A few days ago, U$C announced that ol' Ethical Pat would be getting a new job title.  He's no longer the Director of Athletics; rather, he's now the Charles Griffin Cale Director of Athletics.  That's right folks: just as UCLA has the Stanley M. Zimmerman Endowed Chair in Economics and Finance or the David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Chair in Law (there's actually a ton, if you're curious, you can see the full list here), U$C now has an endowment for their athletics director:

The Charles Griffin Cale Director of Athletics’ Chair at USC has been endowed in perpetuity by Chuck and Jessie Cale, USC senior vice president for university advancement Albert R. Checcio announced today.

The gift, the amount of which will remain private, is the largest endowment gift ever received by the USC athletic department.

"We are deeply grateful to Chuck and Jessie Cale for endowing this important position, which is at the very heart of our athletic program," Checcio said. "Their visionary support will ensure that USC Athletics continues to succeed at the highest levels in the world of intercollegiate athletics."

"All of us in the USC athletic department sincerely thank Chuck and Jessie Cale for their generosity," said USC athletic director Pat Haden, who will be the first holder of the Charles Griffin Cale Director of Athletics’ Chair. "This landmark gift will not only positively impact all USC athletic directors in the years to come, but it will enable us to reallocate resources and funds to much-needed areas such as student-athlete scholarships and recruiting.

As much as it pains me to say this, this is something the Trogans are absolutely killing us in: whoever they have in their marketing department is absolutely killing it.  Whether we like it or not, in spite of sanctions and a national consensus that U$C is the Miami of the West (cheat, deny, lie), they have built not only a strong national brand, but they have gotten their alumni and fan base fired up.

Kind of ironic that their marketing folks  are so on top of their game, and yet their compliance folks were asleep at the switch.  But, I digress.

Of course, for Bruins, the stark contrast is obvious: despite sanctions, despite having a basketball team that was only an also-ran at their peak (Westbrook owned Mayo in college and his team owned them again in the NBA, but I again, I digress), and languishing behind the Bruins in total number of national titles, they have a fired-up alumni and fan-base.

UCLA has just as large of an alumni base.  The fan base has the potential to be crazy huge (especially given what we know about how the UCLA brand is a smash-hit in Asia).  And yet, we are seeing no innovation from Morgan Center.  The chumps across town are cashing in, literally, allowing them to reallocate funds to other purposes (for them, probably upgrading golf-cart rides back to Range Rovers).

Dan Guerrero and Morgan Center, on the other hand, seem to just be sitting on their hands, struggling to raise sufficient capital to fund the renovation of the most storied basketball arena in history.

GO BRUINS