UCI Athletic Director Quits in Frustration
UC Irvine Athletic Director Tom Ford, frustrated by an ongoing budget crisis and repeatedly at odds with some members of the university administration, announced Monday that he is resigning after little more than two years at UCI.
“I think the frustrations and the projections of what we’re going to have to do in the future just were really hard to deal with,” said Ford, who in May announced plans to drop baseball, men’s track and men’s cross-country because of financial problems. “For me to consider going to a brand new job with a lot of potential for success--it didn’t take much consideration.”
Ford, 50, will become assistant executive director of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, a professional organization based in Kansas City and headed by former Big West Conference Commissioner Jim Haney. Haney was named to the position in June.
Though Ford has had an increasingly strained relationship with his direct supervisor, Horace Mitchell, vice chancellor for student affairs, Mitchell said Ford was not pressured to leave.
“He was not forced to resign, I can say that unequivocally,” Mitchell said. “We respect his decision to do something different and appreciate the contribution he’s made in the two years he’s been here.”
Mitchell said that an interim director will be named to take over after Ford’s departure Aug. 1 and that a committee will be appointed to oversee a national search for a replacement.
Ford, a former athletic director at the University of Houston who resigned that position abruptly in 1986, was named to the UCI post in May, 1990. UCI was providing at least partial funding for 17 NCAA sports then. That figure now stands at 12 after departmental budget cuts of $700,000 in 1991 and another $518,477 this year reduced the department budget to $2.65 million. Some of UCI’s sports programs operate without benefit of university funding.
“The timing of taking (the UCI) position couldn’t have been worse in terms of implementing the kinds of programs that would solve the financial problems--because of the economy, the transition in basketball coaches, and because there hadn’t been anyone in the community promoting and marketing UC Irvine athletics,” Ford said.
One of the final, though lesser, blows to the athletic department during Ford’s tenure was the recent decision to lay off the chief athletic fund-raiser, Mike Tracey. The department’s marketing position already had been left vacant, and Ford was to inherit both the marketing and fund-raising duties.
“Prior to me arriving, the positions had been occupied by three people,” Ford said. “For one person to do those three jobs is not realistic, especially when that one person is the athletic director.”
However, the main catalyst for Ford’s departure may well have been Mitchell’s decision to allow supporters an opportunity to revive the discontinued men’s track and cross-country programs.
In a June meeting with angry boosters, Ford began addressing the group by saying that the sports could not be revived. Mitchell, speaking after him, agreed without Ford’s prior knowledge to give the supporters a chance, later announcing that the sports will be reinstated for 1992-93 if $70,000 is raised by Aug. 3. Some in attendance at that meeting said Ford appeared visibly stunned by Mitchell’s pledge.
“I think he felt he was hung out to dry there,” said Jim Fallon, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology in the College of Medicine who is a friend of Ford and a former faculty athletic adviser. “When a person perceives that they have none of the power but all of the responsibility, that person will ask himself, ‘What am I doing here?’ ”
Ford, who also disagreed with Mitchell’s desire to have former UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard considered for the post of men’s basketball coach last year, said he was concerned when he interviewed for the athletic director’s job about reporting to a vice chancellor rather than Chancellor Jack W. Peltason, which Ford said is a more typical arrangement. Fallon was also critical of the chain of authority.
Mitchell called disagreements with Ford “the usual issues about budget targets and fund-raising targets.”
Fallon said Ford’s resignation was prompted by a variety of factors.
“A fair number of things conspired to make the job tough . . . the economic climate, combined with just the lack of funds,” Fallon said. “We’ve had a chronic lack of funding in athletics to run a Division I program. We went from Division II to Division I (major college division) without ever upping the support. . . . I think they were trying to run on fumes forever here.”
Elsewhere across the campus, nearly 30 other staff members and administrators have been laid off since early June as the university tries to pare $15 million from its state operating fund budget of about $150 million, which is about a third of the campus’s overall budget.
No faculty members have been targeted for layoff because Peltason and other university officials have said preservation of all academic programs is their first budget priority.
The university also plans to eliminate another 30 contract positions for maintenance workers and groundskeepers, who are not considered “university employees” and as such would not be included in a layoff tally.
The athletic department, already dealt a blow by the plans to eliminate baseball and the other two sports, adds Ford to the list of departing staff members.
“Given the chance, I think he had an understanding of how to run this athletic department,” said Vince O’Boyle, director of track and cross-country at UCI. “We’re in a major recession and that’s been one of the major stumbling blocks to bringing in the money to support programs at the Division I level. It’s really tough right now.”
Times staff writer Kristina Lindgren contributed to this story.
FORD NOT THE FIRST: Fund constraints have cost other UCI coaches jobs. C1
Tom Ford at a Glance
At UC Irvine: His two-year, three-month tenure as athletic director was marked by budget problems, which in May forced the school to drop baseball, men’s track and field and men’s cross-country. Ford helped reduce a 1991-92 projected budget deficit of $319,000 to $188,000. He also hired coaches to head both the men’s (Rod Baker) and women’s (Colleen Matsuhara) basketball programs.
Previously: After spending 15 years in a variety of administrative roles at University of the Pacific, Ford served seven years in the Houston athletic administration, including two (1984-86) as athletic director. He resigned in 1986 because he disagreed with the university’s handling of an investigation into alleged NCAA violations involving improper payments to football players. Ford went on to work for Raycom Inc. as a negotiator of college sports television packages and for the University of Arizona Extended University in Phoenix, where he served as a manager overseeing classes, budgeting, faculty selection, marketing and promotions.
Next stop: Ford will become assistant executive director of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, which is based in Kansas City. He will join new NABC Executive Director Jim Haney, who resigned his post as Big West Conference commissioner in June.