(05-07-2021 04:19 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(05-07-2021 04:06 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(05-06-2021 06:58 PM)jdgaucho Wrote:  

(05-06-2021 04:35 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Not surprised. Hard to drop out of a conference with UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine and still claim they are your peers. Never thought this directions stood a chance.

The fact this was hanging over their heads for a year and the chancellor had to address it says it stood a chance.

This was from this morning's Riverside Press Enterprise:
https://www.pe.com/2021/05/06/alexander-...ays-alive/
"The major takeaways: Athletics now will be merged into Student Affairs, which among other things will result in the elimination of redundant positions (some have already been pruned from the athletic staff) and might create additional opportunities for on-campus engagement. The department will be put on a three-year “financial and operational plan,” according to Wilcox’s statement, with an eye toward permanent budget reductions and an increase in revenue. Maybe most importantly, they’ll consider a student referendum on raising the Division I athletics fee from $105 a year, the lowest in the Big West Conference and exactly where it was when UCR began its Division I adventure in 2000-01."

They could easily double the athletic fee. But they have to do a better job of engaging with the community and the alumni. This is another problem:
"Even before this uncertainty over the program’s future, UCR – which had a 17-year head start as the only Division I school in the Inland Empire – looked up at crosstown rival Cal Baptist in most metrics: Facilities, donor support, fan engagement, even something as small as getting the word out about its summer sports camps. And CBU just hired a guy with a reputation as a formidable fundraiser, Tyler Mariucci, as its new athletic director."

Chalk it up to California public school complacency.

I think UCs are not very community driven schools. They are too elite (less than the top 5% of the State's HS students get in) and not local enough (majority of students are from other parts of the State), and too stand offish to ever draw from the general public. They rely heavily upon alumni support.

For UC Riverside that means they have to start with the students on campus and build the environment and atmosphere where they attend sports, preferably at the level UC Santa Barbara or UC San Diego does. They are a bit younger a school than other UCs, so they have a weaker alumni base on top of their poor engagement with their current students. That should be their top priority. (pretty much the same thing I tell anyone who will listen at San Jose State ... they don't listen)

That's a good explanation. Before I read your post, I thought "how can a big public school have less community support than a medium-sized Christian school with a big online component?" Your post explains it.

FWIW, CBU is doing well. They have a record enrollment, and have made great strides as a newer D-I program. Their women's basketball program finished undefeated but were ineligible for post-season play due to their transition to D-I.

I’m just a Midwesterner but I feel like like the UCs and the Cal Sts are both hamstrung in athletics:

The UCs are elitist and don’t have great relationships with their communities. They don’t recruit locally and their alumni don’t stay in a 100 mi radius in the same percentages as you’re likely to see elsewhere in D1. San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Davis, and Irvine don’t see the UCs in their cities as THEIR schools.

On the Cal St side you have a large commuter population which doesn’t bode well for fostering that campus community feel that more residential campuses do. I imagine that the Cal Sts get a lot more of their students from within a 100 mi radius and a lot of alums stay in that same area and you’d think that would lend itself to a more populist, every man’s university feel but if their alums didn’t spend a whole lot of their free time on campus when they were enrolled, they aren’t going to have a compulsion to go back and attend sporting events and relive the residential experience if they never had it in the first place.

It’s sad. With the huge enrollment and shear number of CA public schools you’d expect to see them nationally relevant in all sorts of sports.

(05-07-2021 06:25 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’m just a Midwesterner but I feel like like the UCs and the Cal Sts are both hamstrung in athletics:

The UCs are elitist and don’t have great relationships with their communities. They don’t recruit locally and their alumni don’t stay in a 100 mi radius in the same percentages as you’re likely to see elsewhere in D1. San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Davis, and Irvine don’t see the UCs in their cities as THEIR schools.

On the Cal St side you have a large commuter population which doesn’t bode well for fostering that campus community feel that more residential campuses do. I imagine that the Cal Sts get a lot more of their students from within a 100 mi radius and a lot of alums stay in that same area and you’d think that would lend itself to a more populist, every man’s university feel but if their alums didn’t spend a whole lot of their free time on campus when they were enrolled, they aren’t going to have a compulsion to go back and attend sporting events and relive the residential experience if they never had it in the first place.

It’s sad. With the huge enrollment and shear number of CA public schools you’d expect to see them nationally relevant in all sorts of sports.

They are often hamstrung based on how they are legally allowed to operate and be funded. Specifically, most Cal State alumni don't donate, especially the Big West and D-2 alumni.
From 2015:
https://www.dailynews.com/2015/09/26/cal...hallenges/

Fresno State became the "Red Wave" with locals loving both football and basketball in the 70's-80's to expand Bulldog Stadium, create the Bulldog Diamond for scholarships, and pre-buy premium seats for the SaveMart Center. Now those folks are older or dead and their heirs care less about Fresno State sports, thus the delay in renovating Bulldog Stadium.