Caine Remains Positive About Future of Collegiate Athletics : UC Irvine: Former Anteater athletic director retiring after 30 years as coach and administrator.

After more than 30 years in college athletics, UC Irvine’s John Caine remains, rather remarkably, an optimist. He believes the NCAA basically does a good job, that college athletes should play for love of the game and not for pay, and that one day a football team will wear UC Irvine jerseys.

Caine stepped down as athletic director at Irvine last September, when an ongoing financial crisis prompted Chancellor Jack Peltason to restructure the department. Caine stayed on as a special assistant for athletic planning to Peltason during the past year. He is retiring from the university June 30, and this week looked back on his career.

Caine, 65, began his career as a basketball coach and went on to become athletic director at four major colleges, including Cal State Fullerton and Irvine, Orange County’s two NCAA Division I schools.

He oversaw the start of the Fullerton football program in 1970, hiring as its first coach Dick Coury, now a Ram assistant coach. In 1972, after four years at Fullerton, he became athletic director at San Jose State, where he hired football coach Darryl Rogers, who later became coach of the Detroit Lions.

Caine moved to the Pacific-10 Conference in 1976, becoming athletic director at Oregon. He resigned in 1981 after an academic scandal involving the football program, although an investigation showed he had no knowledge of the violations.

He arrived at Irvine in 1983, with “recharged batteries,” as he described it then. During his six years, he was involved in the building of the 5,000-seat Bren Center, which replaced tiny, 1,496-seat Crawford Hall.

Caine’s thoughts on a range of topics follow.

On the NCAA: “Without the NCAA, there would be absolute anarchy in college sports, and it wouldn’t be any fun. We wouldn’t have the championships, we wouldn’t have the concern for the students.

“I’m not saying at various times I don’t disagree with what the NCAA does. Despite all its faults and handicaps, it works.

“If it didn’t have power, then again there would be anarchy. We wouldn’t have controls. Everybody thinks it’s a mess. OK, it’s a mess. What would you do to change it? When you get through thinking that out, you think maybe they’re not doing such a bad job.”

On cheating: “I never liked cheaters when I was a coach. Incidentally, I did very little of it along the way. I did a little bit, everybody does. Most people I know in this business have been pretty clean. Most people run a pretty clean ship.

“When people go out and design a way to cheat and break the rules, those are the people you like to see nailed. The small mistakes, taking an athlete to the airport, those rules I have trouble with.

“There is degree involved. There is the very severe degree where the academic prestige of the university is involved, or where I buy you a car or I get your parents a home. There’s that as opposed to more minimal offenses.

“I’ve turned people in, in a casual manner. Not flamboyantly or secretly. I have mentioned to authorities that I think this or that needs to be investigated. I’ve done that to the NCAA, to the conference, to the person themselves. I say, ‘Knock it off. You can make it without doing that. You’re a fool.’ ”

On the Bren Center: “Our athletic program would have come to a grinding halt if we had not replaced Crawford Hall. One year UNLV was ranked second in the country and Fresno State was ranked eighth, and they played back-to-back games in Crawford Hall. We had to build the Bren Events center. The administration is not happy with the debt, but I don’t think they blame me.”

On basketball coach Bill Mulligan: “There’s nobody else close to the record Bill has against (UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian, whose teams Mulligan has beaten six times in the 1980s).”

On last season’s 5-23 record: “I have a lot of confidence in Bill. Look at his record (484-255 in 24 seasons, 10 at Irvine). That’s how you judge a coach, over all those years. I’ve got confidence Bill will get it straightened out. He had some breakdowns in recruiting and the play of upperclassmen.”

On Cal State Fullerton football: “Langsdorf (William B., then university president) came to me and said, ‘Let’s get football going.’ How much money did we have? Seven-thousand dollars. I told that to Dick Coury, and he couldn’t believe it.

“What’s happened in the ensuing 20 years is they’ve struggled. They had two very fine years. They’ve grown competitively, and Gene Murphy has done an excellent job. I really admire him.

“I’ve been very disappointed in the support Fullerton has gotten, football-wise. It deserves much more. Of course, it will always be difficult in the Southern California entertainment arena. There are wrestling matches going on all over the place. Body-slams everywhere.”

On UC Irvine’s prospects for football: “I personally do not think we will ever be a completely mature athletic program until we get the sport of football. My recommendation is not to play Division I, but to put a program on the (Division III) level and then go to the (Division II) level with non-scholarship players, playing against schools like UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara. I prefer (Division II) without scholarships. Scholarships are very expensive, even at the state university level.

“There are some real ifs. If the student body will agree to support football with an operational budget--no scholarships--and if the community will agree to build a special building. We have to have those variables where the conventional budget would not be impacted. I’d be the first to say, let’s get it going as soon as we can.”

On Fullerton’s football schedule: “Fullerton plays nationally (ranked teams). True, it gets skinned or skunked, but it plays nationally.”

On the prospect of Irvine playing major college football: “I don’t think it’s out of the question we’ll be playing UCLA, Stanford, USC. I have this confidence that UC Irvine is going to grow into a mighty force one of these days.

“I have dreams of Florida 65, UC Irvine, 66.”

On small college football: “Can’t we operate differently (than USC)? Can’t we play football for love of the game? Is that not possible?”

On alumni support: “A small number of people have just done a great job here. That was the key, I think, to the success of the Bren Events Center campaign. But the problem at UCI, Long Beach State and Fullerton is we just don’t have enough people involved. That to me is a reflection more on the alumni than anybody else. I don’t mean be critical; some do help but not enough do. There is a reason for that, partly because there are younger alumni.”

On the scandal at Oregon: “The Oregon thing was very hard, the last year of scandal. After it was over, I wanted to get out of there. Oregon took its licks, took its penalties. Before I got this job, you want to imagine how much UCI checked me out? I hadn’t been aware of what was going on. That’s a little hard for people to believe. Frankly, I understand. How can a guy be this close to the situation and not know? I think it’s possible for an athletic director to not know. It happened to me.”

On the past year: “To go from hands-on to the hypothetical is an experience. If I would have had a clue that I would be asked to move into the chancellor’s office, I probably would have retired. But I was asked to stay on, to do this planning, which I agreed to do.”

On his career: “The athletes over the years have been just great. In all my years, there haven’t been more than three or four kids I didn’t like. There’ve been three or four real pills. I’ve enjoyed almost all the others. I see what they’ve done with there lives. I’ll throw a couple of names at you: Tod Murphy, a fine young fellow. Chris Duplanty, just a great kid. Buffy Rabbitt. Johnny Rogers. Scott Brooks. I don’t want to leave people out, but I can’t name them all.”