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| Jack Clark of Cal Rugby |
Rugby Coach Jack Clark was fired - his position ends June 2011 - and the program dumped to varsity sports status.
The reason given was Title IX requirements to financially equalize male and female sports, but given that Coach Clark had a plan to fund and to elevate Women's Rugby to intercollegiate status that was jettisoned by the Cal Administration, using Title IX as an excuse is pure horseshit.
The overall issue has been Cal's need to cut the overall budget of the athletic department, but the one revenue-generating program, Men's Rugby, and its coach who has a plan to elevated women's rugby, was a major target.
For someone not familiar with this issue at all, Cal Men's Rugby has achieved legendary status in the sports World. The Cal Bears are the 2010 National Champions and have won 25 National Championships and nine since 2000 - and it's 2010 as of this writing. But because of political infighting, the one money-making program in all of Cal Athletics is being reduced to a mere shadow of itself.
As is common with Cal, the way this came about is always the stuff of harsh political infighting. From experience on the Cal Alumni Board and viewing Cal's Administration up close during the Long Range Planning Meetings , this blogger can say turf battles are a contact sport at Cal.
For internal reasons not yet entirely known, Jack Clark, who's used to winning, lost a battle. But in the end, Berkeley lost the one person synonymous with sports success at Berkeley: Jack Clark.
As KalosTV says on YouTube, it's time to celebrate Cal Rugby:
Did Cal Back Sandy Barbour Into A Corner?
The gut level feeling is Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour was backed into a corner by the overall Cal Administration. It feels like Sandy was forced to make a choice between her position or that of Jack's and the Cal Bears Rugby team.
Knowing Cal as I do, that gut level feeling that Sandy was placed between a political rock and a hardplace is powerful.
Stay tuned.
When UC Berkeley announced its elimination of baseball, men’s and women’s gymnastics, and women’s lacrosse teams and its defunding of the national-champion men’s rugby team, the chancellor sighed, “Sorry, but this was necessary!”
ReplyDeleteBut was it? Yes, the university is in dire financial straits. Yet $3 million was somehow found to pay the Bain consulting firm to uncover waste and inefficiencies in UC Berkeley, despite the fact that a prominent East Coast university was doing the same thing without consultants.
Essentially, the process requires collecting and analyzing information from faculty and staff. Apparently, senior administrators at UC Berkeley believe that the faculty and staff of their world-class university lack the cognitive ability, integrity, and motivation to identify millions in savings. If consultants are necessary, the reason is clear: the chancellor, provost, and president have lost credibility with the people who provided the information to the consultants. Chancellor Robert J Birgeneau has reigned for eight years, during which time the inefficiencies proliferated. Even as Bain’s recommendations are implemented (“They told me to do it”, Birgeneau), credibility and trust problems remain.
Bain is interviewing faculty, staff, senior management and the academic senate leaders for $150 million in inefficiencies, most of which could have been found internally. One easy-to-identify problem, for example, was wasteful procurement practices such as failing to secure bulk discounts on printers. But Birgeneau apparently has no concept of savings: even in procuring a consulting firm, he failed to receive proposals from other firms.
Students, staff, faculty, and California legislators are the victims of his incompetence. Now that sports teams are feeling the pinch, perhaps the California Alumni Association, benefactors and donators, and the UC Board of Regents will demand to know why Birgeneau is raking in $500,000 a year despite the abdication of his responsibilities.
The author, who has 35 years’ consulting experience, has taught at University of California Berkeley, where he was able to observe the culture and the way the senior management operates.