<p>Here’s my question: Why is Stanford considered to be the “one place you don’t have to choose”? Shouldn’t Cal also be a school where academically-oriented football players don’t have to choose? Doesn’t Cal also have an impressive constellation of academic offerings? Why can’t Cal dominate a BCS bowl game while also landing some of the most academically impressive football recruits in the country?</p>
<p>Or consider the following:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wait, what? Cal can’t even draw mention with Michigan in terms of academics??? How’s that? </p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate that a former Academic All-American Cal quarterback just became the Superbowl MVP. But his success only seems to highlight the problem: that Stanford is nevertheless apparently viewed as the only school where scholar-athletes don’t have to choose.</p>
<p>But that’s why Cal should garner some of the small minority of players who are academically impressive. That’s what Stanford is apparently doing. The question is, why can Stanford do that, but not Cal?</p>
<p>It’s the same for the undergraduate population in general. Stanford students are more academically gifted than Cal’s, why expect anything different from the athlete’s academic ability?</p>
<p>Cal students are more academically gifted than Michigan’s on average, so why shouldn’t Cal be able to compete for the more academically oriented athletes with Michigan? </p>
<p>But that only further highlights the point. Let’s say that the student quality is indeed the same. Yet only Michigan was mentioned as having even “come close” to Stanford. Why?</p>
<p>But why should that matter? The Michigan football program is currently in turmoil, having 3 head coaches in the last 4 years alone. Why should it matter that Michigan may have had a glorious football past? What matters - or should matter - to prospective players is how good they are now and in the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>Put another way, Stanford isn’t exactly a traditional football powerhouse, claiming but a single national championship during the early years of the sport when the Ivy League was still a relevant football conference and when even Navy could claim a national championship (and in the exact same year that Stanford claims theirs). Heck, it was only a few years ago when the Stanford football program seemed hopelessly moribund, placing dead-last in the Pac-10 with a 1-11 record. </p>
<p>Yet the current smart football prospects don’t seem to care about that, as the WSJ article indicated. They seem perfectly willing - indeed eager - to ignore Stanford’s football history.</p>
<p>I care about football. I suspect that plenty of others do as well. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Cal may not have as many resources as Stanford, but, for all its current budgetary woes, still has far more resources than do the vast majority of other schools in the country. Auburn is not exactly replete with resources - with an endowment being but a small fraction of Berkeley’s - yet they nevertheless won the national championship. Oregon, the Pac-10 champion and national championship runner-up, has an endowment even smaller than Auburn’s. </p>
<p>Now to be clear, I’m not expecting Cal to win a national championship or even be runner-up. But I don’t see why it’s unreasonable for them to expect them to perform better. I particularly don’t find it unreasonable to expect Cal to compete with Stanford, Michigan, Northwestern, Boston College, and Notre Dame for the smarter football recruits.</p>
<p>Cal doesn’t make academics a priority for our football players, simple as that. We’re so desperate to win that we don’t really care if they get Cs and Bs in their classes as long as they can play (and lose). And really, Cal’s undergrad is overrated. You can ***** again and again about how we have more nobel winners or whatever winners, but that doesn’t mean jack if they can’t teach you, me, or anyone else at this school.</p>
<p>And I mean really, have you taken a class with football players from our school before? No offense if any of them ever come on to this board, but hot damn…some of them were having trouble even just reading.</p>
<p>But that’s the irony - is it not? If Cal doesn’t make academics a priority, they can at least make athletics the priority, in that we could bring in dumb players who can nevertheless win games. Instead, we get neither. The players perform poorly in the classroom and on the field. </p>
<p>Whatever you may want to say about the lack of academic resources at Cal relative to Stanford, surely we can all agree that Cal has more academic resources than Auburn or Oregon.</p>
<p>I don’t really. In close games with competitive teams it can be fun to watch, but most of the time it’s a bore. </p>
<p>Our society is so hell bent on athletics that it’s sad. Look at what President Obama said in his State Of The Union address: “We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair. We need to teach them that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline.”</p>
<p>I could not agree more with this statement. This is an academic institution, for learning and educating. You’ll notice that the Ivy League schools don’t have huge sports programs but rather they excel in academics like law, business, medicine, technology, etc. If Berkeley (and other universities alike) spent more time getting research funding and new equipment (have you been in a Cal undergrad chem lab?) maybe we would be better recognized across America and internationally.</p>
<p>Of course, the “arms race” in football recruiting means that it isn’t easy to build a good football team with high academic standards (for the football players specifically), occasional great seasons by Stanford in both football rankings and players in the Academic All-American list notwithstanding. It also means that NCAA Division 1 FBS football is becoming less of the cash cow it once was, as more needs to be spent on coaches, recruiting, facilities, etc. to attract recruit decent players.</p>
![http://coe.berkeley.edu/static/innovations-slideshow/athletes/images/4fisher.jpg]One](http://coe.berkeley.edu/static/innovations-slideshow/athletes/images/4fisher.jpg%5DOne){kind=link}
![http://coe.berkeley.edu/static/innovations-slideshow/athletes/images/2fisher.jpg]Another](http://coe.berkeley.edu/static/innovations-slideshow/athletes/images/2fisher.jpg%5DAnother){kind=link}
