OT - Cal golf team the collegiate sports story of the year.
First, the headline. The California Golden Bears mens golf team is the number one team in the nation, as the NCAA finals begin at Georgia Tech's home course this week. By itself, to non-golfers, that headline would be totally unremarkable. But it is without any doubt in my mind the most amazing collegiate sports story of the year. If the Golden Bears win the tournament (no sure thing), they'd doubtless be the story of the year, ahead of even Michigan's youth-movement run for the NCAA basketball title in March.
There are two equally amazing things about Cal golf right now. First, is the way that they have dominated competitions that were supposed to be close. Unlike a lot of big-time golf programs (Oklahoma State, Stanford, Texas, Alabama, Georgia Tech, UCLA, USC, etc.) Cal doesn't win with two or three stud recruits. Cal puts out a team where four or five guys play with unbelievable balance. They are all playing some very good golf. And they have been destroying some of the best competition in the nation. The Pac 12 (with golf powers Stanford, Washington, UCLA, USC and Oregon) is always loaded. They are more "the SEC of golf" than even the SEC is the SEC of golf.
The second amazing thing about Cal is that they don't have any stud recruits at all. Because the golf team was, uh, cut by the Cal athletic department. That's right; they don't get any funding. None. Zero. They have a bare-bones budget, and they have to scrounge all of their funds themselves, privately.
Imagine, say, that Michigan's hockey team was cut due to budget constraints. And that with no funding, the players determined that they wanted to play anyway, and had to raise the funds to pay Red Berenson, and support a team. And that even while doing that, they made it to the NCAAs as the number one team in the country.
So now the NCAA tournament finals begin this week in Atlanta, and it will be a very tough haul for the Cal Golden Bears, because of the new (since 2009) tournament format. What used to be a gigantic accumulated-total stroke play event (Cal would be heavily favored if that were the format) is now a team match play event. Imagine the Ryder Cup, only as an event over six days with 16 teams playing.
The new tournament format makes for one of the most exciting golf tournaments I know of. I saw the last day in 2009 when it was at Inverness in Toledo. And the Michigan team led by Lion Kim had made an unlikely run to the semi-finals losing the day before. The whole thing in '09 was decided on the last day, in the last match of the day, on the last hole, by the last approach shot from out of the right rough on 18. Producing Texas A&M's first national championship in anything. Unbelievable. The new team-matchplay format also creates an environment for massive upset potential through the week, given what can happen in match play. Sort of like the NCAA basketball tournament, but squeezed into six days instead of two weeks.
Texas A&M winning in '09. This is funny video to me, because I was standing next to the guy who hit the last shot and saw the whole thing right in front of me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UnwZzVDZic
The tournament is apparently being shown only on NCAA.com. Maybe that's good; anybody can stream it I think. Unlike something like ESPN6 or NBCObscureSportsNetwork. The Golf Channel is really missing the boat by not broadcasting this one live.
If you live in Atlanta, by all means try to take this one in.
Div. I Championship page is here:
http://www.ncaa.com/championships/golf-men/d1
The amazing story of Cal golf is here:
http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Self-funded-Cal-golf-team-the-favorite-at-NCAAs-4551459.php
FAQ's on why Cal got into its sports budget bind, complete with obligatory mention of how Title IX always screws things up:
What Mitch Album puff piece did you crib all this verbiage from?
Nothing about this story is overly interesting. Kudos to anyone who made it to the end.
Impressed by the kids and their dedication to Cal - but lets face it, golf is not basketball or even hockey - if there is a sport that doesn't need scholarships and funding and can survive on the backs of wealthy parents and donors, golf is it - and I love the game as much as anyone.
Good story, yes - sports story of the year? No. I can think of a few dozen stories that were more inspriational to me personally.
but you are right. It is an extremely expensive sport to get started in, let alone to continue playing in college. I would believe that most of those kids have the means to fund it themselves. The comments on this thread, by the way, are crackin' me up.
Maybe lacrosse? I wonder about skiing or fencing.
Hockey has to be up there, but I agree M couldn't fund the team privately. Maybe some of the smaller schools on the east coast could, though.
Crew and equestrian would be way up there also, and probably tennis too. Lacrosse and to a lesser extent hockey skew to wealthy demographics, but since they require much larger teams, the costs would likely be much higher (albeit you'd be drawing funds from a larger group of parents).
I would love to see some more research done into this topic - which sports lend themselves most (and least) to being self-funded.
Demographically, I don't think you could put together a team of future pros on their own dime. A freak player like JMFJ or even Trouba doesn't need to have (a lot of) money in their family to make it as far as they have, but once you start getting to the second and third tier of players a lot of it can come down to coaching and what club dues a family could afford to pay to see good competition and just keep the player on the ice.
I think you could build a team at Yale or wherever that would compete, and they might even get a deep roster, but they would definitely have problems getting to a NC caliber (I'm thinking specifically goalies).
Didn't consider tennis, but anything that needs a lot of individual lessons will probably trend to higher income brackets. I'd bet pitchers on baseball and softball teams tend to be above average for the team, for example.
social class:
http://irs.sagepub.com/content/37/2/219.short
http://irs.sagepub.com/content/40/4/411.short
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379709000932
http://whartonsportsbiz.org/documents/research/TitleIXandtheEvolutionofHighSchooSports-11-07.pdf
I haven't had a chance to read through significant portions of any of the articles but a cursory skim reveals them to be germane to the topic.
As someone whose family was involved in travel hockey, big time tennis, and memberships at golf clubs (and golf lessons), I can tell you hockey is far and away the most expensive sport. My last year of travel hockey was $5000 per player for ice time alone. Hockey equipment is obviously not cheap (skates now are 600-1000 bucks) and usually must be replaced every year and I usually went through 2 $150 sticks a month. This was 15 years ago and wasn't really even high level hockey. I can't imagine what big time AAA hockey out of Detroit must cost now, but I'd ball park its in the $15000 range. And in order to get to college level hockey, you have to play at that level, there is no cheap alternative.
My siblings were both all state tennis players who had some small school college interest. They had private lessons most weeks, memberships at indoor courts and travelled to tournaments throughout the Midwest, but the cost of that still came no where near my hockey. Tennis racquets aren't cheap, but that's pretty much your only equipment and they last a lot longer than hockey sticks.
Golf to me seems to be in a similar bracket as tennis. You have to have private lessons and clubs, which are expensive, but like tennis racquets, don't have to be replaced often. It certainly would help to be a member at a country club, but you don't have to belong to Oakland Hills or Warwick to be a college level golfer. Play well for your high school (which costs nothing) and win some regional tournaments and you'll get noticed.
I played everything from house to AA to HS hockey, fourteen years in all. In my experience the best players on the team aren't usually the wealthiest, and I've heard some crazy stories about AAA level youth clubs and what gets the 2-3rd line guys onto teams.
The converse of that is what would happen if, say, the Trouba family didn't have a ton of money. From what I've heard, they'll offer dues cuts that scale to income to allow great players to play for their club without paying what the bottom few players pay. That doesn't cover five new Synergy's and the Marriot room in Toronto, but it still allows for a family with relatively lower resources to afford a spot on the same team.
Katherine Webb. That is all.
Quit your drinkin', Brent.
Wait, I got this. Here's how the post should have read...
"Wow, the Cal men's golf team got their funding cut, paid for the season all by themselves and now is the favorite in the NCAA tourney. Prety crazy." <Link>
Weak. You shoulda haiku'd it with 5/7/5 syllable format ftw:
Cal golf team's fund cut
Yet they are still #1
Crazy man crazy
I believe you mean to say
Cal golf team's fund cut
Yet they are still #1
It's like they had subs
I have to say Mantei Te'o has to be the story of the year or Lance armstrong admitting to doping. After this story 100s of college athletic departments cut nonrevenue sports to try and copy Cals golf teams success.
about the high academic standing of the University of Michigan and how much more demanding our educational standards are than those laughable institutions in East Lansing and Columbus will at the same time whine about the length of a post that's more than two paragraphs long. I guess moving your lips while you read gets tiring for more than that.
if you could name specific users who fall into both categories.
But of course you won't, which is par for the course when you bitch about other Michigan fans.
by my unwillingness to read a 1000 word post on the Cal golf team. Hell, I probably should just go ahead and stop reading Dostoyevsky for fun then.
You would have read it if it was written in Russian? You and your 33 letters can take a hike!
if every surname sounds the same and/or sinister and none of the nicknames make any goddamn sense.
Brevity is the soul of wit. Just because someone rambles on for 1000 words doesn't make their point more cohesive or intelligent.
Being accurate, however, is much more important than being brief.
The story is 650 words, give or take hyperlinks.
Long yes. That long? No.
I have a feeling the median income for families whose kids play golf at Cal is substantial.
Definitely should have put the tl;dr version up top, although I did read the whole thing.
Impressive story, but I think Kyle Dake, the Cornell wrestler who became the first person to ever win 4 straight national championships in 4 different weight classes, is at least as compelling.
A group of suburban kids banned together beat the odds (1:1) to make it to the NCAA championships in Atlanta. Armed with only Trust Funds and a lob wedge the Cal Bears looked down a barrell of a pop gun to find their destiny in this months 30for30.
Country Club Vigilanties
Tuesday at 9pm.
Your Texas A&M claim sounded specious so I looked it up. According to wikipedia the Aggies won national championships in softball in 1983 and 1987 and they claim national championships in football in 1919, 1927, and 1929. They have several national championships since 2009 including track & field and woman's basketball.
I always think it's interesting when underdogs win so thanks for posting.
Way to blame everything on Title IX.
/sexist
/butsrsly
Not sure if serious.
I live in Atlanta, and have played Capital City at Crabapple several times (with success, my high school won their region championship there), and will be going to root Cal on at least 3 of the days. As a pretty crazed UGA fan, I can't bring myself to root for Tech. Go Golden Bears.
And sometimes I feel bad for Section 1. He has a pretty poor stigma about him that people are naturally leery of anything he posts.
That being said, this is an extremely loquacious post, as most of his posts are. And this comes from someone who is often long-winded in his own comments. I read the whole thing, it was interesting, but the same thing could have been said in much fewer words. Not worth negging as many are (it's still board-worthy and interesting, and it's not like it's just a block of words or a repeat-posting), but that's par for the course sometimes.
I'm with you on this one - I don't think Section 1 deserves the negging he's getting on this post. It's a good topic and one I hadn't been aware of previously. Sure it's longer than it needs to be and overly dramatic, but it wouldn't be a Section 1 post if he wasn't trying to emulate Rosenberg.
You may need to remind people who "Rosenberg" is. lol.
That scar still oozes a little.
I cannot fathom how they can afford to run that golf team without any support. They must have some pretty big friends of the program or the parents all have deep pockets, etc.
The commenter "Monica's Dad" in the Cal budget crisis article made some pretty salient points about Title IX. Help a few, hurt a lot.
I have some experience in athletic administration at a MAC school, so I can provide some context on the cost of a golf program, but I'm not at all suggesting MAC costs parallel those of a program like Cal. That being said, the men's golf program that I'm most familiar with received school support of around $125,000 per year, most of that for coaching salaries and travel/events. The program probably raised another $30,000 in donations on a good year to augment school support. If I recall correctly, the athletes were responsible for providing most of thier equipment. The amount I reported for school support would not include the cost of scholarships or room/board provided to students, if any. The linked article in the OP reports the Cal budget is $600,000. That seems like more than just a bare bones budget to me but again my context is in the midwest at a school that's never funded its program at even a quarter of the reported amount.
It looks to me like they are not only able to run the program without school support but fund it at a level that many other programs would envy, even with school support.
Given that the SF Bay Area has more millionaires and billionaires per capita than any other region of the US (many of them being Berkeley alums with an affinity for golf), the 'no school funding' aspect of the story isn't really as impressive as it seems. I'm sure they had no trouble lining up donors to cover the program's costs.
Cliff notes:
Cal Bears golf's fundless
Yet dominate they have
Amazing story
A lot of the snark in these comments boils down to the sentiment that white kids do not need scholarships because their families are already wealthy.
The only occurrence of the word "White" anywhere in this thread so far is in your comment.
I neglected to mention the occasional Asian-American athlete who slips into the pool of those students who are unworthy of scholarship. Therefore, my entire point is invalid! The demographics of college football's Bulsworth Award nominees are merely a recurrent anomaly.
You're an idiot.
That's a great story. Thanks for sharing, section 1. I wonder if the success of this team will in anyway influence the Athletic Department to do anything/everything to bring the team back to varsity status.
.............MgoDoublePost............
Not sure why everyone is dogpiling on your writeup. It was clearly labeled OT and is an interesting story.