www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/02/26/SP135965.DTL
There's no reason we can't get athletes who are also good students. We shouldn't be exploiting the athletes, but they shouldn't be exploiting us, either, by just coming here to advance to professional sports careers. I don't think it does anybody any good when players just come in for a couple of years, don't go to class and then leave to play pro ball. They don't get to the Rose Bowl every year, but they're competitive in the Pac-10. One of them was something like, 'The University of Michigan's football stadium holds 10,000 people; He left Texas because he was tired of the overemphasis on football. He talked to his former secretary recently and told her he'd gotten 25-30 letters last season complaining about Cal football. Berdahl realizes that the athletic program is important to alumni, including some of the biggest donors. When it seemed three years ago that Braun might leave, he told then-athletic director John Kasser that he would cover the shortfall. In fact, the administration has paid the large debt that the athletic department has run up the past 10 years. That debt partially was caused by low football revenues, but it also resulted from what Berdahl calls a "perfect storm," a combination of extra expenses for women's sports, lower student contributions and a restriction in outside events. Rock concerts in Memorial Stadium would be big money-raisers, for instance, but the university has promised the city of Berkeley that they won't be held. As a public university, we have rules where most of the money can go. We can't just take money from the general fund for athletics. I think it's much preferable to do that than to cut sports, which nobody wants to do. We'll announce the specifics of our plan when we hire an athletic director. Men's basketball produces some revenue at Cal, and the chancellor thinks the women can, in time. It hasn't at Cal lately because the teams have played poorly. Berdahl has been a supporter of Holmoe, but it's widely expected that Holmoe will be gone if he has another losing season. I was at Oregon in the '80s and I remember one year when Oregon State was winning the Civil War game, their fans started chanting, 'We're No. I just think you're basically looking at winning half your games. It's not easy to be successful in intercollegiate sports with athletes who are also good students, but as the chancellor noted, the model is close at hand.
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