BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

This is an honest question because I don't know, and I sure the answer is multiple factors.
But how is Cal so bad off in terms of finances and fan interest. Shouldn't it be the flagship state university?
I'm not talking Ws and Ls. I'm curious about all the other stuff that has been mentioned.

 

There would be a conflagration not seen since the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake if the Big Game was ever, uh, axed. They're going to need to cut some sports. I say that recalling the ruckus raised when they tried to cut baseball (and ended their season in Omaha) and the same more recently at Stanford. But it may be the only way.

 

Cal has an acceptance rate well below 20 percent, and if you’re just a bog average B student, you probably don’t even bother applying. So even though it is publicly funded, the average Californian probably has the same level of attachment to UC-Berkeley that the average Tennessean has to Vanderbilt.

 

UCLA is the gold-standard in the UC system.

 

I'm many years removed from being a Californian choosing a university, but I suspect the basic dynamic hasn't changed much.

Cal appealed to students who wanted high academic standards and students who liked the counter-culture history. As it got harder and harder to get in, the academics would have become an even bigger factor.

A lot of those students just aren't going to care much about athletics. (And the whole "flagship university" just really wasn't a thing.)

Cal also spent a completely insane amount to renovate the stadium, guaranteeing they'd be in crippling debt for decades.

 

I don't think the UCal system as a whole is in a bad way. Endowments are high,

However, I think universities in the western United States have problems developing fam interest for their athletic teams because the population does not feel the same level of affinity to the school. Western cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix draw people from all over the world to live their. The professional teams are well established and there is not much interest in college sports. The UCLA athletic department was also deeply in debt and the move to the Big 10 was a financial lifeline.

I base this observation on growing up in Denver and getting my undergraduate degree at Colorado. Then I went to Indiana for a graduate degree. I was shocked that in Indiana people other than alims actually cared about the university. Citizens of the state were proud of IU. Citizens of Colorado did not care.

 

There are a lot of current Bay Area residents on here that can probably give you a much better feeling for what's happening now, but I sort of wound up there around the time the school transitioned from "place where the smartest public school kids went" to "international research facility."

Preface: While Berkeley is the "first and oldest" UC school, there are almost a dozen others (including UCLA) and almost two dozen California State Universities, so it really doesn't match the true definition of a "flagship" university, compared to other states with one University of and one State University.

1. The admission standards are crazy high. Not to say there aren't smart football players but that limits the pool of available candidates.

2. The cost of living is crazy high. The apartments near campus were stupidly expensive 40 years ago and have to be worse now.

3. Diversity of the student population. Cal has a huge percentage of international students compared to most public universities. They didn't grow up watching football, so they'd rather study on Saturday afternoon than waste it watching the Bears get flattened by Arizona State.

4. Apathy. With the notable exception of The Big Game, students and alumni really haven't given a damn about Cal athletics for decades. It also doesn't help that the Bears haven't sustained any kind of success -- Bruce Synder and Jeff Tedford withstanding -- so there's more interest in protesting the prolification of nuclear weapons than worrying about beating Washington State on Saturday.

5. Lack of big-time donors. Cal probably has one of the largest deep-pocket alumni base in the country, but very few of the big-money donors care about athletics. There is a Big C Society but it's nothing like the fat cats who are funding new athletic facilities and buying corporate skyboxes at other schools.

6. Bay Area prep football isn't nearly as good as you'd expect. Yeah, De La Salle clicked off 100 million consecutive wins and the South Bay has some great programs but Cal has never been able to put together a decent pipeline of local kids to form a cohesive core of recruits.

7. Professional football. Cal's decline in popularity almost perfectly coincides with the AAFC/NFL 49ers and the AFL/NFL Raiders. Memorial Stadium is a mediocre place to watch a game -- there's nowhere to park close to the stadium, the sun's in your eyes from the east stands and the traffic's a mess. Why not pay a little more and see good football?

8. I can think of about a thousand things to do around the Bay Area -- outdoors and indoors -- that provide a better bang for my entertainment buck than a Cal game. Unfortunately, so can about five million other people who live there.

 

The problem with Cal is similar to other schools in the Pac-12, increasing reliance on out of state and international student to pay the full freight tuition to make the budget work, fewer kids with strong attachment to the school, fewer non-alums with attachment to the school, the pro teams in the market competing for sports fans interest (Cal is probably behind the MLS Earthquakes to be honest, Stanford too).
Disagree about watching a game there, Tightwad Hill is great, the sitelines at the stadium are superior to the LA Coliseum and the Rose Bowl where you tend to be farther away from the field. But the school HAS had a legacy of greatness in the non-revenue sports, especially in the water.
Its something that hasn't received enough attention in the Pac-12 break-up, only four schools have had athletes win more than 100 Olympic gold medals, and 200 medals overall - they are all from the Pac-12.

 

Yes, with millions of backyard swimming pools, California ought to blow away the rest of the nation in swimming and diving and water polo. Outdoor weather? Perfect for track and field, rowing, sailing and skateboarding. Mountains make for great skiiers and snowboarders, too.

But the conference as whole in the two major revenue sports has been a two-trick pony: USC football and UCLA basketball. When it comes to football, the Trojans have 11 national championships but none since 2004. And UCLA rang up 10 men's basketball titles in a 12-year period, but you have to go back to Arizona in 1997 to find the last one with a Pac 12 team cutting down the nets.

 

I too loved the Cal game experience, walking up the hill from the Hotel Durant, the cannon on Tightwad Hill, the Cal band is actually very good and the Bears have a great fight song and you're close to the action in that stadium. Plus even in the down years for some reason the Beavers rarely ever lost at Berkeley, or to Cal in general.

A basketball game at a sold-out Harmon Gym was an experience, akin to attending a game at the Pit in Eugene. Crazy loud and hot.

I don't think you can go wrong at any of the UC schools, although Cal and UCLA and Davis and Santa Barbara are probably prettier than Irvine or Riverside or Modesto.

 

So can I. Unfortunately I am not among the five million who can afford to live there.

 

UC Stanislaus! And Cal State Chico! (Santa Barbara, Humboldt, Sonoma and Santa Cruz are gorgeous.)