of potenial new donors that don't presently contribute to the university in any substantial way, the chancellor is optimistic based on what she's seen and heard so far.
"Both the CSA report and the Marts & Lundy report I referred to say the philanthropic potential is huge in our community and a lot of it is untapped. That's very exciting news to hear," concluded Christ.
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