Blue White Illustrated

became evident that there was not a clear, direct or expeditious path to re- versing worrisome trends. … It is im- perative that Cal football be recognized as a leader in academic accomplishment, competitive success and community en- gagement." Telford's replacement, Sonny Dykes, posted a 1-13 record last season. The team's overall GPA for the spring 2013 semester, however, improved from 2.44 under Telford to 2.74, the team's highest in five years, and its summer 2013 GPA increased again to 2.84, according to the San Jose Mercury News. During this period, the crisis in Cali- fornia's state budget led to sharp decreases in funding for higher education. Cal spent more money than any school in the history of higher athletics, the San Jose Mercury News determined, on facility upgrades. Part of the $474 million total was to seismically retrofit the football stadium, a step that the university's board of regents demanded and the chancellor said was needed to "address significant life safety issues." The initial project, approved in March 2010, was for $321 million, included mod- ernization of facilities and improvements in disabled access, and was funded by an Endowment Seating Program, which provided up to 50-year rights to about 3,000 seats – about 5 percent of the sta- dium – between the 30-yard lines. Pay- ments could be spread out over a period of time, like a mortgage, but participants could drop out at any time without penal- ty. The program launched in 2008, and ini- tial sales were "less than ideal because of the economic climate," Barbour said at the time. When the plan was announced, the regents stressed that no state money would be used. The goal was to raise $270 million by the summer of 2013, but the Wall Street Journal reported in March 2012 that the school had "collected $31 million in cash… and secured another $113 million in long- term seat agreements, the majority of which will be paid over 30 years and are nonbinding." The story noted research that showed Cal's athletic department had needed more than $88 million in cam- pus funds to "stay solvent" from 2003 to 2011, although a Cal official said the figure didn't include donations. The same official, vice chancellor John Wilton, told the WSJ that under most projections, the school wouldn't need to use state money for years. Barbour told the newspaper, "We're not asleep at the wheel here." (She also wrote a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education saying that the WSJ story relied on false information.) The Wall Street Journal story also noted that California's budget crisis had caused a $650 million drop in funding to Cal and that tuition had increased 17 percent. Stanford economics professor Roger Noll, an expert in stadium pricing who consulted with Cal when the plan was being developed, told the San Jose Mercury News in April 2012 that Cal's goals were "extremely ambitious," requiring it to raise three to five times the amount of schools such as Texas and Michigan, which have stronger football traditions. Noll told the newspaper, "That seemed implausible." Noll noted, as well, that Cal's debt on the Simpson Performance Center and the budget cuts constituted a "double wham- my." When Cal hired Barbour in 2004, the stadium renovation project was already on the school's radar; shortly after her hire, she told the Contra Costa Times the renovation was the "800-pound gorilla." At the time, Barbour was an associate athletic director at Notre Dame, where she headed the facilities department and oversaw compliance, athletic training, and strength and conditioning. Prior to that, she had been the athletic director at Tulane from 1996 to 1999. Barbour said she was proud that Cal was able to improve its infrastructure dur- ing her watch, despite the economic head- winds. "They were certainly great achieve- ments, no doubt about it," she said. "That university had been talking about those projects, or some version thereof, for 30 years and hadn't been able to get it done. So I'm very proud that it was our time and our team that got it done." She will face a different set of fiscal problems at Penn State. The athletic de- partment had a $6 million budget deficit in the 2013 fiscal year. It is still paying the $60 million fine that the NCAA levied in 2012, while the football program is cop- ing with the fallout from its bowl ban, which remained in effect as of mid-August, and the scholarship reductions that have eroded the team's depth heading into the 2014 season. Barbour earned an MBA while she was at Northwestern early in her career be- cause, she said, "I saw in the late '80s, early '90s where intercollegiate athletics was headed." She will have ample oppor- tunity at Penn State to put that education to good use. Despite all the challenges, Barbour said she was excited to return to the East Coast after a decade in the Bay Area. A graduate of Wake Forest, where she played field hockey and basketball, she will be the Big Ten's fifth-highest-paid AD with a base salary of $700,000, a $100,000 an- nual retention bonus and performance incentives tied to on- and off-field suc- cess. Her appointment may have triggered a noisy debate on message boards and talk shows, with some fans grumbling about Cal's grad rates and budget issues, and others eager to welcome a forceful voice to Penn State after two years of uncer- tainty as to who would lead the athletic department long-term. But the school's perennially high level of fan engagement helped make the job attractive in the first place. To hear Barbour tell it, they don't have that in Berkeley. Not all the time, anyway. "The passion at Cal is incredible," she said. "The difference between Penn State and Cal is that Penn State does it every minute of every day of every week of every year. It's constant and it's consistent. There's incredible passion at Cal, but it wanes a little bit sometimes, and at Penn State it's every day. … We're competitors, we want to win, and we need it every day, and we need support every day to get that done, and our student-athletes need to feel that every day, and that support exists at Penn State." ■ Lori Shontz contributed to this report.

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