While not all support sports there is one reality that gets the campus on the wider map across the country and that is sports. I recall that when SFU first went into fund raising and the then President Ken Strand not a huge sports fan proponent for universities met business leaders in eastern Canada who opened with - I don't much about Simon Fraser but I know you have a terrific sports program and football team. In those years when a CFL game was played announcers in most games mentioned a player from SFU. That gave football a new life. Other Presidents found the same thing.
The latest UBC attack is to fire their long serving hockey coach who has been a great university advocate for quite some time and high profile in the media.
This is the problem when appointments get made of folks with no sense of the tradition of these things.
http://blogs.theprovince.com/2014/03/17 ... e-program/
Milan Dragicevic, who for the past 12 seasons led the ‘Birds program as its head coach, was fired Monday by the school, just one day after an article by The Province’s Tony Gallagher which outlined the fact that the embattled program had been given five years by the school to meet a number of financial targets to insure its long-term future.
What is most curious about Dragicevic’s firing is that although he and his dedicated alumni group put together a plan which, over the next five years, would be able to match the dollars coming from the school, that he would not be around to see the fruits of that success.