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Oral History Center University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Karl Pister Karl Pister: Oral Histories on the Management of Intercollegiate Athletics at UC Berkeley: 1960 - 2014 Interviews conducted by John Cummins in 2011 Copyright © 2017 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Oral History Center has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well- informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Karl Pister dated February 13, 2013. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Karl Pister “Karl Pister: Oral Histories on the Management of Intercollegiate Athletics at UC Berkeley: 1960 – 2014” conducted by John Cummins in 2011 the Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2017. iii Table of Contents—Karl Pister Interview 1: March 28, 2011 Audio File 1 1 Sports in Pister’s youth in Sacramento — The 1941 Big Game, Stanford-Cal— Running on track team in high school and at Cal — Athletics at Cal, then and now — Returning to Cal in 1946 — Veterans on campus — Participating in a destructive student revolt — 2004, revisiting that episode as university administrator — Remembering the 1940s, 50s, 60s at Cal and University of Illinois — Big Game after Big Game — Bob Steidel — Pappy Waldorf — The Pacific Coast Conference — Pister’s relationship with Dave Maggard — Establishing a protocol for campus fundraising — Pister as chair of task force to deal with seismic retrofit — Plans for a new stadium — The Speiker plan — Members of the committee — A confidential draft report for SCIP [Southeast Campus Integrated Projects] — The process — Donors and UCB Capital Projects — Ned Speiker — “Responsibility with no authority” — The Haas Pavilion — Chancellor Ed [Edward] Denton — Bechdel — URS and the Regents meeting — Theatrics and lawsuits — Tree-sitting protests, 2006 — Sylvia McLaughlin climbs a tree — Save the Bay, Save the Oaks — Nathan Brostrom — Policing at Cal — Mayor Tim Bates, the City of Berkeley, and protests against the construction of the new stadium and the Student Athlete High Performance Center — Architects HNTB and Studios — Running Wolf — Former Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean — A history of social protest and appeasement in Berkeley — Pister’s relevant experience at UCSC in 1991, dealing with construction, protests, and policing — Vicky [Victoria] Hanson, UCB Chief of Police, removes the last tree sitters — Law school-business school project: “plug pulled” — Constructive approaches to conflict management — Billie Greene, Pister’s executive assistant — Pister’s radicalization in the 1960s, Vatican II, participation in a group of Catholic faculty at Berkeley — His assignment to the Campus Rules Committee — Speaking out, and compromising — Capital Projects — more about Ed Denton — “The Dick [Richard C.] Blum Affair” — Stadium risk analysis — Dianne Feinstein, Candlestick Park, and the Loma Prieta earthquake — Structural engineering and seismic design — Inadequacy of alternative sites for Cal games — The Alquist-Priolo [Earthquake Fault] Zoning Act — Assistance from Nancy Skinner and Loni Hancock — Negotiations with the Panoramic Hill Association — The LRDP [Long Range Development Plan] for the Berkeley campus — A lawsuit Interview 2: April 21, 2011 Audio File 2 35 Fundraising for the Student Athlete High Performance Center — Negotiating with opponents and dealing with the threat of lawsuits — Morgan Stanley and the stadium seat licensing program — Athletic Director Sandy Barbour’s lack of a iv development officer — Curt Simic’s fundraising for Cal and other universities — The Principals Committee and the Chancellor’s decision to cut five sports — Aftermath: Title IX implications — The Cal development office and the donor community — An intimate anecdote, and the history of intercollegiate athletics at Cal — Donors’ contributions to both athletics and academics — Comparison of various institutions and cultures — UCSC and UCLA — Athletic foundation at Cal — More about UCLA — The future of intercollegiate athletics at the national level— The Pac-12 and Big 10 — Sports television and money — “An athletics arms race” — The “unsavory” relation of the NFL to student athletes — Professional sports as national religion — The brutality of football — The NCAA and college football deaths, 1909 — Football equipment — Youth sports [End of Interview] 1 Interview 1: March 28, 2011 Audio File 1 01-00:00:02 Cummins: This is an interview with Karl Pister on intercollegiate athletics. This is the first interview, and it is March 28, 2011. So Karl, I know that you have done both an oral history at Berkeley and one at Santa Cruz— 01-00:00:20 Pister: Right. 01-00:00:21 Cummins: You didn’t devote a lot of time to intercollegiate athletics as far as I could tell— 01-00:00:26 Pister: No. 01-00:00:27 Cummins: —in those interviews, in those oral histories. You did talk about sports, but I thought to begin it would be interesting to know how sports affected your own life, really from an early age on, and what you’ve learned as a result. 01-00:00:46 Pister: Sure. Well, I have, from the time I was a young boy, really participated, informally and formally, in sports. I loved sports from the time I was six years old. To give some examples, we lived east of Stockton on a farm and we had a lot of space, so my brother and I would set up broad jumping pits and high jumping standards. My father was a teacher at Stockton High School, and would bring items— actually a pole vaulting pole, a bamboo one, once so I could do pole vaulting. We laid out the distances, and my biggest desire at one point was to get a stopwatch; that was a huge thing! So I finally—I think this would have been in the thirties—got some fairly crude thing that measured to the nearest second, so I had a stopwatch. My brother and I used to stage our own version of Olympics, and we’d participate—and we were handicapped because he was three and a half years younger. So that was a beginning, and that went on up through, certainly through grammar school. When I was in the seventh or eight grade I joined the YMCA and played in the—I think we called it the church league in the YMCA that played different church groups, and we won some contest up in Sacramento, I remember. I still have a little bronze medal we got for playing, so sports were a huge part of my growing up. When I went to high school I attended all the high school football games; you played then at the College of the Pacific stadium, now called Stagg Field. Of course they have no football team anymore, but it’s still Stagg Field. And that 2 was a big deal when Amos Alonzo Stagg came to Pacific after Chicago dropped football, so that was fun to watch those games. I guess the other thing at that point in my life would have been to mention that when I was a senior in high school a friend of mine who played on the high school football team and I were given tickets by a friend of his father to go to the 1941 Big Game, which was at Stanford. At that time I was a great Stanford fan. 01-00:03:48 Cummins: I read that! [laughter] 01-00:03:49 Pister: Yeah. 01-00:03:51 Cummins: The Hildebrand thing! [See pp. 18-19, Pister’s 2002-2003 oral history with interviewer Germain LaBerge at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/subjectarea/univ_hist/fac_adm _reg.html] 01-00:03:52 Pister: We sat in the end zone in the Stanford Stadium and watched Cal upset the favored Stanford. Frankie Albert was quarterback and Norm Standlee was playing for them, and it was quite an interesting experience. I was disheartened by that—of course, the following year I came to Berkeley. The other thing I should mention, in high school I was on the track team and I ran cross-country. We’d go to Lodi and Modesto and Turlock and places like that and run through the fields. I was never very successful. And then I ran the half mile and the mile. Maybe on one occasion I broke six minutes in the mile, but I was never very good.