Thursday, February 10, 2011

"Save Cal Sports?" Does The University Of California Care?

Today's the day that we'll learn the fate of several University of California sports slated for reduction to reduce a large annual deficit that, in point of fact, has existed for over a decade. It's just that, in the past, the University could afford to carry it; not today.

Still, faced with the prospect of losing men's and women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse, and baseball, you'd think there would be massive alarm bells going off. You'd expect this to be a front page issue on the Cal Athletics website. You'd think "Save Cal Sports" would be a rallying cry for the University itself, and not just a set of concerned alumns.

It's not.  And the Cal Athletics website doesn't ask you to donate money for any one of the sports on the chopping block.

I get the impression the University of California at Berkeley just really doesn't give a damn.  Cal lacks the fight required to maintain its athletic programs; it's just not the focus of a massive campaign, because there is no massive campaign outside of what Save Cal Sports has been able to do - raising $15 million is incredible, and the University itself should help.

The simple fact that only California Golden Blogs is running a post encouraging donations to help Cal baseball - and not the Cal Athletics website - causes me to ask just what the hell is going on?  When I go to Cal Athletics's website, I should see DONATE in red Stanford letters, then explaining that "The Cardinal red will go away if you help us today."

If the University of California and Cal Athletics doesn't care enough to communicate its needs via its websites, why should anyone else care either?    And with this, the Cal's "going to make an announcement" today?

Even the Cal Baseball website communicates the idea that everything's OK as of this writing, when we know it's not.

DONATE > SAVE CAL SPORTS.

The only thing the University should say today is "We're going to get behind Save Cal Sports" and help raise more money.

Anything less would be a shame.



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