Comments on: UC Davis hires new athletic director

By: Amie Puehler

Amie Puehler — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:37:06 +0000

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By: Sad

Sad — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:22:50 +0000

I agree with Appalled. I was a varsity student athlete at UCD when it was DII. During orientation the coach told us that he would hear if we we not succeeding as students long before grades came out. Now the athletic director gets bonuses that having nothing to do with how the athletes are doing as students. This creates a financial incentive to ignore the real reason to be at a university. Sad.

By: Appalled

Appalled — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:38:51 +0000

As a former DII athlete in the old NCAC and a UCD alum, I am appalled at the list of incentives outlined in this article. With transition from DII to DI, many of us feared that the athletic program would lose sight of the “student” athlete emphasis, and that is exactly what appears to have happened. These five incentives are associated with a win-at-all-cost philosophy and devalue all of the hard work being done by the coaches and athletes in the other less recognized sports, even though teams such as water polo, swimming, soccer, volleyball, and others achieve at levels so much higher than football, basketball, and baseball. I think that is time that the Aggies return to their proud roots by abolishing these incentives and replacing them with ones that support the mission of the university – the “student” athlete.

By: John Troidl

John Troidl — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 02:39:29 +0000

Well, this seems to be a good story. Always nice to see a fellow Bruin (UCLA MBA as well) doing well…. but this article does remind me that I do kinda remember some lessons from B-School about being thoughtful about incentives.

So, let’s look at the incentives here…… nearly $50K in incentives for accomplishing a certain type of goal: Team level athletic accomplishment. Well, that’s fine. Emphasizing athletic teamwork is certainly a good thing as it is sometimes given short shrift on the academic side…. particularly for undergrads.

But it seems like something is still missing here! What would it be? Oh, yeah, the “student” part of “student athlete” which is a part of our local culture!

How about incentives for meeting certain hurdle graduation rates? Or even “Average Team GPA”? How about community service standards for athletes? (Gonna get some response on that one, I bet!).

We all know that there is a lot of good … and a lot of bad to collegiate level sports. But it is also clear that there’s a lot more to sports than just the trophies. And we should incentivize our leaders accordingly.

Maybe that narrow set of 5 incentives should be reviewed and broadened to include some additional key variables….. that reflect some important academic and community values.