Spirit Night is an annual event where UC San Diego students empty out of Geisel Library, dress up, paint their faces, actually pay attention to one of NCAA Division II’s most successful athletic programs and fill RIMAC Arena for a men’s and women’s basketball doubleheader. The games this year against Cal State Dominguez Hills drew a crowd of 3,924, a school record and 3,709 more than the previous home game against Cal Poly Pomona.
Behind one basket, students held up a yellow sign with blue lettering (school colors) that said: “This is what Div. I looks like.”
They might just find out. Undergraduates at UCSD are voting this week on a referendum that would more than double the Intercollege Athletics (ICA) fee to fund a move from Div. II to Div. I without football – contingent on receiving an invitation from the Big West Conference, which includes UC brethren Irvine, Riverside, Santa Barbara and Davis.
Most think it will pass. But, then, they also thought that four years ago, when a similar referendum was defeated as soundly as Dominguez Hills was on Spirit Night.
It’s a curious dynamic. The athletic department is clearly supportive of the measure, yet election protocol precludes it from openly campaigning with students. There has been no public stance taken by Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, an electrical and computer engineer who grew up in India and previously worked at Div. III Carnegie Mellon. There has been little organized debate on campus, no contentious point-counterpoint forums, no special sections in the student newspaper, no passionate rallies.
(Isn’t that what universities are supposed to do – debate stuff?)
When the Associated Students unanimously approved the special election at a January meeting, several students and alumni spoke in favor of Div. I. There were no dissenting voices, and you rarely hear them, but they exist in the shadows of library stacks and research cubicles – coming up for air long enough from cramming for a p-chem midterm to log onto the online ballot, calculate they’d be paying $3,472.56 over four years to bankroll sports teams they might never watch and summarily click the “no” box.
In 2012, 51 percent of undergraduates cast votes. The final tally: 6,407 no, 4,673 yes.
That election stretched over two weeks, and some speculated that the longer it went the more the opposition coalesced. This election was scheduled for five days this week, Monday through Friday, but a computer glitch when balloting opened will push voting into next week. The results will be announced Tuesday.
So you just don’t know. They’re 19- and 20-year-olds on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean in what some have described as one of the most unique college experiences in the country. The vibe is a weird mix of optimism, trepidation, ambiguity and apathy.
Here’s a closer look at the key issues:
THE PARTICULARS
The current ICA fee is $129.38 per quarter, or $388.14 per year if you don’t attend summer school. The increases would be phased in over three years, rising to $289.38 per quarter – or an extra $480 per year.
But the fee hike wouldn’t begin until fall quarter after the Big West extends an invitation, which likely wouldn’t come until sometime in late 2016. Some students voting this week, then, wouldn’t experience any fee increases and almost none would be around when it maxes out in year three. They’re basically voting for what the next generation of students will pay.
Even with an invitation from the Big West, the NCAA mandates two years to elevate scholarships to minimum levels followed by a four-year transition while reclassifying from Div. II. That puts the target for full-fledged Div. I membership at 2023-24.
THE WHY
Did you know that U.S. News & World Report ranks UCSD as the eighth-best public university in the nation? Or that the National Science Foundation ranked it No. 5 in research and development expenditures in 2013? Or that Washington Monthly has ranked it No. 1 for six straight years in social mobility, research and service?
Didn’t think so.
UCSD knows how great it is, but the problem is no one outside San Diego County – and some folks in it, even – seem to. “Branding” is a word you hear a lot from Div. I advocates, arguing that, fairly or unfairly, the front porch of a university these days is its athletic department and a move to the NCAA’s top echelon would rightfully elevate its national profile.
Athletic director Earl Edwards put it like this: “UC San Diego has a culture of excellence across the board. The only place we don’t have that culture of excellence is athletics. By that, I don’t mean we’re not good in athletics. We are. What I mean by that is while we do well at Div. II we’re not competing at the highest level.”
Translation: They’re in a conference with 12 CSU (and no other UC) schools, and the UC system fashions itself as a cut above.
In some senses, the larger university might need Div. I more than the athletic department. It is in the midst of a $2 billion fundraising campaign over the next decade, hoping to add 6,000 students and bump its on-campus housing capacity by 10,000. Annual fundraising is still south of $200 million, which seems like a lot until you consider places like Stanford are at $1.6 billion.
Even more alarming: About five percent of UCSD’s private donations last year came from alumni, compared to a national average of 28 percent. The idea is that seeing their men’s basketball team on TV or a baseball score on the ESPN crawl helps foster – here’s another buzz phrase – “alumni engagement.”
Reasoned the “pro” argument on the official ballot: “How many times have you had our school mistaken for SDSU or USD? Improved brand recognition strengthens the value of our degrees when looking for jobs, networking and negotiating starting salaries.”
THE BIG (WEST) QUESTION
The real vote isn’t this week but probably sometime later this year, when the nine presidents and chancellors from the Big West consider the findings of an expansion committee and decide whether to add a 10th member. A super majority, or seven votes, is required.
UCSD, you figure, can count on four from its UC kin. That means it needs three from Long Beach State, Fullerton, Northridge, Cal Poly SLO and Hawaii.
The Big West has long coveted the San Diego market … by getting back San Diego State, which was a founding member of the conference’s predecessor, the PCAA. It nearly did three years ago when the Aztecs announced they would leave the Mountain West for the Big East in football and send its Top 25 men’s basketball program plus most other sports to the Big West.
Then the Big East deal unraveled, and the Aztecs stayed in the Mountain West.
UCSD, certainly, doesn’t offer the Big West the big splash that SDSU does. It would be more of a long-term play, rooted in patient growth more than instant gratification.
“I feel good about it based on what I’m hearing,” Edwards said. “When you consider that four of the nine schools are UC schools, that bodes well for us. Also, what we bring to the table in terms of academics should help us.”
Big West commissioner Dennis Farrell, an SDSU alum, is reserving judgment until the student vote passes and he can assemble an expansion committee to take a closer look.
“Conferences expand for one of two reasons,” Farrell said. “One is for survival and you need to shore up your numbers to keep automatic berths into the NCAA Tournament in certain sports. The other is for opportunity. When San Diego State presented itself, that was a slam-dunk opportunity for us.
“We’re not in a survival mode right now, so we have the luxury to see if adding another member represents a good opportunity or not.”
THE PRICE
What does Div. I look like?
At Ohio State, it is an annual athletic budget in 2014-15 of $114 million and 936 athletes across 31 sports teams.
UCSD’s budget in 2014-15, according to the most recent federal figures, was $9.2 million. It spent $305,664 on athletic scholarships and $96,528 on recruiting. Ohio State spent $17.3 million and $1.8 million, respectively.
The Tritons wouldn’t try to compete with Ohio State, not now, probably not ever, not without a football team, not without membership into a Power 5 conference and its prodigious television revenues. But just competing with fellow UC schools in the Big West likely will require doubling the budget as an opening ante.
There are currently 26,590 undergrads at UCSD, which would mean an additional $13 million or $14 million per year depending on summer school enrollment. Of that, the referendum mandates 29 percent would go to university-wide financial aid. That leaves an extra $10 million per year for the athletic department.
But will that be enough? With an estimated 90 percent of the budget coming from student fees – among the highest in the nation – what happens if they need more? And with the university reluctant to chip in, can they raise that through sponsorships and donations?
UC Irvine’s 2014-15 budget was $17.3 million, but that’s for 342 athletes and 18 teams (counting cross country, indoor track and outdoor track as one). UCSD had 568 athletes and 21 teams that year.
Another way to look at it is the average cost per athlete. At UCSD it was $16,228 in ’14-15. At UCSB it was $32,108. At UC Riverside, which had only 304 athletes and 13 teams, it was $38,443. At UC Davis, which plays low-level Div. I football, $47,031. At UC Irvine, $50,811.
At SDSU, $82,113. At Ohio State, $122,557.
MOVING UP
The last UC school to make the jump to Div. I was Davis, in the mid-2000s. Here’s how it has gone: The Aggies have tripled the athletic budget to $26.8 million, cut four sports in 2010, had five athletic directors or interim ADs since 2012 and struggled to remain competitive in sports they once dominated.
Take the Learfield Director’s Cup. It assigns points to a school’s national finish in each sport and crowns an annual overall champion in Divs. I, II and III. Davis won it six times in its final eight years in Div. II and finished second twice.
As a Div. I school: 95th, 153rd, 199th, 142nd, 182nd, 201st, 147th and 139th.
UCSD has been almost as good in Div. II, recently ending a nine-year streak of Top 10 Director’s Cup finishes. And sports like water polo and men’s volleyball already compete at the Div. I level, because there aren’t enough programs nationally to populate different divisions.
But doing what the women’s soccer team did – winning the NCAA title in 1999 in its final year at Div. III, then again in 2000 and 2001 at Div. II – isn’t happening. Div. I these days is ruled by the Power 5 conferences, where football money is flowing into the “Olympic” sports and creating a growing partition of have and have-nots. Of the 100 Div. I titles awarded over the previous four years (in sports contested across three divisions), Power 5 schools won 95.
“More than likely, we won’t have the same type of success at the national level in Div. I that we’ve had at Div. II,” said Edwards, the longtime UCSD athletic director who also oversaw the move to Div. II. “But I feel fairly confident that we can do well within (the Big West) in a relatively short period of time, and if you win your conference you can get into the NCAA Tournament.”
CULTURE CLASH
More than a decision about sports and budgets and competition, this is a referendum of a university’s identity. Of its soul.
The Guardian, UCSD’s student newspaper, polled 100 students earlier this year about the role of intercollegiate athletics in student life. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being excellent, they rated school spirit as 1.9.
So here’s the existential question: Is that a flaw, or a virtue? Is it something that needs to be fixed, or embraced?
And is it worth $3,472.56 per student over four years?
UCSD has always taken a different approach to sports, beginning in non-scholarship Div. III and initially opting against scholarships at Div. II before providing a flat $500 stipend per student-athlete. Now it has a more traditional scholarship model, with each team receiving a modest allotment of financial aid that the coaches sprinkle across the roster – but nothing approaching the fully-funded levels of Div. I.
It is a balance – a unique culture – of academics and athletics that other universities of UCSD’s size and stature can’t claim. Admission standards aren’t compromised. Facilities are shared with intramural and recreation programs. Players are buried in text books on buses to games. The expectation is not to play in the pros but to get a real job after graduation.
That perspective regularly gets distorted, like a straw in a glass of water, in the big, bad world of Div. I, becoming more athlete-student than student-athlete. Will UCSD resist that? Can it?
Most students polled anonymously by the Guardian seemed supportive this time of upward athletic mobility, of competing against like institutions, of playing against the best. But some did not, and one student questioned whether school spirit needed to be improved at all.
It certainly hasn’t hurt enrollment. According to U.S. News & World Report, UCSD ranked third nationally in 2015 in total applicants at 73,440, trailing only UCLA and Cal.
“UCSD is an atypical college experience,” the student told the Guardian, “and I knew that when I signed up to come here. I think it’s one of the things that makes us special. Our atmosphere isn’t college-y.”
