Anteaters Making Uniform Effort

Welcome to the real world, Anteaters.

The world where money means the world and raising money separates winners from losers, separates the CEOs from the people in the cubicles.

Thursday, athletes from all the UC Irvine sports teams became politicians. They sat at tables, they ran around the ring road, the road that encircles the campus, wearing their volleyball uniforms, their basketball uniforms, their track suits. The men’s water polo team had threatened to run in Speedos, but they chickened out and jogged in their shorts. The soccer team dribbled a ball between them while they ran their laps, but all the athletes stopped every time a UC Irvine student wandered by.

“Do you know about the athletic referendum,” they would ask. “Are you going to vote on the athletic referendum.” “Let me tell you about the athletic referendum.”

This is the way of the new world in college sports. If you want to compete, you’d better raise your own money. If you want your team to have more scholarship and recruiting money, then you’d better get out and buttonhole your classmates. You students want a baseball team on your campus? Then you’d better pay for it. You men’s volleyball players want more than 2 1/2 scholarships to split 15 ways, then you go, go, go raise that money.

It has happened at UC Riverside. There was a referendum to raise student fees to help fund a jump from NCAA Division II to Division I. The referendum passed, Riverside is moving up. There’s soon to be a referendum at UC Davis to up the quality of the sports programs and a similar referendum passed a couple years ago at UC Santa Barbara.

And this isn’t just going on at California schools. Miami of Ohio athletic officials are trying to find a way to raise more than $50 million to save sports like baseball and wrestling, sports where the school has a proud tradition. You can’t just have a bake sale or a pancake breakfast nowadays.

Beginning Monday, UC Irvine students will have a chance to vote on whether to raise their quarterly fees by $13, $19 or $33. Or not at all. At least 25% of the student body must vote and at least 60% of the voters must say yes to a fee hike before it will take place. At the maximum fee, every sport now in existence would be fully funded, that is, funded to the limits the NCAA allows plus baseball, women’s water polo and one other women’s sport would be added. At the minimum level, all NCAA sports now in existence would be fully funded.

All UCI athletes have been asked by the administration to participate in this campaign. If you think all athletes do is play, practice and try to stay academically eligible, if you think college athletes these days have no relation to their campus and to the other students, you should have been at Irvine Thursday afternoon.

“What’s the difference between UC Irvine and UCLA,” senior basketball player Brian Scoggin said earnestly. “Nationally ranked football and basketball teams and the social life. The academic programs are the same. We’re in the same UC system. But everybody knows what UCLA is all about. Nobody knows what Irvine is about. When you have big-time sports, it helps across the board. It gives you publicity. When you graduate and go look for a job, people know what your school is about.”

Scoggin gives this speech while looking you right in the eye. He shakes your hand firmly while he explains how Irvine ranks in the bottom 6% of Division I schools in athletic scholarship money available. He speaks enthusiastically about what a boost it would be if Irvine could have a baseball program again. He is, you think, ready to run for office. Right now.

As Scoggin talked, the men’s soccer team gathered to begin its jog around the ring road.

Every few minutes, one of the players would stop in front of a student.

“Do you know about the referendum,” sophomore midfielder Jon Spencer asked. “No,” his startled new friend said. Spencer immediately gave a little speech about the importance of the vote, how the best vote would be for the $33 increase and of how sports makes college a better experience.

These soccer guys were good at this. They seemed especially solicitous of the female students who maybe weren’t totally paying attention to the details of the referendum. “Oh, gosh, you guys look so cute in your outfits,” one junior named Mary said, causing several soccer players to blush.

As public money becomes scarcer for universities, as facilities age and need repairs, as lab equipment needs updating, as computers need to be purchased, Scoggin, the basketball player, says he understands how sports is not first in line for funds.

“It’s up to us to make a convincing case,” Scoggin says as students passed by the athletes’ table to check out The Peace Club table. “We have to show why sports are important.”

If at first it seems a little unfair to expect students who have days filled with books and sweat to make time for fund-raising and vote-raising, as you listen to Scoggin make sensible points, as you see the soccer players introducing themselves to students they would otherwise never meet, it turns out that maybe this is a good thing.

“This is real life,” athletic director Dan Guerrero said. “It’s the way of the world.”

Real lessons being taught and learned. Isn’t that what college is all about?

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com