Rich Lyons Says Endowments Coming to Four Cal Sports

The chancellor also reports there are no plans to cut any of the Bears' 30 sports

Cal Chancellor Rich Lyons / Photo by Jeff Faraudo

While sharing the enthusiasm he says donors are experiencing over the hiring of Ron Rivera as general manager of the Cal football program, Chancellor Rich Lyons let slip two other pieces of news:

First, that the university is on the brink of landing full endowments that will cover expenses for four existing sports.

And second, that there are no plans — no current plans — to cut any of Cal’s 30 sports programs, even as the cost of running the athletic department figures to ratchet up next fall.

Back in September, Cal received an anonymous $23 million gift earmarked to fully endow both the men’s and women’s golf programs and create a training facility.

On the heels of that, Lyons said four more sports are expected to soon get the same level of donor support.

“I can’t pre-announce things and I can’t tell you which sports, but we’ve had some lovely gifts come in over the last few weeks,” he said. “Gifts, for example, that will get across the fully endowed finish line. Four different sports. That’s real progress.”

Whatever financial assistance the athletic department can garner these days is critical, especially with significant expenses related to NIL and, likely beginning next fall, revenue sharing with athletes that has a cap of $20.5 million per year..

Those fiscal demands have prompted concerns that Cal — whose broad sport offerings are among the nation’s largest — may have to consider trimming teams to stay afloat.

In 2010, the university announced plans to cut baseball, men’s rugby and women’s gymnastics. The reaction from the Cal sports community was ferocious and eventually all three were removed from the hit list.

Lyons said no such dire announcement is on the table.

“We have no current plans to shut down any of our sports. I’ll put that out there.” he said. “We have done a lot of analysis on what that looks like and there is no current plan to shut down any of our sports.”

Then, because he cannot predict what might happen next in such a volatile college sports landscape, he slightly qualified his remarks.

“The world could pivot radically in two or three or four years, right?” he said. “I mean, conference realignment, if there’s a super league, are you part of it, not part of it? Are you on the right side of the fork or the wrong side of the fork? We can’t make any commitments for the long run.”

Working to make the football program successful — and profitable — is critical to the health of all of Cal’s sports. That’s at the root of his decision to bring in Rivera — a former All-America linebacker for the Bears and a long-time NFL head coach — to spearhead fundraising and be an additional resource for the team.

“We need to be in the game. If there’s further disruption, and no one knows for sure, we need to be in the game,” he said. “And this is the right time to make sure we are very likely to be in the game.”

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