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If you're going to do something, do it right. That should be the motto for the Cal intercollegiate athletic program in the 21st century, and the goal should be to field topflight teams without sacrificing academic excellence. In the more than 40 years I've been around Cal sports, the has always been ambivalence about the role of the university's teams. When I was an undergraduate, the editor of The Daily Californian wrote an editorial recommending that Cal simply hire professional athletes to represent the school and forget about student athletes. In the '80s, chancellor Ira Michael Heyman feared that too much emphasis on athletics would hurt the school's academic reputation and he spoke out at an NCAA convention against the excesses of intercollegiate sports. Others have at times suggested that Cal should get out of Division 1A sports, falling back to the Division II level of Cal Davis, which would mean a retreat from more than a century-long tradition. In fact, though, there are legitimate reasons for Cal to field teams at the top level, particularly in football and basketball, because the games and the teams are rallying points for alumni and students, one of the very few experiences the two disparate groups can share. Many things have changed at the university since my undergraduate days, but football on autumn Saturdays remains the same, with friends meeting to picnic and perhaps take a stroll around the campus. It's always a memorable experience even on the days the Bears lose, altogether too often in recent years. And I believe, as former chancellor Chang-Lin Tien did, that it's possible for Cal to field topflight teams without sacrificing academic standards. Tien's stated goal was to be in the top 10 in football and basketball and in academics. The university fields a broad range of teams in both men's and women's sports, but the emphasis in this essay is on football and men's basketball, because they are the two sports capable of generating considerable revenue. If they're successful, every Cal team benefits. The timing is good right now for Cal athletics because the chancellors and presidents of NCAA schools have been tightening the academic rules for athletes, including the most important of all - requiring athletes to take more core subjects in high school. That in itself widens the recruiting pool for Cal coaches, and the better educated high school athletes are, the more likely they are to consider the kind of education they can get at the university as a priority. There is another reason for optimism: The administration, faculty and athletic department are all on the same page. This has not always been the case. The university administration was embarrassed when Cal was put on NCAA probation in the early '70s, primarily because somebody else (apparently an assistant football coach) took the SAT for star receiver Isaac Curtis. Dave Maggard was hired as athletic director to clean up the mess, but friction remained between the faculty and football coach Mike White, who brought in academic misfits to play football, until Maggard fired White. As recently as three years ago, everybody in the university community knew it was only a matter of time until the basketball program imploded; coach Todd Bozeman was forced to resign and the university was again put on NCAA probation because of illegal payments to player Jelani Gardner. But now, the administration is behind the program and faculty members are happy with football coach Tom Holmoe and basketball coach Ben Braun because both coaches are genuinely concerned about the education their athletes receive. Braun, in fact, started as a teacher before making a career move to coaching. Within the athletic department, the success or failure of the program begins with the athletic director. We saw this in a negative way when Bob Bockrath took over for Maggard, who left to become A.D. at Miami before moving on to work on the '96 Olympics in Atlanta. At the time, Bruce Snyder had the football program in great shape, culminating with a 10-2 season in 1991 and a win in the 1992 Citrus Bowl, the Bears' first New Year's Day win since 1938. Before he left, Maggard had proposed a contract extension to Snyder, but Bockrath tabled that until the end of the season. Even then, he made no serious attempt to re-sign Snyder. On the plane back from the Citrus Bowl, Snyder told Bockrath that representatives of Arizona State wanted to talk to him in Los Angeles that week. "Fine, Bruce," said Bockrath. "Talk with them and do what you want to do." Snyder soon signed a contract with Arizona State. Since then, the Cal program has had only occasional periods of success, mostly because the man Bockrath hired to replace Snyder, Keith Gilbertson, is a classic case of a top assistant who doesn't have the vision to be a head coach. Bockrath's meddling was equally disastrous in basketball. Cal coach Lou Campanelli had built up the program but he was an old-style coach, dictatorial and demanding. His methods were well known but instead of meeting with Campanelli and trying to get him to modify his style, Bockrath abruptly fired him after overhearing a post-game Campanelli tirade. Bozeman did well with the team he inherited, as Cal went to the Sweet Sixteen, but success was fleeting because the star players Bozeman recruited left school early, one of them, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, after his freshman year, and his recruiting methods put Cal on probation. Current athletic director John Kasser won't make those mistakes. Kasser has done a remarkable job since he took over for Bockrath, especially with his fund-raising which made possible the building of Haas Pavilion as well as many other less obvious improvements to the athletic facilities. Kasser, who previously had served in the university system at UC Santa Barbara, has a good understanding of what's needed at Berkeley, and the program is headed in the right direction. He signed a five-year extension of his contract last fall. There is no reason Cal should not enjoy the same kind of athletic success as Michigan and UCLA, both large public university with good academic reputations. But those two schools have usually had an important ingredient that Cal's programs have lacked: coaching continuity.That's especially true in football, where the Bears have had three head coaches and four offensive coordinators in the last five years. Is there any wonder the players often look confused? That could change, because both Holmoe and Braun have the look of coaches who could stay in place for many years and build the kind of programs that just get stronger and stronger. Both men come highly recommended by top men in their field, in Holmoe's case Bill Walsh, for whom Holmoe was both a player and an assistant coach. Holmoe was not really ready to be a head coach, having had only one year as a defensive coordinator, and he admits he's still learning on the job. There have been some rough moments and he still needs to exert more control over his coordinators, especially on offense, but he's a very effective recruiter because parents believe in him and he appears to be building a solid program with athletes who have strong characters. Holmoe wasn't expected to be a quick fix, and he hasn't been. As have other alumni, I've often been frustrated by the Bears' play, especially in the Big Game, but progress has been made, and I expect that to show on the field, starting in the 2000 season. Since he became head coach, other coaches have spread rumors that Holmoe, a devout Mormon, wanted to go back to BYU when Lavell Edwards retired. But Holmoe, a painfully honest man, has always insisted he wants to stay at Cal, and the BYU speculation fizzled out when Edwards signed a contract extension in 1999. There is no question about Braun's coaching ability, and that's underscored by a tribute from legendary Cal coach Pete Newell. "Ben doesn't have to have the best players to win,'' Newell told me in a recent conversation. "Some coaches can win only if they get great players but Ben can take mediocre players and still win.'' Braun took over the reins after Bozeman was fired and guided the Bears to a 23-9 record and a Sweet Sixteen appearance in the NCAA tournament. For the last two years, he's been coaching under a double whammy: The NCAA banned the Bears from post-season play two years ago because of Bozeman's transgressions and cut the number of scholarships by two each year - and the Bears had to play and practice off campus, in the New Arena in Oakland, because Harmon Gym was being transformed into Haas Pavilion. Nevertheless he led his team to the NIT championship last season and this year rebuilt the Bears into the kind of team he wants, bringing in primarily freshmen players as the foundation for what should be a solid team for many years. Former faculty athletic advisor Jack Citrin told me that Braun's freshmen were the best students of any group of athletes he'd seen at Cal, and that's a very important point. Though people sometimes expect athletes to be dumb, there's no reason for that. Athletic ability, like musical skills, has no direct relationship to intelligence, but intelligence can sometimes compensate for athletic weaknesses. There is no better example of that than Newell's 1959 NCAA champion. There were certainly more skilled teams in the country that year, but the Cal players used their intelligence to work together and defeat two teams with great players, Cincinnati with Oscar Robertson and West Virginia with Jerry West, on their way to the NCAA title. Academics are paramount at Cal, but the balance brought by students who have special skills in athletics is important, too. There is no reason that Cal can't remain in the forefront of academics while maintaining a strong intercollegiate sports program. If you're going to do something, do it right. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Glenn Dickey has been with the San Francisco Chronicle since 1963 and a sports columnist there since 1971. The author of 16 books, he is working on a history of the '49ers during the DeBartolo years, to be published in August 2000. |
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