UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK / ROBYN NORWOOD : Ford Now Working Within a Budget He Can Live With

Out in the wooded suburbs of Kansas City, in a vast corporate park where the addresses are as confounding as any in Irvine, Tom Ford is still digging into his dwindling stash to hand out Anteater lapel pins.

“Looks like a pig that told a lie,” said Brian Hakan, a licensing agent visiting the offices of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, where Ford, the former UC Irvine athletic director, is assistant executive director under former Big West Commissioner Jim Haney.

“You’re hyper,” a co-worker told Ford the day after the UC Irvine men’s basketball team arrived for the Golden Harvest Classic in Kansas City. “You must have gotten to see the Anteaters last night.”

Ford resigned at Irvine in July, prompted to leave because of the budget crisis and an ongoing conflict with Horace Mitchell, vice chancellor for student affairs who oversees athletics.

The two clashed on fund-raising expectations and budget decisions, but Ford says one of the final straws came when Mitchell told track and cross-country boosters he would give them a chance to raise money to revive the men’s teams that Ford and Mitchell had agreed would be dropped because of funding problems and gender-equity concerns.

“Jim asked me about this position before the infamous day in Crawford Gym when Horace, how would you call it, undermined me,” Ford said. “That was the day that made the difference. I think it was actually on my birthday, June 10. I called Jim the next day, June 11.

“I left shortly after (Mitchell) told me you can’t replace (fund raiser) Mike Tracey, you can’t hire a marketing director. I felt I was getting set up for failure. I did exactly what he wanted me to do--I resigned.”

Ford doesn’t ooze bitterness about the parting, but admits he felt vindicated when the first three finalists to replace him as athletic director withdrew from consideration. Brad Rothermel, the former Nevada Las Vegas athletic director and Irvine’s apparent first choice, took a hard-line stance in demanding a budget increase of $1 million. He didn’t get it.

“It should have pointed out to them what we were saying all along, that the institution needs to make a commitment to athletics,” Ford said. “I really liked that place. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I couldn’t continue on the way it was. If the circumstances were different, I’d love to be there.

“The day I resigned, I asked Horace where he sees the program going. I asked if there was a commitment to Division I. He said yes, the commitment is conditional--conditional on how much money you can raise.”

Instead of fretting about Irvine’s bare-bones budget--he saw new Athletic Director Dan Guerrero in Kansas City, and the two chatted amiably about the department--Ford is working on a number of projects with Haney at the NABC.

The group, which has a membership of 4,500 boys’ high school and men’s college coaches, doesn’t appear to be hurting for money. The highest dues, the fees paid by Division I head coaches, are $300 a year. That money helps support the group’s heavy lobbying efforts directed at NCAA rules such as practice time restrictions and salary limits for the third assistant coach. The NABC also produces a high-quality monthly newspaper edited by Andy Geerken, another Big West Conference alumnus.

How big is the budget? Nobody at the NABC wanted to say.

Ford gave the biggest clue. Is it bigger than Irvine’s?

He smiled broadly. “Isn’t everybody’s?”

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Ford and Haney don’t show it if they are offended when you snicker at the NABC’s slogan, “Guardians of the Game.”

College basketball coaches, guardians of the game? Most people think they are the reason the game needs guardians.

“I think there has been an image problem that we’re addressing,” Ford said. “Some of our coaches have been portrayed or maybe perceived as being less than good citizens, with a lot of the problems associated with rules violations. We feel that what we need to do is improve the image of coaches. They are concerned with more than just winning. They’re concerned with the student, the student as a person, socially and sometimes spiritually.”

Haney said repairing the images of the good guys in college coaching is one of the NABC’s goals.

“So much of our legislation from the NCAA is addressed toward a small segment of people,” Haney said. “So the focus ends up drawn toward those who would corrupt the system, while the vast majority of coaches are really good for the student-athlete.

“We feel in recent years there has been an effort to reduce the contact between student-athletes and coaches because this “abusive coach” is forcing them to spend more time on their sport to the detriment of their academic and social life.”

So the NABC is seeking to change the image--and if it can, the restrictive rules, too.

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After the men’s basketball team came from 25 points behind to beat Mississippi Valley State on Saturday, Kansas Coach Roy Williams teased Irvine’s Rod Baker that the rally coincided with Williams’ entrance into the arena.

“You’d better carry me around with you,” Williams told him.

Guess who will get a plane ticket in the mail from Baker this week?

Irvine plays No. 22 Nevada Las Vegas in the Thomas & Mack Center on Saturday. And no, Baker doesn’t expect Williams to abandon the Jayhawks, who play East Tennessee State that night. The ticket will either be non-negotiable or quickly refunded.

The rapport between the coaches might pay off for Irvine in another way. Baker and Williams are discussing a long-term schedule contract beginning in 1994-95 that would bring Kansas to Irvine at least once.

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Coach Colleen Matsuhara was ejected from a game for the first time in her career Sunday with 36 seconds left in the women’s 84-64 loss to Arizona at Tucson.

Irvine (0-4) led by seven at halftime, but Arizona came back by capitalizing on the Anteaters’ weak ballhandling and its own size advantage.

Matsuhara, who was automatically ejected when she received her second technical, was facing an old boss in Arizona Coach Joan Bonvicini, formerly the coach at Cal State Long Beach.

“It was pretty interesting coaching against Joan,” Matsuhara said. “I told her next time I get kicked out, I’m going to come sit on your bench and see if I can get some calls from there.”

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Baker has replayed the videotape of his team’s one-point loss to Missouri Kansas City on Tony Dumas’ 10-footer with five seconds left, “trying to figure out who screwed up,” he said.

His conclusion: It wasn’t Elzie Love, who guarded Dumas for the final 21 seconds and stayed in his face without fouling on the shot.

Baker told the players not to take a timeout if Missouri Kansas City scored with less than 10 seconds left, but instead to push the ball up the floor with the Kangaroos still unsettled.

Reviewing the play, he thought Jeff Von Lutzow was “a little slow” taking the ball out of bounds, and faulted Lloyd Mumford for not getting his shot off before the buzzer, though Mumford pointed out that he couldn’t see the clock overhead.

And Baker grants he could have chosen a different tactic--now that he knows Dumas scored despite Irvine’s defensive effort.

“Now, looking back, another option is to foul with 20 seconds left,” Baker said. “(Dumas) has got tired legs, maybe he’ll miss. And now we’d get the last shot.”

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Joe Furukawa, a former UC Irvine baseball player, has agreed to play professionally next season in Japan. The Irvine baseball program was discontinued last spring, and Furukawa is still a student at the school. Japanese teams are allowed to have only two Americans, but Furukawa holds Japanese citizenship.