[2006alum]

I'm not privy to the specifics of the WBB program, but this seems to be a recurring theme in Cal athletics.  It is a school that on paper should be one of the top 3 recruiting destinations in the Pac-12 across most sports.  And yet it more often languishes in the middle of the Pac.  I always marvel when I look at the number of NCAA championships that Stanford, UCLA, and USC all have over 100, and Cal is the ugly stepchild of California Pac-12 school athletics.

BC

Knowing that institution well, I will say that no school with a top athletics department has a more ambivalent relationship with athletics than Cal. What makes Cal a top school is its graduate programs and its research faculty. And they mostly, almost, exclusively, have moderate-to-extreme antipathy for everything having to do with college athletics. That is not true of Stanford, USC, and UCLA, and it affects everything from how accommodating profs will be with late/make-up work to the fact that Berkeley has very strict curves and no APR-padding courses that places like UNC practically create full departments and majors to provide.

Don't know if the course "EDGE" existed during y'all's time at Stanford, but I knew many people who took it (some more than once), and it padded many a Stanford athlete's not-very-impressive GPA. And then there's the infamous "The List." 

I am dyed in the wool Stanford all the way, but I will say, that kind of stuff doesn't exist anywhere at Berkeley, and the research faculty are (mostly) more than happy to turn the thumbscrews at the expense of the athletes. It's a whole different world across the bay.

[2006alum]

I'm not privy to the specifics of the WBB program, but this seems to be a recurring theme in Cal athletics.  It is a school that on paper should be one of the top 3 recruiting destinations in the Pac-12 across most sports.  And yet it more often languishes in the middle of the Pac.  I always marvel when I look at the number of NCAA championships that Stanford, UCLA, and USC all have over 100, and Cal is the ugly stepchild of California Pac-12 school athletics.

BC

Knowing that institution well, I will say that no school with a top athletics department has a more ambivalent relationship with athletics than Cal. What makes Cal a top school is its graduate programs and its research faculty. And they mostly, almost, exclusively, have moderate-to-extreme antipathy for everything having to do with college athletics. That is not true of Stanford, USC, and UCLA, and it affects everything from how accommodating profs will be with late/make-up work to the fact that Berkeley has very strict curves and no APR-padding courses that places like UNC practically create full departments and majors to provide.

Don't know if the course "EDGE" existed during y'all's time at Stanford, but I knew many people who took it (some more than once), and it padded many a Stanford athlete's not-very-impressive GPA. And then there's the infamous "The List." 

I am dyed in the wool Stanford all the way, but I will say, that kind of stuff doesn't exist anywhere at Berkeley, and the research faculty are (mostly) more than happy to turn the thumbscrews at the expense of the athletes. It's a whole different world across the bay.