 Greetings and welcome to this edition of Campus Conversations. I'm Dan Moguloff from the University's Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Today, we're going to be tackling, no pun intended, well, maybe a little, the forces and factors reshaping intercollegiate athletics nationally. What it all means for Cattle Athletics is our program prepares for the move to the ACC conference. I'm honored to welcome today's panel members, Chancellor Carol Christ, Jim Nolton, the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, Oliver O'Reilly, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Max Ofhummer, Academic Senate Chair. If you'd like to pose a question, just post it to our Facebook live streaming site. We already have a large number of questions, but we'll do our best to get to all that you submit. So let's jump in. Carol, I'd like to start with you and I'm curious, what made you believe in this particular conversation about intercollegiate athletics was so important to have at this moment in time? Dan, there's never been a more turbulent time in intercollegiate athletics. So many changes are happening. Nobody really knows what the future holds. Just to name a few, there is NIL, name, image, and likeness, where players, student athletes, can profit from their name, image, and likeness. There's the transfer portal that allows students to transfer between institutions much more easily. There are a number of suits working their way through the law courts, claiming that student athletes should be seen as employees, not as students, in their capacity as athletes. And there is conference realignment. In addition, there's the increasing dominance of broadcast television, mostly of football, shaping the intercollegiate athletics landscape. That's lots of changes in the wider landscape, and they all have consequences for Berkeley as the collapse of the PAC-12 and our move to the ACC demonstrate. Yeah, and before I move on, I want to turn to Jim next and talk a little bit more specifically about the potential impact on Cal athletics. What's your own perspective? I mean, are you concerned about how we continue to have a program where students can thrive within the context of the university's finances, or is it something about the conference? Are conference change itself? What's really getting your attention and generating concerns for you right now? The most important thing for me is maintaining the ideal that we've had of the student athlete, the opportunity to compete at the highest level in your chosen sport at the same time that you're earning a Cal degree. Got it. Jim, let me turn to you, and let's see if we can narrow down our focus a little bit. Talk to us about what's got your attention. Where do you see challenges and opportunities on the road ahead for Cal athletics within the context of all these changes? Yeah, Dan, I think the chancellor really highlighted that pretty well. If any one of those things were happening at any given time in intercollegiate athletics, the enterprise would be really shaken to its core, and when you have all of those things happen at the same time, all that the chancellor listed, it really is tectonic plates shifting. And I think the enterprise is trying to keep up with the changes, trying to absorb the changes. Well, at the core of it all, we try to continue to provide this magnificent experience for our student athletes. And as I look at this and all of the changes, I still feel great that our student athletes are excelling in the classroom. We've got the highest graduation success rates we've ever had in our history for student athletes, comparable to our students here at the University of California, Berkeley. We've continued to win national championships, produce Olympians, and really do a really nice job with student athlete development. So for us, it's how do we manage the change while still providing this exceptional experience for student athletes? And each of the ones that the chancellor listed require really detailed planning to be able to change conferences or handle NIL or work through some of the challenges of student athletes being employees, and all of those are happening at the same time. So yeah, I'm still hopeful that we can combine this experience, but I do believe that it's consuming a lot of time to make sure that these changes don't negatively impact the student athlete experience. Thanks for that, Jim. I'm going to come back to you a little bit later. I'd like to drill down a little bit more exactly what is meant by how things have changed in the portal and named image likeness. But before I do that, Max, let me turn to you with the next question. I know that for you, too, this was an important conversation. Obviously, we never speak in broad brushstrokes about UC Berkeley faculty, but share with us a little bit why, in your role as chair of the Academic Senate, you, too, believe this is a conversation whose time has come. So I'm really grateful for this conversation taking place, and I hope we have more of these going forward about this topic. I mean, I think there's two parts of the landscape where, as Senate Chair, you really worry, one of which is there's 850 student athletes here that are students. So making sure that these students get the support they need in this world where they basically have two really important and demanding full-time jobs. So those of us who teach big classes, you usually have a bunch of student athletes in the classroom, and I'm always impressed by their ability to sit there and listen to an economics lecture for an hour and a half after having been to three hours of rowing practice in the morning. So I think many of us don't realize how demanding the life of a student athlete is. So making sure that student athletes, especially in this world of conference realignment, get the support they need to succeed in their student lives is something that really I worry about a lot. So this is related to the ability to succeed in class, to be able to have schedules where you can take the classes you want. If you look at the majors that our student athletes major in, these are some really, really hard majors. An economist myself, I found economics really hard. I still find it difficult, and it's the top major that our student athletes major in. The other thing I, of course, do worry about is resource issues, and this goes much beyond intercollegiate athletics. It's not just athletics that's changing. It's higher education in general that is changing. And we've heard so much from Chancellor Christ and others about the financial pressures. So trying to think about how we as an institution allocate our resources is a prime concern. And this conference realignment, of course, is one of the many pressures on our financial picture. Not going to talk much more, but just acknowledge the fact that intercollegiate athletics and the administration has been unbelievably transparent and cooperative in this particular space by sharing data with CAPRA, our asset committee, to better understand the picture and the challenges and work on solutions here. Yeah, thanks for those initial comments. Oliver, let me come to you for this first round. I think you sit at an interesting nexus. Former chair of the Academic Senate currently serving not only as vice provost for undergraduate education, but also the faculty athletics representative. What are you noticing right now? What, as you think about this whole space we're conversing about today, what's getting your attention? What's generating concern? Where do you see opportunity? So I think there's concern that there, of the financial, the financial situation and the changing financial landscape of collegiate athletics. I think that's a widespread concern for everyone, but I also see this as an opportunity for us to do, to change things on our campus for the better of all students. So for instance, right now, we've just done a survey of instructors on accommodating students. We're also looking, I'm also working with a student athlete on looking at all the different accommodations that the ACC is providing for their students at the other ACC campuses. And trying to get a handle on the different ways institutions support student athletes, but also the different ways that we can improve our support for instructors so they can improve their accommodations of students. So I hear lots of concerns about the student athlete experience in terms of traveling, in terms of practice schedules, etc. And so some of these can be taken care of by accommodating the student athletes in the classroom. But those accommodations also apply for all of our other students. For instance, students from the disabled community, students who are ill, students who are suffering from bereavement. So I believe there's an opportunity here to improve the landscape on our campus and improve the way we support all students. By changing the way we support instructors and by being very thoughtful and methodical about that in ways that I think the campus is open to do right now. And I find to me that's a really interesting, a very interesting opportunity for us. The other opportunity I see for us is that we will now be our coast, we are now going to become bicoastal. So we're going to have a presence on the east coast that we haven't had before. So there's an opportunity here for us to showcase the brilliance of Berkeley on the east coast to engage with alumni and supporters on the east coast and to get more support for Berkeley from the east coast. And I think this is a great opportunity for our campus as well. But the third point I want to make is that it's in all of our interests here to find a path forward together that supports our campus. And by being unified in doing that, by being unified in our support for student athletes and intercollegiate athletics and the academic mission of the campus, we can go a long way. But being unified is really essential to that. So we portray a unified approach to the office of the president, the state legislature and the public itself. And I think we will get much further by doing that than by being divided. Got it. Thanks to you all for those initial comments. A lot of raw material here. Carol, I think it's clear that central to so many of the comments, questions and concerns is the issue of resources and money. I think people are aware these are tight financial times on campus. So help us out here, help us understand where we are. How much is intercollegiate athletics costing the campus this year? What do you expect next year? And talk a little bit about the overall financial impact of the collapse of the PAC-12 and our move to a new conference. Yeah, thank you for that question, Dan. So currently our subsidy of athletics is about $22.5 million a year. We, the athletics and I spent a long time free pandemic developing a budget plan whereby that central campus commitment declined to about 13 million over the course of seven or eight years. Unfortunately, the pandemic made that financial plan not really one that would work anymore. And then of course, along came conference realignment. So we're just to give you some numbers. We have currently our television revenues from the PAC-12 for about $24 million a year. When we move to the ACC, their television revenues per school are $33 million a year, but we're entering in a third of a share. So that's 11 million. So clearly the difference between 11 and 24, 13 million. And so we have at least that gap to make up. There are also other expenses that we'll have like increased travel costs. But so we are working very hard, group of us that meet regularly on a new financial model for athletics. We have a hole that we have to fill, but I also am convinced that we have some revenue sources that we can develop that will help us fill that hole. Can you give me a few examples of those new revenue sources or is it too soon? No, no, no, I'd be happy to give you some examples. Probably the one with the wittiest name is the Calamoni we expect to get from UCLA. And I hope we'll also get help from the office of the president. But in addition to that, we haven't really monetized the stadium in ways that we might. And I think we haven't fully taken advantage of I think the donor generosity that we could, that might be motivated by the move to the ACC. Right. So you think there's upside in philanthropy there? Yes, I do. So before I move on, I want to talk to Jim a little bit, just drill down on the finances and where our program stacks up with other programs. So in the context of a $3 billion a year campus budget, 20-some-odd million dollars may not be a large percentage, a very small one in fact. But it's a serious chunk of change. What makes it worth it for you, that expenditure? Like to Carol, let me ask her, Jim, before you, sorry. Chancellor, if I could just before we go to Jim, if I could ask you first about, from your perspective, from the corner office, what makes that expenditure worth it for the campus? Are you asking me or asking? Yes, yes, you. Well, athletics is a really an interesting question. And I think there's several answers to it. One is that I really value the student-athlete experience, that I think it's a wonderful opportunity for students to compete at the level at which they compete at Cal and in the top athletic conferences of the country. So that's an extraordinary opportunity. But also what athletics does, and this is very peculiar, I think, to the American collegiate culture, is a way of bringing the community together. So we're having this conversation, this very conversation, with numerous groups. And we recently had it with the Board of Trustees of the Berkeley Foundation. And I was really interested to hear trustee after trustee say athletics is what brings me close to the university, what maintains my engagement. These are not people, for the most part, that give predominantly or even at all to athletics. But it is the way they feel the closeness to the institution. So it helps us in a way that I think is culturally unique and particularly pronounced at big state flagship universities to maintain a community across generations and to bring people into a feeling of closeness with the university. I was meeting with the leaders of the student government yesterday, which are really, I don't think anybody would think, oh, this is a really a group of athletic boosters. And I was just asking them that we were talking about the UCLA game and one of them had been. And so we were just asking generally, are athletics important to you? And they said, oh, yeah, it gives us a sense of pride. It creates a sense of community for us. So I think that it's for our athletes, there's a certain, I think extraordinary value when competing at that level. But for the whole community, there's a way of feeling part of a greater institutional whole that is really special when the, at the end of the big game, when the fans rushed the field, that was really quite an extraordinary moment. Yeah, Carol, I have one more question for you before I, one more follow up before I go to Jim. There was also in that question, in that initial question, sort of a subsection about what do we expect to spend on athletics next year? Or is that something we don't know, because we don't know how much Calamona, as you call it, will be getting? Where do we stand for next year? We don't entirely know. We still have not gotten the definite commitments either from the office, the president, or from UCLA. And we're still trying to figure out what the other aspects of the costs of the move to the ACC will cost. The one piece we know is what we won't be getting in television revenues. So we're, it's very much top of mind to me, as we, I have a small team that's working together very closely to work out what our financial plan is, not just for next year, but for all the years for athletics until we reach a full share, which is in nine years in the ACC. Got it, Jim. So let me follow up with you. For people who don't, who don't follow Cal athletics closely and all the data that's involved, where do we stack up in terms of, for example, how much we spend on each as on a sort of a per student-athlete basis? What kind of operation are we running? Well, I think we are very, very efficient and have done a great job at Cal maintaining costs and keeping costs down. So when you look at across the landscape of the Power 5 schools, we're probably in the middle to a little bit below the middle, as far as what it costs to run our department. And obviously some of the challenges are we're in as high a cost to living area as there is in the country. And so that certainly plays a role in that. But yeah, I think we're very efficient. We've been going through sort of these challenges for years and years and years. And as a result, we've been constantly looking at every cost and cost reduction that's possible. Yeah, I might insert something there. I'm on the region special committee on athletics, which they established consequent to UCLA's leaving for the big 10. And what we're going now through is a set of presentations by each campus of their athletic program and what the budget numbers are. We had in our last meeting presentations by UC Irvine and UC Davis. And neither of those are in a Power 5 conference. And UC Irvine spends a little bit north of 20 million on its athletic program from central funds. So about the same as Cal spends, even though it's division three. And Davis spends about 30 million on its athletics program. So it's a myth, I think, that Cal is spending disproportionately more on athletics than schools spend that are not at the competitive level that Cal spends. Thank you, Carol. So Jim, given what the chancellor just said, doesn't that, does that point to the importance of the revenue generated for a place like Berkeley by basketball and football, for example? Is that one of the reasons, for example, that Davis is actually spending more than us is because they don't have a media contract. Is that, do I have that right? Yes, I think a lot of it is based on media. And certainly for us, it's your two sports, basketball and football are the revenue generators. We have 30 sports and two of them are profitable sports that produce more revenue than their expenses. And in many cases, football programs across the country help fund the rest of the athletic departments. And that's what we are. And the football program helps us through ticket sales, through sponsorships, through the media rights deals to support this broad-based athletic department that provides 850 student athletes with the opportunity to get this great education at Cal. And so the fact that those two teams are so important in terms of driving revenue, was that in turn the driving motivation for joining the ACC and perhaps a lesser conference, a non-power five conference, as you called it? Well, certainly that is. And I think the chancellor and I would both tell anybody who asks that we wanted the Pac-12 to survive. I mean, we invested everything in the Pac-12 because we truly believed 108 years of the conference of champions was just a great fit for us both regionally travel-wise types of schools. And so when the conference of Pac-12 began to be dismantled, we wanted to be able to continue to play at the highest level. We wanted to be able to continue to play with schools that were like-minded as far as academics. And along with that, by staying at the power five or the power four depending on how you look at it now, the media rights, the brand exposure, all of those things were critically important to a school like Cal to expand our brand across the nation and globally as well. Thanks. Max, so as you hear, talking about cost and benefit, talking about dollars, you're an economist, of course. You know, I'm wondering how this lands, what your thoughts are. And I'm thinking about one of the questions that we received from a faculty member, who notes that we spend far more on student athletes than, for example, members of the university's orchestra. How do you sort your way through these various issues? How do those money figures land for you? So I always have to think about, we often say an organization's budget should reflect its values. So when I think about Berkeley's budget, we put our money where our mouth is in some sense, we hire the best faculty and we do whatever we can to retain the faculty. Often departments don't see the cost of that very much because central campus pays for a lot of that. So the notion here is that's sort of prime directive of campus. After that, you have to figure out where do you allocate funds? There are trade-offs, right? Should the marginal dollar, I'm sorry for the econ lingo, should the dollar you have in your hand, should it go to the library? Should it go to athletics? Should it go towards, you know, new buildings? So the question here is, while on the surface, it seems really like a simple question with a simple answer. It's really complicated. First off, a dollar is not a dollar. Not all dollars that we see can go anywhere, right? Especially when it comes to buildings and things like that. And after that, there are many competing things that we would like to have and we have to make decisions. So while we can have, you know, animated discussions on the various chat forums that we read in our emails about, yes, I want this, I don't want that, we just have to think very carefully about not necessarily what we want to do this year or next year, right? Yes, those are interesting questions and these are sort of short run decisions that the chancellor has to make in very close collaboration with the academic senate. But I think a much more interesting question is where do we want to be five years from now, right? In this new reality with NIL, in this new reality of a new conference, looking at the sort of both financial and spatial constraints that we have in this campus and make really, you know, clear decisions. That can only happen if we have open dialogue between athletics, the administration and the senate. And I see those happening at multiple levels, right? We see the budgets, we see numbers and we go through them carefully and we have, I think, really productive conversations here. A lot of that doesn't take place in public, right? Because a lot of this stuff is just, it's complex, it's confidential, taken out of context, you know, maybe not the right way to do it. But I'm really confident in the process that we have now that we can have a productive collaboration here going forward and getting to a place that really reflects what we want to do here in this university. Thanks, Max. And I just want to give all of our panelists advance warning that that will be my final question, your own thoughts about where we want to be five years from now. So you have another 35 minutes to think about that. We're going to get back to the subject of money, but it's actually connected, Oliver, the degree of academic support. What do we have, what we have in place to support our student athletes, whether it makes sense, whether it's paying off, whether we can legitimately call them student athletes, talk to us a little bit about that whole infrastructure and why you think it's worth it. Well, so I think several years ago there was a crisis in terms of the academic performance of student athletes and the administration in the Senate made some very considerable decisions after a lot of talk. So we have the Atlantic Study Center that provides support to student athletes, tutoring support and academic advising. We also have the Student Athlete Admissions Committee that looks at admissions cases for student athletes and reviews and vets them. So that's a joint Senate administration committee we meet every month, especially at this time of year. There's also concern on that committee that the students that we do admit are will succeed at Berkeley. So we've increased the admissions standards for student athletes about 10 years ago. And this committee now is in charge of looking at some of the cases that are on the margins, not to borrow a term from economics, and to make sure that they are set to succeed at Berkeley. So those students have come in, are monitored, they're given the support they need, they're required, and we've experienced now the student, the Atlantic Study Center has experienced supporting students and interviewing students over the past decade to see what works and what doesn't work and what metrics we can view in admissions that will guarantee success and which metrics are in admissions that we are concerned about. As well as that, thanks to a generous philanthropic donation, the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics has the Cameron Institute that provides leadership and career support for student athletes. So it provides tremendous support for our student athletes as well. So not just on the academic side, but also on the side that helps prepare them for life, like financial education on finances, education on communications, education on DEIBJ, education on leadership. It's probably one of the best programs in the country. So I think between the Cameron Institute and the Atlantic Study Center, we've really primed ourselves for the success of our student athletes. Now, I know there's concern by faculty about our student athletes, but in my role, when I was the vice chair for the Senate, I had a meeting with Jim Knowlton, this is six years ago, and I was surprised by how some of our student athletes felt othered by the campus, that they didn't feel like they belonged here and I thought this was, I found this very sad. First of all, they are some of our most visible representatives and there are some of our most visible campus ambassadors and our most celebrated alums. And so if they don't feel that they belong to Berkeley, then we are not really doing our job as an institution. So in my role as Senate chair and in the roles I've taken since then, one of my priorities is to being to improve the relations that we have with the student athletes. So I teach a freshman seminar and I've got to know a lot more of them through my experiences as faculty athletic rep as well over the past five or six years. And to be honest, I'm just astounded by them. Not alone are they academically some of the best students we have on their campus, but they managed to do that while juggling, essentially what's a 20 hour a week job. And to come from the, as Max described, the students who train early in the morning, they train at 6.30 in the morning, they come to class after training, they sit through classes for the rest of the day, then they do other training, then they do their homework and their assignments. It's remarkable what these students are doing. Many of them are from historically excluded communities. And the fact that they're able to thrive at Berkeley, the fact that we have the highest, our highest graduation rates ever for student athletes, the fact that our average GPA for student athletes is on par with the average GPA for all of our students, those are remarkable. Yeah. And one of the joys I get as a faculty member is writing letters of recommendation for our student athletes who go off to some of the top graduate programs in the country and in Europe. And it's wonderful to see that. And then it's wonderful to see them out in the world representing our campus. Thanks for that. That's a lot of good information. Jim, I want to come back to you and talk a little bit more, drill down a little bit about some of these things that have been buffeting the world of intercollegiate athletics. And let me see if I can just sort of briefly summarize what they are and correct me if I'm wrong. So first of all, there's been a change to transfer rules. It used to be that if you transferred schools, you had to sit out a year, now you can just hop from one school to the other and be immediately eligible. Then on top of that, we have name, image, likeness. Courts have ruled that students can and must be paid for use of their name, image, and likeness. That in turn connects to the collectives that have been formed, alumni that are getting together to in effect pay students for use of their name, image, and likeness. And we have students in intercollegiate athletics making hundreds of thousands. I've heard millions of dollars a year. And we may have more court ruling coming about revenue sharing with student athletes and treating them as employees. All this taking place while the conferences are consolidating driven by huge media contracts. Have I missed anything on the overall what's driving change right now? No, I think that and then some of the lawsuits against the NCAA pretty much covers everything, Dan. That's those are those tectonic plates that I was referring to. Okay, so let's jump into some questions that we've got. Here's the first one. What are the current cost ranges for signing football players out of the portal? Meaning they said they'd want to transfer. Where does the money come from? And if it doesn't come from Cal athletics, has that resulted in less giving to Cal athletics? Because the alumni are now paying students directly. Right, so that's a complicated question. And I'll try to simplify it as best I can. The bottom line is the athletic department does not get involved in the NIL part of this. So, excuse me. So what happens is if a donor wants to support a student athlete and have them help in some way, they go to our collective, which is a third party, give money and talk about how they would like to support a particular student athlete or a particular team. And then the collective is able to support that athlete or that group of athletes. So that it is not within the athletic department. I don't know if that's answered it completely. Yeah, so do you have control over? Are you okay? Yes, yes. Do we have control over the collectives or are they completely independent? Yeah, they're completely independent. And an important piece of this is if they were within the department, then Title IX rules would also apply. So, you know, many of us think that if the NCAA said that they would come into the department, then we would be able to distribute it equitably, vice how it's working right now, which is about 80% to men, 20% to our female athletes. And that's across the country, not just Cal. So, when you talk about all of the different pieces that are coming together, you know, once the NCAA said you could be immediately eligible instead of have to sit out a year, and you said that NIL could be paid to student athletes, which I am totally in support of NIL. What we found is the only students on campus who weren't able to use their name, image and likeness to make money were the student athletes. So, if you were a tuba player and wanted to get into a band camp in the summer, you could make money. And our student athletes couldn't do the same. So, it made perfect sense to go in that direction. But the real challenge, excuse me, the real challenge was allowing the transfer portal and NIL to happen at the same time. Now all of a sudden, we have these bidding wars that are really creating havoc. So, two follow-up questions. First, what kind of impact has this had, if any, on philanthropy to the program? If alumni are spending their funds, some alumni are spending their funds on sort of recruiting students, paying students through the collectives. Well, there's only a finite amount of alumni philanthropy. And so, you can imagine if they're being asked to give to NIL or to the caliber fund or the Cal athletics or anywhere else, they're having to make hard decisions. So, I think it's already had an impact that will continue to have an impact for sure. What about on our competitiveness? I mean, all schools are different. And clearly there's some schools whose alumni have a much different level of devotion and passion about the intercollegiate athletics program in general or football in particular. Is this making it more difficult for Cal to compete in the world of intercollegiate athletics, particularly in football? Well, it's interesting. Based on the NCAA rules, you're not allowed to induce someone to come to your school with NIL. But we feel like that is just not being enforced and is not kind of the reality that we're living with. And so, for sure, there are schools that are paying 12, 14 million in NIL for the team that they have on the field. And obviously it's talent acquisition. And those teams are currently in the top 10 in the country. And so, I think it's become a big part of having the best student athletes come to your school. And I think we've approached this in a way where we are trying to very deliberately follow the rules of the NCAA while providing these opportunities for student athletes. And I think other schools are approaching it a little bit differently, which creates an unlevel playing field, for sure. Interesting. Carol, I want to come back to you. You've been in higher education for a long time. I mean, certainly when I think about how this all compares to intercollegiate athletics when I was in school, these are major changes. How does that land with you? The idea of intercollegiate student athletes making hundreds of thousands of dollars and bidding wars happening and all of these changes that we've been talking about, do you think we're at risk of losing something valuable here or are these just changing times that we have to kind of roll along with? I feel very strongly that we're at risk of losing something valuable. First of all, I completely agree with Jim. I support NIL. I don't think it was fair that student athletes were not allowed to make money. Doing anything didn't matter whether it was related to their sport or not, but the trouble is there are no federal guidelines now and the NCAA guidelines are widely ignored. So there's essentially no regulation that sticks and it's like the Wild Wild West. I think there desperately needs to be a regulation. Congress doesn't seem to be on a path to do that really quickly, but that's what we need. Max, I'm wondering about your own sort of perspective on this as an economist as chair of the Academic Senate. I mean, money talks and it talks really loud, particularly if you're 18 years old. What's your perspective on all the things we've been talking about for the last few minutes? So I mean, this is a really interesting question, right? So my own experiences with faculty, all salaries are public and everybody knows what we're being paid. So other universities can look at the excellent Berkeley faculty and they sort of know how much they have to pay. If you're working in this very strange and now information limited environment where some people are playing by the rules on how to get athletes to come to your school and especially for sports where it's not clear that there is a professional future for the majority of people on the teams after they're done playing college sports, you know, the value of the education you receive should be the sort of prime thing you're considering here. So I am frankly deeply confused in my own thinking about what the right strategy is one should pursue here which is why I think these conversations are key. So instead of just focusing on one little aspect, really looking at this as an overall challenge about how do we at Berkeley attract the students that want to be here both as athletes and as students to get the amazing education that you get in the classroom here and making sure that they have what they need to succeed in both spaces. I do share Oliver's concern about the sense of belonging here. I think that's a really important thing we should not undervalue. And I also question frankly, this is maybe just a little side remark here. What these actual valuations are the amounts that people get paid. Is it really correlated to, you know, just athletic success or are there weird other characteristics where, you know, things that have nothing to do with athletic success actually get, you know, more money in these NIL deals than, you know, your ability to perform in the sport. So I think we have brilliant faculty around here. This is a resource problem. So social sciences, we have the best division of social sciences in the world. This is a topic we're studying looking at what the incentives are here and how one as a university optimally plays in these these markets is I think an interesting interesting question we should we should study. And I hear some of those faculty have a good running game as well. No. I'm slow. If you ever want to, you know, feel good about yourself, join me on my morning run. Jim, we have a lot of questions about the ACC and I want to drill down a little bit. Starting at the very top, sort of the we talk about the reasons for and the impact of that move. So if you could just encapsulate why did we move to the ACC and why was it so important for the program to move to that particular conference? Well, Dan, I think when when the PAC 12 began to disintegrate, you know, the chancellor and I looked at the the other available Power Five schools and really there were only two that fit both the academic and the athletic missions that we embrace here at Cal. It was the big 10 and the ACC and as we as we did more and more homework, the ACC just became a much more appealing place to land both from the schools that are in the ACC, you know, from Duke and Wake Forest to Georgia Tech and Notre Dame and Virginia all academically minded schools like us and they all compete at the very highest level. Like they compete for national championships. They they produce Olympians and and they also have a very robust student-athlete support network. So we quickly zeroed in on the ACC. They were very receptive there. Commissioner Jim Phillips was very excited about the possibility of Stanford and Cal coming to the ACC. And I would say that it was really important for us that we were in lock step with Stanford throughout the whole process. I was really I was really pleased, proud that the values of both of our schools were were very similar and what we wanted for our student-athletes. And it really helped us as we talked as a package deal to each of the conferences. And so that really drove what we wanted to do and it was what our student-athletes told us they valued most. The academics, the athletics and then the student-athlete experience. And also I'm assuming that it was only through joining one of the major conferences that we could assure a certain level of revenue in out years from media, right? Yeah, it was not just revenue but it was visibility, brand exposure both nationally and internationally. The five power five conferences now four power five conferences really have the largest reach throughout the globe. And so this was a great a great conference for us to end up. And I will tell you the quality of their staff now that we've been dealing with them it is absolutely first class. We are very, very fortunate to be becoming members of the ACC. Let's stay, I'm going to stay with you here some more questions about the ACC here. So one question is why do all the teams have to move to the ACC? Why not just football and basketball? Or in fact, are all the of our teams moving to the ACC? And then if you could go from there and talk about the impact of travel not just financially but what we're going to do to mitigate the impact on our student-athletes. So the first thing is is everybody moving? And if so why? Meaning all the teams? Right. So to answer that the question is no. There are many of our sports six in fact that did not compete in the PAC 12. So we've got rugby and crew and water polo and and now beach volleyball that compete and either the MPSF or their individual conferences. So they won't be impacted at all. And then other sports like field hockey who are competing in the America East and traveling to the East Coast every weekend now will be in the ACC. And so their travel will not be impacted either. It'll be the same as what they've been doing. And and they are some of our best students. They have some of the highest GPAs of any in graduation success rates of any of our teams. And so when you look at some of our other sports like golf they spend their entire season going to tournaments around the country. And they will continue to do the same thing. And the only time they'll know that they're not in the PAC 12 and are in the ACC is for the two to three days that they do the conference championship. And then instead of being in Colorado those championships may be in Wake Forest or Duke. So so when you really get down to 11 teams are going to have an impact on their travel. And that's what we've been focused on even before we got accepted. We did a lot of work on that to look at both the costs the impact and then what we would do to mitigate the impacts of that travel on our student athletes. And we're continuing to do that as we work the final schedules for each of those sports with the ACC staff. So give us a sense of some of the things you're considering you're looking at to help mitigate the impact for those 11 teams. So it's it's funny some of the things are as simple as as doing charter flights with Stanford. There are our tribal one day a year in each sport but they are of ours and we're taking on these challenges together. So we're looking at chartering multiple teams together. We could have four teams that two from Cal and two from Stanford going to the East Coast and competing. We're looking at bringing tutors on the trips with us to help with the study halls and the study times. And then we're also just looking at scheduling and how we can make sure that when we have the opportunity to schedule over spring break or other breaks we do it and go out maybe spend two weekends on the East Coast and get four or five competitions in without missing any class. So lots of different ways to do it. You know we can use the beginning of January before classes start. We can use spring break and each of those provides an opportunity to to get games without missing class. Oliver I'm going to kind of one more question for you Jim. Oliver I'm going to come to you next. I'm interested in your own perspective about the travel impacts and ways we we might mitigate it. And what about in terms of cost Jim? I mean how serious a hit do you think the program is going to take because of increased travel costs next year or is that too soon to tell? Yeah I think we're really working that those details right now because we really haven't haven't received the final schedules on anything but football. We've got football right now and we'll have four away games. One of the away games will be Stanford every other year. The other away game will be SMU. So we'll go to the East Coast three times a year and we're working through those numbers both for football and for the other sports as the schedules come out. But we imagine there'll be an impact up to four or five million dollars of travel and as we now refine it with you know working with Stanford and the scheduling we think that we might be able to trim some of that off once we finally get the schedules. Thanks Jim. So Oliver your own perspective as an educators vice provost faculty athletics representative how concerned are you about the travel impact and how confident are you that will be able to mitigate some of those impacts. So I'm concerned about I'm concerned about the travel the impact for our student athletes but I think it's part of a broader a broader issue that we have of accommodating students. So some of the some of the some of the impact we I'm working with the faculty athletic council which is a senate committee to come up with guidance for the senate and recommendations to the senate we'll be meeting tomorrow to discuss those to present them to the division council. I'm hopeful that those will help improve the situation for our student athletes. On a broader level I think we need to do more as a campus to accommodate students and to provide them more support. So I feel this is part of a broader a broader issue for our campus. It's come out you know it's part of coming out of COVID that are accommodating students. The landscape has changed dramatically and I think what students' expectations not just student athletes but all students their expectations are different. And so as an institution we need to adjust to that as well. So I'm hopeful that this will inspire change a positive change throughout the entire campus. So I'm actually feeling I feel good about this. On the other hand I think we will need to provide more tutoring support for our student athletes when they are traveling proctoring support and we will also just need to continually assess our student athletes as they travel to see what we can do just to continue to support them. I don't think it's going to be we put these systems in place and everything is fine for the next 5 or 10 years. I think we will need to continually monitor to make sure that they have the support they need. You know I know there's been a lot of discussion on this call about NIL but what we need to remember too is that most of our student athletes while many of them will be Olympians or are Olympians and will represent their nations including the United States at world championships they will they will not be professional athletes. Yeah. And so we need to set them up for success just like we need to set all of our students up for success. So many of them while they come here as student athletes in 10 years from now they will not be professional athletes and so helping them launch properly to a successful professional career is something that I consider to be really really important for us as a campus to do. Thanks Oliver. Carol I want to come back to you there's a number of questions about the stadium and about debt it's an important issue and a number of the questions repeat something that we actually recently discovered wasn't true that Cal athletics has the largest debt in the country and one of the reasons is is that the Knight Foundation which compiles those data still considers all of the stadium debt to be on athletics books but you made a decision to change that and so if you could describe that decision why you made it and its impact and where things stand with the stadium and the debt. I certainly can the debt service on the stadium together with the high together with the renovations to the stadium and the high performance facility for athletics is about 20 million and that includes about half of that is the seismic reinforcement of the stadium and I decided early on as I was trying to create a a plan for the athletics budget that it wasn't fair to ask the athletics department to bear the burden of the seismic retrofit of the stadium we don't ask any other department to bear the burden of the seismic retrofit of their buildings so I took approximately half of that debt service onto the books of the campus and saying the athletics deciding the athletics department should be responsible for the renovations to the stadium and the enhancements to the stadium and also the high performance center. Got it and I was interested you mentioned earlier about better ways to monetize the stadium what could that possibly mean? Oh Taylor Swift you know somehow I knew I knew she was going to come up in this conversation she comes up in every conversation so I we haven't used in part because of an agreement with the panoramic hill neighbors which expires in the very early 2030s that may have been expired before that we haven't been using the stadium for other kinds of events soccer matches for example or concerts and I think that there is a real opportunity to create an income stream there much like we use the Greek as an income stream for Cal performances in order to help athletics with the current budget challenges that it's facing. Got it so we are just about at time we did our best to get to a number of questions I hope we hit the main points but I want to go around the horn again as it were with that final question and ask each of you and Jim I'm going to start with you on this one where do we want to be in five years and where do we realistically I mean want to be in five years if if things work out according to your hopes and wishes and all the things you're working on where will Cal athletics be five years from now well Dan I think I'd start by saying Carol Chris would still be the chancellor in my vision of of the next five years so we'll have to work on that with Carol but you know what I'd like to have is the enterprise of Intercollegiate Athletics stabilizes there's been so much chaos and so much change you know in five years I'm hoping that we get back down to a more reasonable battle rhythm of what happens I'd like to continue to support our student athletes the same way we do and I really want to be able to get to a point we have a long term sustainable financial model and and that's what we're working on the chancellor and I and and Max and Oliver and and others so that it is sustainable it's we're generating more revenue we continue to maintain our expenses at a reasonable level and and I think that's important part of this athletic department and and we also want to continue to represent through Olympians and national championships along with great graduation success rate so that's my dream my vision and I'm going to have to start talking to the chancellor about the next five years right but she's still not ready to play defense just on a Saturday afternoon I just want you to know that Oliver same question five years from now if you could have it your way of where you'd like to see Cal athletics and its relationship to the campus so I would like to see the the relationship become closer I would like to see our student athletes have an improved sense of belonging to the campus I'd also like us to take advantage of this moment and this turbulence to make campus a better place for all of our students and to help think about how we can support our instructors to do that so take this as an opportunity to work collectively together ideally in five years time I'd like us to look back at this time and and say wow this is a pretty challenging time for Berkeley we all everybody joined in together to find solutions so we are in a better place now than we were five years ago because we've done this in the past we've ridden through turbulent times before together and we I'm really confident that we can do that now if we put our minds to it together thank you for that max same question so I don't think I have much more to add here I think what it means to be a university community in a higher education environment that is undergoing really turbulent times and we're trying to figure out what it means to be a public university in this new environment of higher education where cost structures are changing where what students think a higher education means is changing is key and athletics is part of what the American college experience or university experience is like but I think we should think about how do we how do we put it on a sustainable financial footing and how do we learn from each other so I'm sure there's something I could learn from my coaching colleagues about how to be a better instructor and how to better motivate my students to do their their reading and I'm sure there's something they could learn from us so really thinking about the big picture without a successful financial model it's not going to work so that's clearly a necessary condition but I think it's much broader than that thank you and Carol I know Jim is not going to get his primary wish but yours from now what would you hope for the university and Cal athletics well I feel like I should channel a number of our alumni and say we would be at the Rose Bowl but you know am I going to live to see Cal in another Rose Bowl and I say I don't know how old are you but I I think my colleagues have have have you know said what my goals are also very well I want financial stability a healthy stable financial framework for athletics I want a wonderful experience for our student athletes I want the kinds of national regulation like NIL that will help stabilize the world of college athletics and so how can I end but say go Bears and with that I will reciprocate with another go Bears I want to thank all of you for your time for joining us today I think we got to most of the questions but just maybe we may have to do another one of these down the road because there's certainly a lot to chew on and think about here I want to thank all of you for joining us and hope you'll join us again on December 12th when I'll be talking to Chancellor Christ about the semester that's wrapping up and the semester ahead which will be her last on the UC Berkeley campus in that corner office thanks everybody thank you thank you