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Football and basketball support a shitload of sports programs at Cal. The Athletic Department is too big, but like the federal budget everybody complains that it's too big but nobody wants to stick their necks out and go on record about what they'd cut.
Cal financed the stadium ten yeas ago with the ESP program, Endowment Seating Plan or something like that. It was a nonbinding agreement whereby donors would pledge to donate a certain amount per year for 30 or 50 years. In exchange for that ongoing pledge, donors would get the nice seatbacks on the shady side of the stadium between the 30's, and they'd get access to the fucking Donor's Club where they could drink heavily whilst watching the game and congratulating each other on how much money they had to throw away on status perks. So the stadium was financed on the expectation that donors would keep donating no matter how fucked the product was on the field.
Turns out that Cal donors aren't suckers. They see a shitty product and an AD (Williams) who is horrible at alumni/donor relations, they stop coming. Many backed out on their ESP pledges, and lo and behold money for the yearly payments dried up. Williams didn't resign; he was told that he wouldn't be retained after his contract was up, so he then made the resignation statement. He's made some right moves so far (getting rid of Dykes and hiring Wilcox) but pissed off basketball donors after Martin left by not listening to their concerns/suggestions and just went ahead and hired Martin's assistant instead. The new AD will have to be somebody who can reach out to the money (it's there) and coax it back to Cal.
The stadium plan was too expensive. Some things needed to be done (seismic retrofit), but that could have been done on the cheap. Instead, Sandy Barbour and Co. went ahead with a more pricey plan to make attending Cal Football games a status symbol. But you can slap a MBZ star on a Kia, and it's still a fucking Kia. Improve the car, and the donors will come back. Maybe. Hopefully. The landscape is changing anyway; people like me aren't big money, but I'm one of many who used to religiously attend games but long ago decided that it was cheaper to drink at home (comfy couch, HDTV, 20+games per Saturday). Winning ought to cure this problem, but we'll see.
If anybody really thought that stadium finance would be a god use of TV revenue, they should be summarily shot. Everybody in the conference got that money and put it to use in the coaching arms race. Cal needs to do that too, so no money there, really.
