Coach Jack Clark lost his job last week.
Given the ever-changing carousal of coaches, one man getting fired hardly seems like news. In the NBA alone, Mike Brown bit the bullet after guiding Cleveland to the NBA's best regular season record. Mike Woodson got the pink slip after his Hawks' - yes, the perennially bad Atlanta Hawks - early exit in the playoffs. Golden State released Don Nelson, the winningest coach in NBA history.
Admittedly, coaching decisions are rarely fair and are often illogical. Even those guys, however, may bat an eye at Clark's termination.
All Clark did was win 21 national championships in 26 seasons at the University of California, Berkeley. His only crime was having the bad sense to coach rugby, a non-revenue sport.\nCal recently axed four of its so-called non-revenue teams and demoted rugby to club status. The school eliminated baseball, men's and women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse, affecting 163 student-athletes and 13 full-time coaches.
Cal asserted that state budget cuts have severely strained funding for academics, and that by eliminating these athletic programs, it could save $4 million. Education must take precedence to athletics, and during a time of economic uncertainty, saving $4 million seems like a logical move.
It seems logical - until you hear that Cal is spending $321 million on renovations for its new football stadium. Then those $4 million don't seem like quite as much of a budget-buster. Sure, carpeting in the press box is nice. But is it worth more than the men's and women's gymnastics teams?
The rugby team was not draining the university's or football team's resources, Clark said, estimating that rugby-driven corporate sponsorships have earned $300,000 for the athletic department and that the team is nearly self-sufficient.
The rugby team, however, broke Title IX compliance. Obviously, equality dictates cutting men's sports rather than funding women ones. Hear that, Craig Littlepage? Do not even consider giving Virginia's championship-winning women's rugby team varsity status. Just cut the baseball team instead - you almost did it in 2001 and Cal is doing it now.
The Golden Bears' baseball team has a 100-year history of winning, including College World Series championships in 1947 and 1957. They made the NCAA tournament two of the last three seasons. The program has produced major leaguers like Jeff Kent, Conor Jackson and Bob Melvin. It's also been lagging in attendance recently, and that meant the team had to go.
The baseball team has long solicited new lights to boost attendance but was told that money did not exist. Why drop money on lighting the baseball stadium when the football team needs a fifth set of alternate jerseys?
Football absolutely should be a priority for universities. Those teams make money, and college athletics is largely a business. I just did not think football was the only priority for universities. I never realized college athletics as a whole was only a business.
I thought college sports were also about giving a wide variety of athletes on-field experiences as preparation for off-field success. I thought it was a way to open doors to a group of students who may otherwise have been unable to access education. I hoped it could be about "integrity and sportsmanship, diversity and inclusion, amateurism, competitive equity and excellence in the classroom," like the NCAA contends.
Maybe it's naive to assume the NCAA is about anything other than making money, but I do not think it is naive to hope it can be. I hope Cal is making a mistake, not starting a trend. Nine years ago, Viginia faced similar budget constraints and considered cutting its baseball team or demoting it to club status. Instead, it went the other direction, giving the team a new stadium and a new life. The team took that second chance and turned it into a College World Series appearance in 2009. I hope Virginia continues to keep the low-revenue sports - the school needs some winning teams.
And I hope that if Jack Clark is looking for a job, he comes here. Given his track record of success, I'm sure we could find room for a guy like that.
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