Does UCLA Football's Culture of Mediocrity Have Effects in the Classroom?

They splashed a lot of money out on hiring some big name academics (I have a history background, and in the middle of the last decade, they raised the profile of their history department with some big hires). I don’t know if they’ve maintained that, and if they’ll be able to keep their academic departments at the same level going forward. Their film school is set, with the deep pockets of Lucas, Speilberg, and Zemeckis, and they also get a lot of funding from the military for digital battle simulations.

But with the economic downturn, USC’s endowment has taken a hit. And on the same day that Standard & Poor downgraded the USA’s credit ranking, they did the same for USC (this almost went unnoticed). Scroll down at this link to August 8:

Standard & Poor’s has downgraded University of Southern California bonds to AA from AA+ because of a growing debt burden. "The lowered ratings are based largely on our view of the rapid issuance of debt on the heels of two hospital acquisitions, the operations of which are not profitable, nor are expected to be for several years," S&P said. USC is getting ready to sell $300 million of taxable bonds. (Moody‘s Investors Service still rates the bonds Aa1 with a stable outlook.) "With this issuance, the university will have more than doubled its debt in the last three years (fiscals 2008 through 2010)," S&P said. However, USC’s "resources (both cash and investments and expendable resources) have not grown at a similar pace, and corresponding ratios have actually decreased over that time."

… like Football and Basketball dominance. Love it. If I’d seen that connection 30 years ago, I woulda put myself on Chancellor Track. Darn it! I am the singular cause of our current woes. lol. Come to think of it, our First to 100 likely plays into overall school achievement than most of us perhaps have ever given credit to. Yet… I’m now puzzled about our Big Sister, Cal. We’re the best public schools in the Country… yet… Cal athletics? Hmm. Great Post.

Yes, there is a correlation between USC’s rise in academic rankings and football program, but correlation does not imply causation.

If a football program winning causes a school’s academics to rise, then Oklahoma, Ohio State, Florida should all be in the same caliber. But they are not.

This year is Oregon’s highest average entry GPA, and the year before that was a significant upgrade from the previous year. Football drives the “brand,” at least up here in Eugene.

Up until four or so years ago, there was no Bruins Nation. The only places you could get together with your best friends from school was at the games. When those games were exciting, and when the teams were competitive, it was easy to create reasons to devote the scarce resources of a recent graduate to Bruin sporting events. That was pretty much it. And it mattered. It mattered in every sense of the word. I was on Jeopardy in 1978, and I mentioned UCLA football during the introductions because it mattered. Bruin athletics were fun.

Now, two things have happened. In 30 plus years, we have become not just a bad team, and a non-competitive team, we have become a boring, irrelevant, mediocre team. This team excites no passion. No one on Jeopardy invites all his friends and classsmates and Bruins generally to tailgate before a game. We just are irrelevant. I no longer live within traveling reach of UCLA football, but if UCLA played USF here in Tampa, I don’t think I would allocate my resources to attend, because the Bruins are for all intents and purposes irrelevant. We are basically only a statistic in a good team’s winning record.

That’s not the team’s fault or the coach’s fault. In the last 30 plus years, we have had many coaches and many, many more players. I blame the institution. UCLA as an institution is a reflection of those who run the institution. and those people apparently never went to football games. They never were able to look forward to hearing the band marching into the Rose Bowl or the Crapaseum. Ten years after I graduated, I still saw people I knew from school at the Crapaseum, and I looked forward to that. But apparently the school leadership never had and never appreciated that experience. I don’t say they are against it, just indifferent to it. John the Apostle talked about how a lukewarm church would be spit out, and that’s what our administration has done to the athletic part of the UCLA student experience over the past 40 years. I am happy to say that I will have shuffled off this mortal coil before the administration will be able to do much more to ruin Bruin athletics.

I don’t really care what some school administrator does to get one school or another more ratings points in some magazine poll. That’s about as relevant as being named as “Outstanding this” or “Newcomer to Watch” in some magazine which will name you to that list as long as you pay enough. I don’t care whether our applicants are the top 10% or something else. What I care about is the school I attended and loved, and the experiences I had there that I loved (yeah, and those other ones, too.) Our administrators will never know the euphoria of Beban to Altenberg for the TD and the 20-16 win in 1966. They will also never know the bitter disappointment of a horrible defeat. They will stay lukewarm, knowing that in academia, lukewarm is perfect and is never spit out. Their lack of passion and vision is killing UCLA for the students. I know that would never be admitted now – I couldn’t compete against the new applicants, but I don’t know that I would really want to go to this version of UCLA. It’s not the UCLA I attended, and that’s a fact.

It’s up to the kids to change things. Ways to get things done exist. This blog, which substitutes for the weekly gathering of friends at the Rose Bowl for many of us, is one way to get things done. I don’t think anyone will change the way the terribly misguided and totally lukewarm athletic and university administration sees things, but I may well be wrong. Without all the social media, a young guy named Mario Savio changed things forever in the mid-60’s, and he did it by the force of his personality, as far as I can determine. He started the Free Speech Movement at Cal, and it changed things.

Is there anyone with passion at UCLA? Is there anyone who will take action that will cause my alma mater to spit out the lukewarm bodies who are single handledly making UCLA an irrelevant institution? I’m not talking about a stern note of protest. I’m talking about organizing. Who is going to organize the walkout at the Rose Bowl, or at Pauley? Who is going to organize the boycott of whatever has to be boycotted to get someone to notice?

Or maybe do nothing. But if you do nothing, in my view you forfeit your right to complaint about Guerrero or Block.

I yield my remaining time on the soap box in front of Kerckhoff, which, by the way, did not exist until the UCLA version of the Free Speech Movement got it established.