At This School, Sports Never Has Been No. 1

In its quest for excellence and prestige, UC Irvine has built top-ranked programs in biomedical research and evolutionary biology and has recruited renowned scholars. Its literature department has become the U.S. center for the esoteric discipline of deconstructionism.

Yet in UCI’s 28 years of inventing itself, competitive athletics--prized at many major universities as the glue that binds students, alumni, faculty and the community--has never been viewed as a central mission of the campus. Tellingly, its sporting complex is outside the hub of most campus commerce and is barely visible.

“Athletics has not been a priority at all,” said UCI anatomy professor James Fallon, who served four years as the academic representative for athletics and fought unsuccessfully to win faculty support for a university football team in 1990.

“In the campus efforts to become a world-class university, I think a lot of people thought it wouldn’t make sense to spend a lot of money on sports,” said one UCI faculty member who got his undergraduate degree at the university.

To be sure, Chancellor Jack W. Peltason and top UCI administrators believe that athletics is an important part of campus life.

Even as UCI eliminates three men’s athletics programs to balance a budget deficit and provide sexual equity, campus officials are adamant about playing at Division I level under National Collegiate Athletics Assn. rules, even though dropping to a lower level could save money.

“The feeling of the administration and the feeling we have is that Division I is appropriate for the growth potential of the institution,” UCI Athletic Director Tom Ford said.

Added Horace Mitchell, UCI’s vice chancellor for student affairs: “We think it’s important because it becomes an additional outlet for students, providing ways of expressing their interests and talents. It also helps to build a sense of school pride and spirit, and . . . provides avenues for the campus and the off-campus community to come together.”

Yet Peltason, who was unavailable for comment Tuesday, has always placed academics first. He was one of the leaders of an NCAA commission that in the early 1980s recommended toughening academic requirements for student athletes and emphasizing education as the central purpose of the nation’s universities.

“He was one of the main proponents to put the student back into the student athlete,” Fallon said.

UCI student body president Jose Solorio was upset Tuesday after learning of the sports program cuts. “It will be an outrage to students on campus,” he predicted. Moreover, it’s another example of “students paying more for less,” he said, citing student fees, which have nearly doubled since 1990.

“I would rather the university consider maybe once again delaying merit raises for staff. To the extent possible, we should try to protect as many student services and programs as possible.”

Yet student interest in sports has never been high at UCI. Men’s baseball, the second-most popular sporting activity, drew only $4,500 in gate receipts. And past efforts to launch a football program have fallen flat.

In a straw vote about four years ago, UCI students overwhelmingly rejected adding football.

To some, student apathy over athletics is part and parcel of an anti-sports culture that has evolved at UCI since it was founded in the turbulent 1960s.

“There was really a sentiment among the transplanted faculty that was anti-sports, especially anti-football,” Fallon said. “Somehow, in their minds, they equated football with war.”

Founding Chancellor Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. was himself a top-notch athlete and quietly supported starting a football program at UCI up until his death in 1990. But chancellors as strong as Aldrich or his successor, Peltason, must contend with faculty opinion.

“They have to respond to the will of the faculty itself, and there is a zeitgeist out there, a resentment and a resistance to athletics, especially football,” Fallon said.

Political scientist William R. Schonfeld, dean of UCI’s school of social sciences, agrees that athletics is “character-building” for students. But if the university must absorb cuts that may be as large as $15 million in the coming year, something has to give, he said.

Besides, he and others argue that sports are a supplement to, not the heart of, the university experience.

“Second-class universities have first-class sports teams,” Schonfeld said. “Look at who wins. Have you ever seen Harvard win a sports championship? And who wouldn’t rather go to Harvard than the University of Alabama?”

In fact, Harvard University’s hockey team won the national championship in 1989.

Supporters say it is unfair to compare the youthful university to such mature institutions and athletic powers as UCLA or Stanford.

By any measure, Vice Chancellor Mitchell said, research and academic programs will remain the “clear first priorities” of the university. “Athletics and other things will come after that.”

Times staff writer Robyn Norwood contributed to this report.