UBC Athletics being destroyed?

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Toppy Vann
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I have read some of Tony Gallagher's stories on UBC athletics which has a storied history but there is something very odd it seems going on with their director in conflict with sports and alumni.

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.
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Although I haven't been following UBC sports for some time, I think it might be worth noting that UBC is now in the top tier of Canadian and world research universities. It consistently ranks second to the University of Toronto in Canada and anywhere from 30th to 35th worldwide in scholarly prominence. This status is the result of the amount and quality of cutting-edge research work and enormous funding from federal funding agencies now seen at UBC. Many of its academic departments and schools are at the very forefront of world standings. When a university reaches this status, I think that athletics may recede in importance. If we look at other Canadian universities of note, the University of Toronto and McGill are not noted for their athletic programs, but are world-class academically. UBC is well-known among business people for its many collaborative research programs with various private-sector firms, and, thus, I don't think the absence of prominent athletics detracts from the university's fund-raising efforts. I'm not coming down on one side or the other with respect to the need for support for varsity athletics, but I can see that UBC may see this as less important than in the past or at other, less research-focused, colleges and universities.
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Sir Purrcival
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I am kind of with you on this South P. While some individuals make a career out of sport, for many it is personal pursuit. As you say, UBC has come to some prominence in a variety of areas but just like not all medical schools are the same, so too, not all universities are the same or are good in all things. In most cases, choice of a University is often predicated on it's reputation in a certain field of knowledge. Canadians as a whole don't buy in to the whole varsity sports thing the way they do south of the border. They don't get the same kind of funding in those areas and as a result often display prominence in other areas where there is money from government and private industry. By the same token, many of the best athletes seek the schools that have the best coaches, resources and programs in their respective sports or for schools who are willing to pay the shot for the schooling by way of athletic scholarship. Generally speaking that means the US, not Canada. The programs are bigger, the scholarships more numerous and easier to get and often more lucrative. Trying to compete with that is a tough job and one that I think UBC has concluded is not sustainable. They don't get the glory or the $$ and without either of those, athletics are in tough.
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