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Oral History Center University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Bob Steiner

Bob Steiner: Oral Histories on the Management of Intercollegiate Athletics at UC Berkeley: 1960 - 2014

Interviews conducted by John C. Cummins in 2013

Since 1954 the Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library, formerly the Regional Oral History Office, 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.

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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Bob Steiner dated January 27, 2016. 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.

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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Bob Steiner “Bob Steiner: Oral Histories on the Management of Intercollegiate Athletics at UC Berkeley: 1960-2014” conducted by John C. Cummins in 2013, Oral History Center of the Bancroft Library, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2017.

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Table of Contents—Bob Steiner

Interview 1: April 16, 2013

Audio File 1 1

Life before Cal, admission to Cal — Pete Newell — Marv Levy — Brutus Hamilton — Mike Baxter — 1956 Pacific Coast Conference — Censure of Pappy Waldorf — Trouble with UCLA — Athletic Association of Western Universities — Name change to Pac-8 — Clark Kerr named president 1958 — Proverb Jacobs — Earle Schneider — Race: “black athletes were few and far between” — John Erby — Wiles Hallock — Ray Willsey — Isaac Curtis and 1.8 test — Walter Byers, Kent State comment — Work-aid program, athletic scholarships — Herm Selvin — H.D. Thoreau, jobs in sports — More on Pete Newell — Alfred Wright of Sports Illustrated — Forrest Beaty’s recruitment — Newell’s “Big Man’s Camp” — “Responsibility of the Athletic Department was to make it a level playing field” — Sports budget cut — Academic Senate — University Athletics Board — Fundraising, “Keeping the Promise” — Cal Sports Eighties — Donor- centric fundraising — “Normalization of deviances” — Mike White gets fired — David Maggard — Bob Presley — Black student boycott — Rene Herrerias — College basketball as a sport — Struggles of student athletes — Cal’s lack of “academic home” for sports — Cal spirit, past and present

[End of Interview]

Interview 1: April 16, 2013 Audio File 1

01-00:00:00 Cummins: Okay, this is April 16, 2013. This is the first interview with Bob Steiner, who began working at Cal in intercollegiate athletics as a student in 1957, and then progressed from there to becoming the sports information director and spent a considerable time at Cal, and then moved on to professional sports—and we’ll certainly talk about that. But Bob, why don’t you talk a little bit about your background leading up to Cal and how you got involved with athletics.

01-00:00:40 Steiner: [laughing] Well, I went to high school here—we moved from Chicago in 1948 when I was thirteen. I went to high school here in Los Angeles at Hamilton High School and went into the navy upon graduation in 1953 so I could get the GI Bill and be able to go to college. I wanted to major in journalism, and UCLA didn’t offer a degree in journalism at that time and USC was too expensive. And then they had the panty raids up at Cal and I thought that’s the place for me. [laughter] So I came up to Cal. Interesting—I had to go to junior college to get my grades up, so I applied to Cal and then I never heard from Cal. And late in the summer in 1956 I called, and you get a voice, and I said I hadn’t heard. And she, two minutes later, comes back and says, “Oh, you’ve been admitted. Come on up.” You can’t possibly do that today, get a voice.

01-00:01:55 Cummins: No way. Exactly.

01-00:01:56 Steiner: So I came up and worked on the Daily Cal for a year and got very involved working on the Daily Cal with the athletic news bureau. I’m not sure whether it was right away that Lefty [Hans “Lefty” Stern] left. In any case, they didn’t hire a full-time assistant and they hired a number of students to work in the office and I was one of them. And then in 1958 I was hired as a full-time assistant.

01-00:02:29 Cummins: Great. Now—so talk about those early years and just your view of Cal Athletics, what it was like, what it meant to the students—anything that comes to mind.

01-00:02:44 Steiner: They were at one time a golden era, with Pete’s basketball teams.

01-00:02:50 Cummins: Pete Newell, yeah.

01-00:02:52 Steiner: Pete Newell. Our baseball team won the 1957 national championship. Marv Levy came as a football coach, and I told him that in my first years at Cal we won the NCAA baseball championship in 1957, the NCAA basketball

championship in 1959, Rose Bowl in 1959 and set world and American track records – all in my first two years at Cal. He said, “You certainly were a flash in the pan, weren’t you? [laughter] But Marv Levy had been my cabin counselor when I was twelve years old or thirteen years old, in Eagle River, Wisconsin.

01-00:03:11 Cummins: Is that right? Amazing!

01-00:03:16 Steiner: And the next time that I saw him he was named the head coach at Cal to replace Pete Elliott. But they were hard, academically they were hard. Clark Kerr makes a statement, President Kerr makes a statement—“I haven’t looked at a Swarthmore score in thirty years, and Prescott Sullivan says he and I have something in common.” I haven’t looked at a Swarthmore score in—and Prescott Sullivan was a leading sports columnist in the Bay Area at the time. Charles McCabe was writing in the [San Francisco] Chronicle that later, when Marv Levy was hired, he was hired to kill athletics at Cal. And there was a— seemingly, a crack down in athletics. Brutus Hamilton telling the story of a shot putter, Mike Baxter, who his first semester at Cal went down a number of grade points and made up almost all of them the next semester but was dismissed from school. And Brutus, who was also assistant dean of students, and with a high regard for academics, felt that that was very unfair. So there was a seeming rigidity at that time, and after Pete’s Rose Bowl team which was—Pete Elliott’s Rose Bowl team which was—

01-00:04:44 Cummins: Yeah, ’59.

01-00:04:45 Steiner: Fifty-nine, ’58-’59, which was just carried on the back of Joe Kapp, probably in a weak conference. But football was desperate, when Pete [Newell] retired as coach then basketball became pretty desperate. And so—but you had some real shining moments and some great athletes on campus. But there was—it evolved into a gloom in the sixties, from the late fifties which was wonderful—

01-00:05:23 Cummins: Which was a high point.

01-00:05:24 Steiner: —which was wonderful, to a gloom in the sixties, early sixties.

01-00:05:34 Cummins: When you started, in ’56, do you have any recollections of all the turmoil in the Pacific Coast Conference?

01-00:05:44 Steiner: You’ll help me here—only second hand. In ’56 the penalties came down, and SC and UCLA, Cal, to the extent that Jerry Drew was assessed—ineligible for

a half semester, a running back at Cal, and there were a little harder penalties at—

01-00:06:05 Cummins: Washington.

01-00:06:06 Steiner: —and SC and UCLA.

01-00:06:07 Cummins: Exactly.

01-00:06:10 Steiner: So the new conference was formed in ’60? Fifty-nine-‘60?

01-00:06:13 Cummins: Yes, ’59-‘60, yes.

01-00:06:16 Steiner: The AAWU.

01-00:06:19 Cummins: Right. Scott Newhall writes this editorial, beginning the ’58 season. It was called the “Obit for the Pacific Coast Conference,” and that was the last year. It was very interesting because the politics of the dissolution, within UC, were very interesting because UCLA was in deep trouble. Glenn Seaborg says that it came to a vote whether to keep UCLA in the Pacific Coast Conference.

01-00:06:57 Steiner: Oh!

01-00:06:58 Cummins: And his vote in favor of keeping them in was the deciding vote.

01-00:07:03 Steiner: Oh, I did not know that.

01-00:07:06 Cummins: Yeah, and then you have Pappy Waldorf being censured by Clark Kerr publicly, in a letter.

01-00:07:19 Steiner: Pappy left at the end of the ’56 season.

01-00:07:23 Cummins: Yes.

01-00:07:23 Steiner: So that would have been in that period of time, or after?

01-00:07:27 Cummins: It was right before that, and then when he retires, both he and Clark Kerr, who was chancellor at that time—became chancellor in’52, to ’58 was chancellor and then president from ’58 to ’67—so they both say this had nothing to do with Pappy Waldorf’s involvement in paying players. [background conversations are audible in semi-public interview venue]

01-00:07:54 Steiner: In their—okay, I guess maybe I’m not quite aware there was a payment of players. I don’t remember quite why Jerry Drew was penalized, but there were no other sanctions against Cal, were there?

01-00:08:11 Cummins: No, the biggest sanctions went against USC, UCLA, and Washington. UCLA refused to cooperate in the investigation that was being done by Victor Schmidt, and it was an absolute mess. And [Robert Gordon] Sproul was worried because of pressure from the regents and the Los Angeles Times and that whole UCLA alumni community, that UCLA would try to split from the UC System. And so that was the politics. And the regents came up with what was called the five-point plan, which increased the GPA for incoming students, and that made it virtually impossible for Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State to participate.

01-00:09:08 Steiner: And that would have been what year, the five-point plan?

01-00:09:11 Cummins: That was around—

01-00:09:13 Steiner: Fifty-seven?

01-00:09:15 Cummins: Fifty-six, ’57. Right in there.

01-00:09:16 Steiner: Okay. As a direct result of the investigations?

01-00:09:22 Cummins: Yes, exactly. Ed Pauley, the regent at that time, was concerned that you could get a bigger gate at UCLA, for example, if you weren’t playing an Oregon State. And they were infuriated, some regents, that an Oregon/Oregon State/Washington State would have any say over what they did.

01-00:09:48 Steiner: Dictate their fortunes, right.

01-00:09:47 Cummins: What they—dictate their fortunes.

01-00:09:48 Steiner: Okay, okay.

01-00:09:50 Cummins: And there was a big push to get rid of the UCLA—

01-00:09:52 Steiner: Okay. I think I remember living here in LA and reading that.

01-00:09:59 Cummins: Okay, fine, yeah—because it was big news at that point in time. Okay, so—

01-00:10:07 Steiner: The censure of Pappy, I guess maybe I’d forgotten.

01-00:10:10 Cummins: It’s not very well known. It was covered in the press and Clark Kerr was attacked for doing it, because the UCLA coach—

01-00:10:22 Steiner: Red Sanders at the time?

01-00:10:21 Cummins: Red Sanders was never censured, even though their behavior was much more egregious than anything that happened at Cal. And then—

01-00:10:35 Steiner: So the UCLA chancellor did not censure Red Sanders.

01-00:10:38 Cummins: Did not.

01-00:10:38 Steiner: And the president of the university, Dr. Sproul, didn’t take any public action in that case?

01-00:10:44 Cummins: No, that’s right, that’s right.

01-00:10:46 Steiner: Okay.

01-00:10:49 Cummins: The Pacific Coast Conference, in terms of sanctions that were imposed, because those sanctions had to be carried out even though the conference dissolved, and they were, viewed positively those institutions that did take affirmative action vis-à-vis the coach and, if necessary, the athletic director.

01-00:11:14 Steiner: Okay, but the conference didn’t dissolve until ’59.

01-00:11:17 Cummins: That’s right. It took a while to do this. So anyway, it was a very politically charged—

01-00:11:29 Steiner: Yeah, I would not have—I was never at that level certainly.

01-00:11:32 Cummins: And then they create the Western Association of—

01-00:11:38 Steiner: Athletic Association of Western Universities [AAWU].

01-00:11:40 Cummins: Yes, exactly.

01-00:11:41 Steiner: As PR directors we fought that name.

01-00:11:44 Cummins: Oh, talk about that then.

01-00:11:45 Steiner: Well, it was—American Association of University Women [AAUW]. It’s just transposing one—

01-00:11:52 Cummins: I see; the name.

01-00:11:53 Steiner: Two letters—and it was cumbersome and the ah-woo? And it wasn’t for a while—Tom Hamilton took our resolution to the presidents and then it was changed to the Pac-8.

01-00:12:10 Cummins: Interesting, interesting. And then all those schools come back in anyway.

01-00:12:15 Steiner: Right.

01-00:12:15 Cummins: So you could see how much of it was really political versus—

01-00:12:23 Steiner: I do remember the Pauley—not that it was Pauley particularly, but I do remember the argument that it was holding UCLA back and we didn’t want those schools dictating our fortunes.

01-00:12:36 Cummins: Exactly. Well, and the politics were brutal. Clark Kerr talks about—he’s named as president in ’58 at UC Davis. That’s where the regents happened to

meet. Sproul centralized everything. He didn’t want to have chancellors; he was forced to have chancellors. Raymond Allen was the chancellor at UCLA.

01-00:13:00 Steiner: UCLA.

01-00:13:01 Cummins: And there was a lot of thinking that he would become the president, but his handling of the athletics thing almost certainly influenced that, among other things. So Kerr is named president and there’s a reception following his naming.

01-00:13:21 Steiner: At Davis?

01-00:13:23 Cummins: At Davis. Sproul had his vice presidents, who were strong believers in centralization, and he reports in his memoirs that they came up to him with drinks in their hand and dumped them at his feet. Imagine that!

01-00:13:47 Steiner: They dumped drinks at whose feet?

01-00:13:49 Cummins: Clark Kerr’s feet.

01-00:13:52 Steiner: [bursts out laughing]

01-00:13:55 Cummins: It is—it’s like you think politics today—

01-00:13:57 Steiner: That’s a little bit like Khrushchev pounding his shoe at the—[laughter]

01-00:14:02 Cummins: Yes. And so Kerr says, in typical Kerr fashion, he assumed that was their way of submitting their—

01-00:14:08 Steiner: Resignations.

01-00:14:10 Cummins: —resignations. Yeah, exactly. Yes, amazing.

01-00:14:20 Steiner: There was a romanticism with Dr. Sproul as president, where he’d walk the campus and remember your name. That never happened to me. My wife says it happened to her at the freshman reception.

01-00:14:37 Cummins: Oh, really? Oh wow!

01-00:14:37 Steiner: Miss Eglin? That’s amazing stuff, the aura that he had over the Berkeley campus. I don’t know that it existed, probably not, at UCLA and other places. But to that extent, Cal was a tremendous place to be at at the time. That feeling outside of—in the fifties, was wonderful, was wonderful.

01-00:15:06 Cummins: In terms of a community spirit?

01-00:15:08 Steiner: Well, it just—I still have very close friends who I met in those times, through the Daily Cal, through athletics, through whatever, that—well, we get together regularly, and that’s fifty-five years ago! And we all share the same feelings about Cal.

01-00:15:41 Cummins: Yeah, and it’s very positive and very strong.

01-00:15:44 Steiner: Yes.

01-00:15:46 Cummins: A lot of people talk about that, and that kind of Cal spirit, and of course athletics—those golden years are tied into that.

01-00:15:55 Steiner: Well, and Pappy’s Boys are still an element and Pete’s players still get together regularly. Proverb Jacobs is putting together a thing for—a Brutus Hamilton track meet. It’s later in this month at Cal—and trying to get not only Brutus’s athletes but Erv Hunt’s and others, and Proverb is a semi-heroic figure.

01-00:16:26 Cummins: I don’t know him. I don’t know him.

01-00:16:32 Steiner: Well, Proverb came to Cal from Modesto Junior College. I think he’d grown up, actually, in Oakland, a huge black fellow, tremendous athlete. I guess a lot of people didn’t think he was very bright. He did have some academic problems. He got into a fight in the locker room with Jim Cherry—and Jim is still down here and he’s still a very involved alum—and Pappy threw them off the team. The next spring—and Proverb was a very good shot putter—an official called a foul on him and he swore at the official, and now he’s ejected from a track meet. And Bob Brachman at the Examiner went to Brutus and said, “Are you going to kick him off the team?” And Brutus said, “No, Bob. I’m not. I don’t know whether I can help him, but I can’t help him if he’s off the team.” And you know Brutus didn’t care about a point or two in a track meet, he was more concerned about—well, Proverb went on to professional football and later came back and got his doctorate from Cal.

01-00:17:43 Cummins: Amazing, amazing!

01-00:17:44 Steiner: And then taught for years at Laney [College] and was the track coach actually at Laney. In his first appearance back I got to—Proverb and Joe Kapp were good friends, so I’ve seen Proverb through them.

01-00:17:55 Cummins: And his last name again?

01-00:17:57 Steiner: Jacobs.

01-00:17:58 Cummins: Proverb Jacobs.

01-00:17:59 Steiner: Proverb Jacobs. His first time back on campus, in a long time, was for Brutus’s memorial. I don’t know how I got—I got sidetracked about Proverb.

01-00:18:10 Cummins: Oh no, that’s very interesting.

01-00:18:13 Steiner: That’s Brutus’s—in fact, examples for me, lessons for me, and there were lessons for Pete. Pete had a player, Earle Schneider, a very talented, very talented guy. And Pete just—[Earle was] breaking rules, whatever the rules were, and I’m not sure what they were. Pete just went with him, went with him, went with him. And finally—because it was getting detrimental to the team, he had a long talk with him and told him he couldn’t play basketball at Cal anymore but encouraged him to stay in school. And I’m told Earle did stay in school and graduated.

01-00:18:53 Cummins: Very interesting.

01-00:18:56 Steiner: That was Brutus’s—Pete would have gravitated to that in any case I’m sure.

01-00:19:02 Cummins: What about the racial situation during those years? What’s your recollection?

01-00:19:12 Steiner: Well, black athletes were few and far between. There was a study done in the early sixties or something, that there were five hundred black students on the campus and three hundred of those were foreign. It was something like that. And the numbers are not accurate, but it was appalling. The captain of the basketball team—but they stood out singularly. Earl Robinson was captain of Pete’s basketball team. Joe Griffin, Art Stewart in track and field. Joe might have been captain of the track team. So there—Jerry, Drew, Proverb—there

weren’t a lot. Terry Jones, who was the starting center on the Rose Bowl team, Charlie Holston. But the reason you can remember them is—

01-00:20:14 Cummins: Because there were so few.

01-00:20:17 Steiner: There were so few. But that study then caused—there was a—I can’t remember, an exception rule that—

01-00:20:28 Cummins: Special admits.

01-00:20:33 Steiner: Special admits, yeah.

01-00:20:34 Cummins: Interesting. And then when Cal travelled and they played Southern schools, then these players didn’t play, right?

01-00:20:43 Steiner: No, I don’t remember that. But there was an incident at Duke. We went to play Duke, and I was not on the trip. I was assistant. And John Erby was—and he might have been captain of the football team—one of Pappy’s tri-captains was black in Mike White’s years, I think when Mike was tri-captain. John Erby, and this hotel or motel where they were going to stay in Durham had never allowed blacks, so they were going to integrate the hotel with the Cal football team. And John who—was quite a guy—he went to work for Levi Strauss after—lost a leg in Korea.

01-00:21:39 Cummins: He’s the one that Pete Newell talks about in his oral history and talks about you in that context. Because he says that he wants to—he had been to Korea and lost a leg and he heard that he was back, Pete did, and said gee—he went over and visited him and said did he ever think about coaching? And then I guess Pete talked to Ray Willsey and said, “I want you to meet him,” and he came over. And then there was the issue about the press release naming him. And you really had the impression in his oral history that that was the straw that broke the camel’s back because he really—he had been under pressure from the administration—

01-00:22:35 Steiner: “He” being Pete?

01-00:22:37 Cummins: Pete, yes. And this press [release], he said—I’m almost certain it was to you— that, “Make sure that there isn’t any reference in the press release—

01-00:22:48 Steiner: To him being black.

01-00:22:48 Cummins: —to him being black. I don’t want this to be a black thing. I’m not doing it for that reason.” And then the press release comes out and there it is, that’s the headline that he read. I think he was down here for some reason, in Los Angeles, and he was really upset by that. So yeah. Interesting.

01-00:23:12 Steiner: Pete.

01-00:23:11 Cummins: Pete was, yeah.

01-00:23:12 Steiner: He didn’t want to denigrate John, that he was being hired as a token coach.

01-00:23:17 Cummins: Exactly, yeah, that that wasn’t his reason at all.

01-00:23:21 Steiner: But you couldn’t—I don’t remember how I wrote the press release, and if Pete asked me not to mention it I’m sure I would not have mentioned it.

01-00:23:29 Cummins: So he calls you, I think, and says, “What the hell happened here?” And you say—or it’s pretty clear that it was changed by the administration.

01-00:23:39 Steiner: Oh, okay.

01-00:23:41 Cummins: Somebody over in the chancellor’s office. Now, who knows what that headline—who knows who created the headline?

01-00:23:48 Steiner: Well, and you can’t hide the fact that you’re hiring—

01-00:23:51 Cummins: No, of course not, of course not. But yeah, he makes a big deal about that.

01-00:23:55 Steiner: And John was quite a guy. But then there was a protest, that it was because of a football team that they’re integrating the motel.

01-00:24:08 Cummins: Oh! How interesting.

01-00:24:09 Steiner: And John went out to confront the protesters. Here’s a twenty-year-old guy in the South.

01-00:24:19 Cummins: Amazing. And were you on that trip?

01-00:24:20 Steiner: No, I was not.

01-00:24:21 Cummins: Oh, that’s right.

01-00:24:22 Steiner: That’s hearsay.

01-00:24:27 Cummins: Yeah, is that interesting—wow. So what other recollections do you have from—so that period in the fifties ends, the ASUC takes over. Pete comes in. You’re still an assistant then.

01-00:24:44 Steiner: I am.

01-00:24:44 Cummins: Until sixty—

01-00:24:45 Steiner: Three.

01-00:24:45 Cummins: Three.

01-00:24:49 Steiner: Pete very wisely elevated Paul Christopulos into a fundraising position, and he had been sports information director. He might have still been director of the athletic news bureau. I’m not sure of the titles. And I’d been there—’58—so two years, and in my own mind thought I was ready. Pete wisely knew I wasn’t, and talked to me, and hired Wiles Hallock. So then I got a request to interview for a job at Oregon, and it was my leaving Cal. I had a professional ambition, sure, but the fun of the job was my alma mater, because I might have gone into journalism, which was what my degree was—and that would have been a huge mistake. But I remember talking to Wiles—who recommended me for the job, by the way. But he said ask some questions. And I asked the questions and I never heard back from Oregon, so that was a real wise move on my part. And then when Wiles left Pete—it was automatic that he hired me.

01-00:26:16 Cummins: Yes, and he went to the Pac-8 then?

01-00:26:22 Steiner: Yeah, [Wiles left to go work for the NCAA in television and later became commissioner of the conference.] But that’s interesting in itself, I think. Admiral [Thomas J.] Hamilton was hired as executive director, not commissioner, and because Schmidt, having the powers, seemingly, powers that he had and was commissioner, then the new league didn’t want a commissioner, so Tom was named as executive director. But then when Wiles

came in I’m sure it was commissioner again. But I’m guessing that there’d been enough time and the old stuff had been forgotten or healed.

01-00:27:01 Cummins: Right. Well, and they made a real change there about the role of the commissioner and placing much more reliance on the good faith of the individual schools to comply.

01-00:27:14 Steiner: Well, I’m sure that’s why the title of executive director.

01-00:27:19 Cummins: Exactly. And then in ’68, at Cal, we run into these problems with Isaac Curtis and more rules violations that—

01-00:27:35 Steiner: Timely, because several of them—Isaac and have you talked to Mike White? Are you going to talk to Mike?

01-00:27:47 Cummins: I’m trying. Kirsten [Hexstrum] is—

01-00:27:50 Steiner: And what’s Ray Willsey’s condition?

01-00:27:51 Cummins: I don’t know, actually.

01-00:27:55 Steiner: Okay, John—these are my recollections. The 1.8, that predictability test, which was a short-sighted, ill-advised rule—but Isaac didn’t take the test.

01-00:28:22 Cummins: The SAT, yeah.

01-00:28:23 Steiner: The 1.8 test.

01-00:28:24 Cummins: Oh, okay—it’s called the 1.8?

01-00:28:28 Steiner: It was the 1.8 rule. I’m not sure whether—it might have been a euphemism for a different—

01-00:28:32 Cummins: Yeah, I’ll find that out. Okay.

01-00:28:33 Steiner: And UCLA, with the running back—I can’t remember his name—was found in violation, but they’d had somebody take the test for him. Now at Cal we called it a clerical error that Isaac didn’t take it.

01-00:28:51 Cummins: Yes, the administration—

01-00:28:51 Steiner: And it amazed me that the media accepted that. It took—I don’t know whether it spoke that we were trusted, that Ray was trusted, I was trusted, whatever, that it was accepted—and it amazed me. The one thing—that Ray Willsey didn’t know everything that was going on in his football program would surprise me. I have great respect for Ray as a coach, by the way. And if he hadn’t—he and the free speech movement hadn’t come at the same time I think he’d have been—we’d have had a very nice football tenure for Ray. And then the NCAA came down on us and said Cal will be on probation for as long as Isaac Curtis participates plus one year.

There was a meeting—I can’t remember whose house, but we were out in the valley so it might have been Ray’s—out in Contra Costa County. Bob Kerley was there representing the chancellor, Ray, and Paul Brechler who was now the athletic director. And Ray’s explaining that it was an error, whatever, and Paul Brechler and—Ray wants to fight the NCAA on it. And Kerley, I remember him saying, “Well, good. That’s what the chancellor would like to hear.” Now when Kerley—

01-00:30:38 Cummins: Now is this ’71? Because yes, it would have to be.

01-00:30:41 Steiner: It was shortly after the—it was whenever we won the NCAA track championship and that was voided.

01-00:30:48 Cummins: Oh okay. So would Kerley—because [Chancellor Al] Bowker comes in in ’71.

01-00:30:55 Steiner: I think Heyns was chancellor at that time.

01-00:30:57 Cummins: Okay, so Roger Heyns is still chancellor, but Kerley—I wonder if he was the—because at least my recollection was that Bowker appointed him as vice chancellor. He was a business officer, but he had to be close to Roger in order for Roger to do that.

01-00:31:16 Steiner: Well, I can’t believe it’s Bowker as chancellor.

01-00:31:22 Cummins: Yeah, okay. I think you’re right.

01-00:31:22 Steiner: It had to have been Roger Heyns. And I remember Kerley saying that—and now whether that’s true or whether Bob is representing that correctly, I don’t know.

01-00:31:30 Cummins: No, I think that’s probably correct.

01-00:31:32 Steiner: But I remember Brechler sitting there and saying, “We’re making a mistake. We’re making a big mistake.”

01-00:31:38 Cummins: Exactly, exactly, which was Dave Maggard’s view too.

01-00:31:43 Steiner: Yeah. Now, Isaac was a terrific guy and then Isaac ultimately left to go to San Diego State because of the pressure he was putting on Cal. Isaac had dyslexia in high school, as a youngster, and his education was really set back and he had a real hard time and probably should not have been at Cal.

01-00:32:09 Cummins: But has a great career, NFL.

01-00:32:10 Steiner: I liked Isaac a lot and he was an unassuming guy, he was quiet, and who— Eddie Hart, who I love—Eddie Hart and Isaac and Dave [Masters] were very close.

01-00:32:25 Cummins: Right, right. Yeah, well he helped to win that NCAA track and field championship, that’s for sure. So that’s interesting because now—yeah, so Brechler is there—

01-00:32:40 Steiner: There’s a—it bothered me. Glenn Dickey did a piece in the Cal Monthly and he confused that—that Cal had somebody take the test for Isaac. And the only reason I bring that up is if it’s part of history, it’s an inaccuracy.

01-00:33:01 Cummins: Yeah, that’s interesting. Everything I’ve read—

01-00:33:04 Steiner: And I told Glenn. I talked to Glenn about it and he said, “Oh, who cares.” He just—

01-00:33:11 Cummins: Yeah, interesting, interesting. Well, at least that’s not—and from everything I’ve read, the administration says basically it was our fault and he’s in good standing now, Curtis, Isaac Curtis is in good standing and why should the

NCAA make this determination? And the Golden Bear Athletic Association files a lawsuit against the NCAA, which was—do you have any recollection?

01-00:33:38 Steiner: Yeah, now that you bring it up, yeah. It was not the school bringing the suit.

01-00:33:45 Cummins: Yes, exactly. And then when—so Dave Maggard talks about he and Brechler—because I guess Brechler would rely on Dave for certain things— went to meet Walter Byers, head of the NCAA. The NCAA at that time was trying to beef up its enforcement efforts—always a challenge. Byers, in his book, Unsportsmanlike Conduct: [Exploiting College Athletes], talks about this. So say something about—

01-00:34:22 Steiner: Byers is—I have such a low esteem of Walter Byers it’s—and not that what was done to Cal was unfair. I couldn’t believe we were going in this direction and I didn’t know how the NCAA would react, but Paul Brechler did. And so that was—I knew we were lying. I felt we were lying; I had no documentation of that and did not know how the NCAA would react, so Paul was my guide on that because he did have experience with the NCAA. Walter Byers—I was on the CoSIDA—College Sports Information Directors [of America], and we had a meeting in Chicago every year and I was on the NCAA PR committee. So we’re having a meeting—

01-00:35:16 Cummins: What year, roughly?

01-00:35:20 Steiner: Well, it would have been some time—it was shortly after Kent State, the shootings at Kent State.

01-00:35:23 Cummins: Oh, okay, okay—’68, ’69, somewhere in [there], right? I’ll find it, so don’t worry about it. [Shortly after May 4, 1970.]

01-00:35:33 Steiner: Tom Hansen was public relations director for the NCAA at the time. We have this PR committee meeting and they want to get better exposure for the NCAA. And so we’re talking about Walter doing some sit-down interviews and media interviews. And then Walter later addressed the convention and somebody asked him about Kent State. And his response was, “You can’t stop a mob by firing over their heads.”

01-00:36:14 Cummins: Wow! Whoa.

01-00:36:19 Steiner: And I’m just sitting there totally aghast.

01-00:36:21 Cummins: Absolutely.

01-00:36:22 Steiner: And I went to Tom—I said, “Tom, hide him and don’t let him speak.”

01-00:36:29 Cummins: Wow! Incredible!

01-00:36:31 Steiner: It was incredible. The athletic world was slow to change, and I’m not sure how many of us were stunned by that comment there. Not enough. Not enough. And certainly, those of us in the conference were. We had a great relationship at our level in the conference. It was marvelously cooperative.

01-00:37:03 Cummins: And your level being the sports information?

01-00:37:04 Steiner: Right. It was wonderfully cooperative. And Tom Hamilton was terrific setting an environment for that. The admiral was a super guy. Anyway, he was just brought in as a figurehead or to restore some integ[rity]. I demean him by that. To give the conference an appearance of integrity, which he brought to the job. And so he was the right person to do it, but they weren’t looking for a Victor Schmidt. They were looking for the antithesis of Victor Schmidt.

01-00:37:43 Cummins: Yeah, now why was that? In just, in your view—why wouldn’t they want to have strong enforcement?

01-00:37:55 Steiner: I think UCLA’s reaction to the penalties would be—

01-00:37:56 Cummins: The reason.

01-00:37:59 Steiner: —would be the reason for that.

01-00:38:02 Cummins: Yeah, yeah, because the interesting thing—

01-00:38:02 Steiner: Well, you said it before. They weren’t going to rely on the good faith of the—

01-00:38:08 Cummins: The institutions.

01-00:38:09 Steiner: Yeah.

01-00:38:11 Cummins: Because that’s such a switch. Because is it true, in your recollection, that the Pacific Coast Conference had a fairly good reputation vis-à-vis other conferences?

01-00:38:22 Steiner: I would think so, certainly.

01-00:38:25 Cummins: Yeah, in terms of these rules. And Sproul and Kerr—Sproul basically said even though the Pacific Coast Conference and the NCAA said you can offer athletic scholarships in ’56, they said no.

01-00:38:44 Steiner: Work-aid program.

01-00:38:44 Cummins: Yeah, work aid, because if you do athletic scholarships you’re just paying and you lose the amateur concept. And was that highly unusual?

01-00:38:56 Steiner: Right. Yeah. I think so. It was an Avery Brundage—and I don’t know that Avery influenced him, but when Avery Brundage was head of the IOC, and the outrage of America about the Soviets being essentially paid—they’re raised in this and they’re supported and they’re totally—and he said well, college scholarships are no different.

01-00:39:25 Cummins: Ah! I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s really interesting. So there’s that connection.

01-00:39:29 Steiner: Well, no, I don’t know, but if his thinking was the same—and the work-aid program was a travesty. It was just—

01-00:39:39 Cummins: A joke.

01-00:39:42 Steiner: Yeah, I know guys who—they didn’t even go in and sign up. They’d say I read a book and—

01-00:39:49 Cummins: Right, right, yeah. Tom Bates I interviewed and he said—

01-00:39:51 Steiner: Is he still mayor?

01-00:39:53 Cummins: Yeah, he’s still—reelected.

01-00:39:56 Steiner: A green town.

01-00:39:57 Cummins: Yeah, exactly. And he said that the work program basically—if you got there on time you could get the job of watering the lawn on the field or—which I still find amazing in this day and age—the next day after the game you were supposed to go and clean up the stadium. I think oh my God!

01-00:40:20 Steiner: The stadium, yeah.

01-00:40:25 Cummins: So okay, yeah, that is very interesting.

01-00:40:30 Steiner: But it was resistance to subsidized student athletes.

01-00:40:38 Cummins: Exactly, exactly. And did you have a view, a personal view of all of that? You know, you’re sitting there in this key position—

01-00:40:45 Steiner: But I was hearing stories from—I can’t remember the year. But I shared a house on Ward Street with Earl Shultz, Stan Morrison.

01-00:40:57 Cummins: Oh, how interesting.

01-00:40:58 Steiner: And a kid named Dean Bond who was a friend of Earl’s who came up to try to play quarterback for a while at a junior college. And we shared a house, and [Ned] Averbuck and [Bill] McClintock and those guys would always come over and you’d hear the stories of what they didn’t do—I had no firsthand experience. I had some athletes working in the sports information office, clippings and things like that. I wasn’t a taskmaster, but they had a job to do and they did it. It’s not labor and it’s a fun place to be. There was all these conversations and coaches coming in and out, so it was a great place for them to be, which was terrific for me, to have these guys doing that.

01-00:41:50 Cummins: And so what was your—did you have a personal reaction to what was going on in terms of intercollegiate athletics generally, the UC stand vis-à-vis athletic scholarships, this kind of schizophrenic—

01-00:42:08 Steiner: I was pretty novice at that time. I was more of an observer rather than a critic or a proponent. I knew the work-aid program wasn’t being administered, so you think well, that’s a sham—so why have it? And probably felt that the amount of time that the athletes were putting in in their sport, for a benefit to the university, that—

01-00:42:50 Cummins: Right, they deserve—

01-00:42:53 Steiner: —their lot in life ought to be improved, it ought to be made a little easier. And then what about the musician or something like that? Well, in my thinking give them all scholarships.

I had dinner with Herm Selvin. Do you know that name?

01-00:43:12 Cummins: I don’t, no.

01-00:43:13 Steiner: Well, Herm, a little guy—he was a lawyer with Loeb and Loeb, down here in LA, and had been a student manager for Andy Smith’s wonder teams and is a marvelous man. I’m told [he] had rejected a bid to the California Supreme Court several times because he had a handicapped child down here. So I met Herm at a number of Southern Seas meetings—now he’s not to be contrasted with Herm Weiner, who was probably party to paying the players during Pappy’s days. But Herm Selvin—a very bright guy. So we have dinner and we’re just talking about things, and this would have been 1960, because we had just—December of ’60 Pete was—Rene Herrerias was the coach when we just lost the four-overtime basketball game, in the LA tournament, to Iowa. So we’re getting a bite to eat before going back, and one of the things Herm said was, “You have to proselytize—” He didn’t use the word recruit. So it’s an old-fashioned word. “You have to proselytize to stay in the league.” But that doesn’t answer the question of why you have to stay in the league. And so that’s the first thought that got me—and first of the things that I heard that really got me to look at athletics. Not that I studied it, researched it, but it put questions in my mind.

And then I taught a class at USC in the early eighties, a guest lecturer. H.D. Thoreau, who had been the athletic news bureau at USC and then ran the Squaw Valley Olympics, the Winter Olympics director in Squaw Valley and then went to work—his major job was with Hale Stores—I can’t remember…

01-00:45:31 Cummins: Yeah, Carter Hawley Hale.

01-00:45:32 Steiner: Carter Hawley Hale. And then [he] ran track and field in the ’84 Olympics for Peter Ueberroth. So he comes to speak to my class and we talk about sports and whatnot, and at the end there’s always a Q&A session and it always comes up—“How can I get a job?” And H.D. talked about jobs in sports. And a student asked him, “Well, what about a college sports information director?” And H.D. said—he says, “If you think that major college football belongs on a campus, then it’s a good job.” So those two things have stayed with me.

01-00:46:16 Cummins: Exactly.

01-00:46:18 Steiner: And to me it’s not a foregone conclusion that it ought to be the way it is. And it’s heading in the opposite direction, and does it self-destruct? Does the greed or the need to compete at a high level ultimately destroy all this? Well, I don’t know. I don’t know. So you mourn for the days of Brutus Hamilton and Pete Newell and Dr. Sproul.

01-00:46:46 Cummins: So talk about Pete Newell then, because you knew him very well. You spoke, I know, at his memorial service, so go ahead.

01-00:46:59 Steiner: Well, an amazing guy. So grounded. It always amazed me that his players, when they played for him, would always be in terror whenever he walked by. If they had a complaint they’d go to Rene [Herrerias]. Yet here was this guy who was the most approachable, as a student in the Daily Cal—he was absolutely approachable. And if he had time there was no end to the—

01-00:47:39 Cummins: Conversation.

01-00:47:41 Steiner: —conversation. We went up to play Washington in the ’58 season, so it would have been ‘58. And Washington had redshirted Bruno Boin, so Boin and Smart, Doug Smart, could play together, two big guys. And they were really good. They were good. Fifty-seven, ’57. It was the first of Pete’s conference championships. So we go up there and I think we beat them both games. But there was a day in between, and so it was the Daily Cal, I called Pete at the hotel, “Could I come up, Pete, and interview you for the second game?” “Sure, come on up.” So it turns out he ran out of cigarettes and he didn’t want to go down to the lobby. So as long as my cigarettes lasted, he’d talk to me. [laughter] [cell phone whistles] No, that’s fine. Absolutely approachable, totally grounded—you can remember, and I’m going to be at a loss—you can remember comments he’d make that were such common sense, things that— and then to work as his sports information director was a delight!

During the free speech movement Pete called me and he said be at his office at a certain time. “Alfred Wright of Sports Illustrated is going to come out and he wants to do a piece on athletics during this upheaval on campus.” And so Pete is enamored with Alfred Wright, who had been married to Olivia de Havilland or her sister [Joan Fontaine]—and he was this—he had a coat and tie—or he might even have had a bow tie, Alfred Wright. He was this gentleman out of a different era. And so we’re having—and he wants to do this piece, and Pete is going to be very accommodating. Pete doesn’t think in terms of things to hide or to spin, and actually neither did I. So he asked me, Alfred Wright, he said, “Can you recommend four students that I can

interview that would give me a perspective of the campus?” And I did. One of them was Johnathan [A.] Rodgers. Do you know Johnathan?

01-00:50:25 Cummins: I don’t, no.

01-00:50:26 Steiner: Well, Johnathan is a black fellow on the Daily Cal, and he went on to run all of the O&Os [owned-and-operated television stations] of CBS or NBC or— and Johnathan had become this—and he says—

01-00:50:37 Cummins: Oh, okay. I do know who that is, yeah.

01-00:50:39 Steiner: And he’s been a major contributor to athletics. So Johnathan is a very bright, obviously, young Daily Cal black student. He was the conservative band member who was president of the student body. Forrest Beaty, who was—do you know Forrest?

01-00:51:00 Cummins: I don’t.

01-00:51:00 Steiner: Okay, well, Forrest was an outstanding track athlete, maybe the most highly recruited track athlete of his day, a white sprinter out of Glendale who set the national high school record, the 100 and 220, but actually got hurt in his last high school race. Everybody—a pre-med student, 4.38, whatever his high school grade point average [was], and everybody is recruiting him. And well, I’m digressing like hell here.

01-00:51:34 Cummins: No, no, keep going. It’s great.

01-00:51:38 Steiner: So we’re bringing him up for a—and Brutus was one of the worst recruiters in the history of the sport. He once told this guy John Woolley, who was the state mile champion, a very introverted, shy kid. He says he thought he might be better off at Stanford, a smaller campus. [laughing] So but anyway— Forrest—Paul Christopulos—did you know Paul?

01-00:52:03 Cummins: Amazing, amazing. I did know Paul.

01-00:52:05 Steiner: Paul had everything. He had down to the minute what we were going to do on this. He was going to go over and watch Bob Albo operate in San Francisco— it was all to the minute. So here at ten o’clock in the morning he’s going to meet with Brutus, and at 10:45 he’s going to go—such and such. And so Brutus—he comes in there and Brutus closes the door. And they’re in there,

and they’re in there—and it’s now eleven, it’s eleven thirty. And Brutus took a liking to Forrest Beaty. Brutus felt that kids should ask to come to your university rather than you asking them to come. And for whatever the reason though—

01-00:52:44 Cummins: What a change!

01-00:52:45 Steiner: For whatever the reason—and the door finally opened and Brutus and Forrest walked out, and Brutus said, “I’m going to take Forrest for the best milkshake he’s ever had in his life,” and they went to Fentons. And Forrest came back and said, “I’m coming to Cal.” And SC and UCLA and Stanford—Payton Jordan had just come to Stanford, but everybody was—and so Forrest is one of the—and the fourth student I recommended was Bettina Aptheker. Now, I don’t know how many people in athletics would do that, and Pete thought it was a terrific idea. Alfred wanted a cross-section of the campus—and Herbert Aptheker’s daughter. So anyway—and the story ran in Sports Illustrated. It was a marvelous story. It was a marvelous piece.

01-00:53:36 Cummins: And this was ’64 you think, ’65? I’ll get the piece.

01-00:53:44 Steiner: Probably it was ’64. [http://www.si.com/vault/1966/01/03/607791/to-the-big- game-and-to-the-barricades]

01-00:53:46 Cummins: Sixty-four, okay. [brief interruption in recording] Okay, this is a continuation with Bob Steiner. This is the first interview, April 16, 2015. Okay, go ahead Bob. So the Sports Illustrated—

01-00:54:05 Steiner: —story ran, and it read marvelously for us. To the point that it carried such that we were back playing Notre Dame, ’64-65, and the sports editor of the Chicago Tribune—I can’t remember his name—wanted to interview me on the same subject and took me to dinner. That also came out very well for us, and it was prompted by the article in Sports Illustrated.

So we were being bludgeoned all over the place because of things that are happening on campus. Our coaches are—it’s killing us in recruiting, which was a—and I’m sure it was. Hal Frey—do you know Hal?

01-00:55:04 Cummins: I know who he—

01-00:55:04 Steiner: He was a gymnastics coach, very successful. I don’t know how many NCAA—this little guy. And he comes into my office—to me it shows why he won—and he’s always like this; he’s looking down. He says, “How can we

turn this to our advantage?” While everybody else is—the sky is falling. And it was. It was being perceived that way, and countless tales of going into a recruit’s home and then the TV’s on and then another thing is happening on campus.

01-00:55:48 Cummins: Right, right. Now, to go back to Pete Newell for a minute, so he—based on the [Bruce] Jenkins book [A Good Man: The Pete Newell Story], he really gave up coaching for health reasons, because he was—

01-00:56:01 Steiner: And he never regretted the decision.

01-00:56:04 Cummins: Interesting.

01-00:56:04 Steiner: Never regretted it.

01-00:56:06 Cummins: So talk about that.

01-00:56:07 Steiner: Well, Pete—during the season he’d survive on cigarettes, coffee, and a tuna sandwich, the closer you got to game days. And his weight went down to whatever. But Pete was a teacher—obviously a great coach—a great coach. And Bobby Knight says the world will never catch up to Pete Newell’s knowledge of basketball. But he was a teacher, and he also was not a great recruiter. But there are enough of his players around who could tell you how they got to Cal. I can’t relate all the—it didn’t seem to me like many of them were very highly recruited. But he’d come down and watch the high school tournaments down here because he had some friends—he’d sit with the writers and he enjoyed that. So it was the teaching things that he really liked, and then he went on into his Big Men’s Camps. I remember him telling me Kareem called him one night and he said, “Pete, I’m losing something rebounding.” And Pete didn’t say, “Come down to my Big Man’s Camp.” He says, “Kareem, let me know—I’ll meet you wherever you,” so he spent a couple of sessions with him. A young [Hakeem] Elajuwon is there—these are—but he loved that and never regretted it, because I asked him several times. He never regretted giving up coaching, never looked back. And when he gave up smoking he really got sick there for—when he was athletic director. He gave up smoking, and I don’t remember what it was, but he really got sick, maybe as a reaction.

01-00:58:14 Cummins: To not smoking.

01-00:58:16 Steiner: Not smoking. Pete was great to work with and he did rudimentary fundraising, which the Athletic Department had never done. And Pete was a fundraiser, I

would think, the way Pappy Waldorf was a recruiter. He’d enjoy sitting with some alums and chatting. The story was Pappy would meet with the Modesto group, the Fresno group, and he’d say I like this player, this player, and this— and then they went out and did whatever it took. And so Pete was probably that way as a fundraiser. Now Dave [Maggard] extended the fundraising considerably, and now it’s much more organized and educated in what they’re doing.

01-00:59:06 Cummins: So and—did he enjoy being an AD?

01-00:59:09 Steiner: I’m not sure. My guess is not. I don’t remember that he ever complained about it. We spent a lot of time talking. [laughing] I’d go—and you want to have a beer after work? And he’d say, “Yeah, but I won’t go in the back room with you.” [laughing] It’s the old— And talk—we’d go to the Rathskeller and have a beer, or the Kingfish, Kingfish—

01-00:59:49 Cummins: Right, Kingfish.

01-00:59:49 Steiner: Yeah, which was closer to his house. His wife was wonderful. Florence was just this wonderful lady, marvelous—and we’d just talk about a lot of things, but some of it sports, some of it not. I don’t have a remembrance of him complaining. Now, he had a tremendous relationship with Adrian—

01-01:00:18 Cummins: Kragen.

01-01:00:19 Steiner: Kragen.

01-01:00:22 Cummins: A law school [alumnus and professor], yes.

01-01:00:25 Steiner: Yeah, yeah. A very close relationship with Adrian. I don’t remember him complaining about it but I always thought that there should not have been a tier between the athletic director and the chancellor. It can’t be for every day, rudimentary things like that, but when the AD needed it he should have been able to go directly without having it be filtered. And Pete’s liking of Adrian— if Pete liked somebody then they could do no wrong. And when he’d write a letter of recommendation—he and Brutus were the same way. They were wonderful letters if they liked you. I don’t know that they investigated who you were or what, but if they liked you then there were these marvelous letters. Because those are transformative years in the mid-sixties, certainly

01-01:01:31 Cummins: Absolutely. Was it, in your recollection, a really big shift to go to the administration as opposed to ASUC? Do you have much of a sense of that?

01-01:01:43 Steiner: Well, I felt that Bud Hastings and Greg Engelhard—I don’t know that I trusted Bud, and I liked Greg, but he’s a school teacher. I’m not sure that Greg brought a lot to the—pretty friendly, even as a student there, he would always stop and talk. And then you get the feeling that there would be debates in the student council or whatever—

01-01:02:24 Cummins: Yes, the senate.

01-01:02:28 Steiner: I always felt they didn’t have any—

01-01:02:31 Cummins: Real sense, yeah.

01-01:02:32 Steiner: Well, they were young and inexperienced, just like I was!

01-01:02:34 Cummins: Of course, of course, yeah.

01-01:02:37 Steiner: Right. That it should be—the decisions ought to be at a little higher level or a more mature level. Bud, who I would assume was looking out for the economics of the ASUC, and those aren’t always necessarily compatible. There were going to be some loggerheads between the conduct of athletics and the economics of the ASUC. So I probably liked the change. I knew I did because it gave me a chance to get into the university retirement system, so that, from a personal standpoint… But I felt the ASUC was more of a nuisance, the students were more of a nuisance—as I would have been were I on the student council!

01-01:03:28 Cummins: Right, exactly, exactly. Well, and Cal was one of the last places that had that kind of—still the student control. Because in the history it’s a student activity, athletics, going back to the 1850s. And so—yeah, that’s interesting. So no question then, about the impact of the—were attendance numbers down, do you think?

01-01:03:58 Steiner: In football?

01-01:04:00 Cummins: In football.

01-01:04:01 Steiner: Oh, very—well, down, they were down all the time I was there—what a job I did! [laughter] Now, obviously from Pappy’s heyday, they were dramatically down. But then Pappy’s last years were not good years, and we artificially estimated attendance numbers. I’m sure the actually paid attendance or—were really dismal. But again, I don’t know how you count the students in that. You always have that student athletic calculus—it was Ray Corrigan.

01-01:04:40 Cummins: Exactly, exactly. And then Marv Levy, when he comes, in his book—I think the title of the book is What Else Would I Rather Be Doing? [Marv Levy: Where Else Would You Rather Be?], he talks about the fact that, he says something like, “You know, I thought I was a nice guy, and when I get to Cal I could never figure out why I got such a cold reception.” And he said, “But I realized after a while that people weren’t angry with me, they were angry with the administration.”

01-01:05:16 Steiner: I think that’s correct. As I said, Charles McCabe was, he did—his writing was an entertainment value as opposed to being informative, but I’m sure he believed it—that Levy was hired to bring athletics down or kill athletics or kill football or to bring it down to a different level. But McCabe was more of an editorial kind of a writer, the Sporting Green or something or something—I can’t remember what it is. [The Fearless Spectator]

01-01:05:59 Cummins: Yeah, exactly, more a daily column of some kind.

01-01:06:01 Steiner: Yeah, I’d suppose so, a sports column. He was a shit-disturber and a finger- poker, and I remember Marv said, “I would engage him in a battle of wits, but my mother told me never fight an unarmed person.” [laughter]

01-01:06:21 Cummins: Interesting! Well, and Seaborg liked Levy because of his academic background, right? Talk about Glenn Seaborg as—

01-01:06:34 Steiner: I didn’t know him—I mean I knew him but not personally, and obviously his academic credentials just—

01-01:06:44 Cummins: Oh, no question.

01-01:06:45 Steiner: —overwhelm you. But what a pleasant, pleasant guy he was, and Pete loved him. Pete really liked him. Glenn was a fan and he was a rooter—and those had to have been simpler times. Obviously, things got more complicated as we’ve gone on—and are really complicated today. [laughing] I can’t fathom

what’s happening. Robley Williams was also a pleasant fellow but less outgoing.

01-01:07:41 Cummins: And he was the faculty athletic rep?

01-01:07:41 Steiner: I think he must have come in after Glenn.

01-01:07:48 Cummins: Yes, as faculty athletic rep, yes.

01-01:07:50 Steiner: Right, right. And then I don’t know—Adrian would have replaced him? Or Adrian would have been chancellor’s representative as opposed to the faculty athletic—

01-01:07:58 Cummins: I’m not sure. That’s a good question.

01-01:08:00 Steiner: Yeah, I’m not sure. You know it was a—when the semester would break in March, or whatever, we’d recruit some athletes coming in into track and field. Okay, so you’d get a couple of junior college transfers mid-semester. UCLA would too, and theirs would be eligible immediately. Ours would be a couple- week debate and then they’d be eligible. So they’d miss the UCLA meet or they’d—they’d miss half a season. And why can’t we be doing what UCLA is doing?

01-01:08:54 Cummins: A constant refrain.

01-01:08:57 Steiner: Pardon?

01-01:08:57 Cummins: I mean that’s a constant refrain. It goes up through all these years.

01-01:09:00 Steiner: Do you remember when we met?

01-01:09:02 Cummins: I don’t.

01-01:09:03 Steiner: Okay, Mac Laetsch. You came down, I think it was with Mac Laetsch, a meeting in downtown Los Angeles, and John, I’m not confusing you with somebody else—did you remember coming, doing that?

01-01:09:20 Cummins: I can’t remember why.

01-01:09:23 Steiner: Well, it was a meeting with Cal alums into communication.

01-01:09:25 Cummins: Oh! I remember that, yes. Okay.

01-01:09:32 Steiner: Okay, and you needed a ride—I gave you a ride to the airport. But I remember saying that we ought to find out what UCLA, Stanford, and Michigan are doing, and then—because they’re very successful.

01-01:09:51 Cummins: Yes!

01-01:09:52 Steiner: And then either do what they’re doing or recognize that we don’t want to do that and then get out of the league, because you’re putting our athletes—I always felt a responsibility of the Athletic Department was to make it a level playing field for our athletes in terms of coaches, in terms of facilities, whatever—if you’re going to compete, giving them a chance to be successful. And we weren’t, or my feelings were we weren’t—and this was in the eighties when you came down here. So now all through the years—and I don’t know about today; I don’t know about the last decade or two decades—[but] it was harder at Cal to administer athletics than it was at UCLA. Obviously SC, but I didn’t include SC.

01-01:10:51 Cummins: Yes, right, right. Well, I think—it’s still there today. I think there is this great ambivalence.

01-01:11:01 Steiner: Ambivalence?

01-01:11:02 Cummins: Ambivalence—that is hard to get over. You can’t get unanimity about anything at Cal. It’s a very critical, controversial place. [Steiner laughs with gusto] That’s a big part of it.

01-01:11:20 Steiner: [John] Lindsay, when he’s running for the Republican nomination, he was at the—he spoke at the Greek Theatre—I’m pretty sure it was Lindsay—and he got killed! Later when he was asked about that he says, “That’s a strange place.” [laughing]

01-01:11:45 Cummins: Well, and we went through a long time where no presidential candidate would come near Cal for that reason.

01-01:11:53 Steiner: Well, Kennedy had the marvelous speech [here].

01-01:11:55 Cummins: Of course, of course. And of course that was right—kind of just as the free speech movement, everything, was starting.

01-01:12:03 Steiner: Which they incubated. Absolutely.

01-01:12:05 Cummins: And then this huge shift occurs, at Cal. I think the critical nature of Cal is what makes it so good, at the same time as it makes it so difficult to—like Chuck Young. I interviewed him as part of this and he said, “You know, we don’t have these problems at UCLA. We’re a small fish in a big pond, whereas at Cal everything is an issue!” He said, “You can do things down here. It’s not the end of the world!” [laughter]

01-01:12:45 Steiner: The tree people. I mean absolutely—if I was in the administration—shoot ‘em all!

01-01:12:52 Cummins: Exactly, exactly.

01-01:12:54 Steiner: But I loved it—it’s Cal! And I remember going to a game and a chain-link fence was put up, and I’m going by and I say, “Go Trees!” Because Cal says, all right, Go Bears! Where else but at Cal? [laughing]

01-01:13:14 Cummins: No question. And there’s the good and the bad of that. Even most recently you have this faculty uprising, you’ve got the [Academic] Senate resolution, saying don’t subsidize [the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics] anymore. The chancellor, [Robert] Birgeneau, sets up his own committee of donors and some key faculty, and then the Senate have their own committee. They basically come forward with, I thought, really pretty good analysis, report, et cetera, that gave him—

01-01:13:48 Steiner: Gave the chancellor?

01-01:13:52 Cummins: Yes—an opening to not cut sports. So that’s the one side. On the other side, you’ve got these terrible cuts occurring. The chancellor can’t make Athletics exempt from this huge cut, and so he cuts the sports and then reinstates them. And one of our key donors says, in an interview, “That was a mistake.”

01-01:14:26 Steiner: Cutting?

01-01:14:27 Cummins: Reinstating. And he said, when the question was asked how much would it take to reinstate these sports he said $100 million, and he settled for $20

[million]. And this guy’s a very successful businessman. He said that was a bad decision.

01-01:14:47 Steiner: Do you—who was it?

01-01:14:47 Cummins: Yeah, Gary Rogers.

01-01:14:48 Steiner: Who?

01-01:14:48 Cummins: Gary Rogers.

01-01:14:50 Steiner: Okay. He was a crewman, wasn’t he?

01-01:14:52 Cummins: Crew, yes. Dreyer’s Ice Cream, CEO—I think he was CEO of Levi Strauss after that, or chairman of the board—I can’t remember. He was also on the local fed in San Francisco, a very influential guy and he certainly doesn’t mince his words. But here you are again, this ambivalence. So the donors come up with twenty—and what’s the chancellor going to do, turn down $20 million? So that’s the dilemma that you’re in.

01-01:15:26 Steiner: Yeah, it is. A long time ago I got to saying college sports is only fun on Saturdays. Now it could be a Friday night, it could be Thursday, but Monday through—oh!

01-01:15:41 Cummins: Absolutely, unless you have some ability to reach some unanimity about it. So the other thing that occurs at Cal is—and this gets to what I would call doing it right. When you look at graduation rates and they turn out to be as bad as they were this recent time around. In the FBS [Football Bowl Subdivision] we ranked 111th out 120 schools.

01-01:16:15 Steiner: Is the rating system good?

01-01:16:20 Cummins: It’s not great, and you have two. You’ve got the federal graduation rates, which are pretty straightforward. They look at these kids that come in on athletic scholarships, and if they don’t graduate that’s the rate, okay? The NCAA says that’s not fair because these kids leave, they go to other places, they may leave in good standing.

01-01:16:45 Steiner: Or they go to professional sports.

01-01:16:47 Cummins: Or go to professional sports. Exactly. So they say no, that’s not fair. When you disaggregate the data it disproportionally affects black students. It’s almost totally the problem in football and basketball. Basketball was also terrible towards the end, under Ben Braun. It’s predictable. The coaches start losing, just like Tedford did and Ben Braun. They start reaching down deeper. They get kids that aren’t really there.

01-01:17:20 Steiner: Ray Willsey did it.

01-01:17:21 Cummins: Yes, of course. You go back and you see it repeated. Mike White did it.

01-01:17:24 Steiner: With Crittenden, Lonnie Crittenden.

01-01:17:26 Cummins: Yeah, exactly. So I believe, anyway, because certain programs do it, just like you said, a long time ago. Stanford—everybody says oh well, Stanford is unique. I don’t buy that. If you look at the major violations, when the NCAA starts keeping track of them, we have seven major violations. Stanford has zero.

01-01:17:55 Steiner: Zero.

01-01:17:56 Cummins: Zero, over that period—they started in 1953 all the way up to the present. So we rank third. We’re in a group with—UCLA is also there—seven major violations. And you think wow, is that Cal? In other words, you don’t think about Cal in that context and so it’s kind of shocking. But I do think we can do it a lot better, and that’s kind of the purpose of this whole project, is to try and figure out what are we doing and how do you begin to get it—

01-01:18:31 Steiner: To what extent is the Academic Senate at Cal part of the problem? Seemingly, it carries more weight than at UCLA. Is there an academic senate of any weight at UCLA? Does it get into athletics at all?

01-01:18:51 Cummins: It does. They have a standing committee [Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics] of their Academic Senate that looks at athletics. They’re presented with the budget every year. At Cal we never had a committee like that until fairly recently. We had what’s called a Chancellor’s Advisory Committee, which pretty much didn’t do much of anything. With regard to the budget, the budgetary decisions were made by two or three people—the AD, the chancellor, and whoever the vice chancellor was. Not unusual. Many places do that. But there was a great fear that if the senate found out about these deficits that were accumulating—and from ’91 to about 2010 that

accumulated deficit was $170 [million] to $180 million… So when I got Athletics I said to Bob Berdahl, the chancellor, “If you want to get this under control you’ve got to make this stuff public. You can’t have these decisions— and so that’s when—what came out of that was the creation of what’s called the University Athletics Board, which is a joint Academic Senate/administrative committee. But it hasn’t settled the argument of whether there should be a separate senate committee. People feel they’re on two sides of that issue.

01-01:20:28 Steiner: Right or wrong. Send me back to my days, and I felt the Academic Senate was a powerful force.

01-01:20:36 Cummins: Oh, and it still is.

01-01:20:38 Steiner: For good or evil.

01-01:20:39 Cummins: Yes, there’s no question.

01-01:20:40 Steiner: And it just adds to the noise.

01-01:20:42 Cummins: In athletics. On the academic side it’s terribly important, in terms of the way the senate becomes involved in tenure and promotion decisions. And chancellors come in and they think oh my God, this is—

01-01:21:04 Steiner: More power than it should have?

01-01:21:09 Cummins: You can argue it either way. If you’re a chancellor that you would like to have the power you argue one way. But the winning argument is look at the quality of Cal academically. You can’t beat it, and so no chancellor is going to take that on. So that’s the difference. Now, Chuck Young—a powerful chancellor for twenty-nine years at UCLA. And they’ve got this long tradition of the connection with athletics, using athletics to help them in their development as a major university, et cetera.

01-01:21:44 Steiner: Yeah, well—labor under the, I guess maybe a myth, that the stronger your football program the more it aids your fundraising. Carl Stoney said that there was no statistics or statistics that belie that as opposed to support that.

01-01:22:06 Cummins: Yeah, it’s—my conclusion after looking at it is that when you go back to athletics fundraising, just like you said, Dave gets this thing moving. That was

in 19—well, he creates Bear Backers out of the Golden Bear Athletic Association.

01-01:22:33 Steiner: The Golden C.

01-01:22:32 Cummins: Yeah, do you know much about that? Do you have any recollection?

01-01:22:38 Steiner: It was pretty rudimentary. I think I started the first newsletter that went to donors.

01-01:22:44 Cummins: Yeah, that’s interesting.

01-01:22:46 Steiner: I can’t remember what we called it. And I’m sure I went to Pete and Pete says. “Fine, let’s do that.” I don’t remember anybody being—maybe Paul Christopulos I think was probably the person that Pete brought in to do that. And Paul was tireless. His energy was phenomenal. I don’t know that he wasn’t running in place a lot, but he was active.

01-01:23:26 Cummins: But when Dave sets that up and then he sets up the Cal Sports 80s, you were gone by then.

01-01:23:31 Steiner: Cal what?

01-01:23:32 Cummins: It was called Cal Sports 80s. It was an effort to raise money for facilities for athletics.

01-01:23:38 Steiner: No, I was gone.

01-01:23:39 Cummins: And he got Roger Heyns and Walter Haas to co-chair that. So right at that time Mike Heyman becomes chancellor. And Heyman put Cal in what I call the big leagues of fundraising, where he—

01-01:23:55 Steiner: Oh, at the university.

01-01:23:56 Cummins: At the university. So he creates an entire unit with a vice chancellor. Curt Simic is the first guy that comes in to do this. And he [Mike Heyman] looks at what Cal is doing in athletics fundraising, calls Dave over, and says, “I’ve been watching what you’re doing. I’m going to adopt your model. The only difference is you’ve got to get my permission to contact these people.”

01-01:24:27 Steiner: Yeah, I remember Dave talking about that. I can understand Dave’s frustration with that. I can understand Heyman’s—because it was called Keeping the Promise?

01-01:24:44 Cummins: Well, yes, Keeping the Promise was the campus campaign. Cal Sports 80s was the—

01-01:24:46 Steiner: Okay, that’s when you—I think when you and Mac Laetsch came down it was part of Keeping the Promise, and what can we do to have greater exposure in Los Angeles? That was your question.

01-01:24:56 Cummins: Exactly, yes, yes.

01-01:24:59 Steiner: Okay, yeah, I do remember Dave’s frustration with that. Well, if that’s going to be the case then the university does—you can make the case that the university then does have an obligation to the Athletic Department.

01-01:25:13 Cummins: It does. Also, a lot of those people that were involved in that Cal Sports 80s effort move right over into the Keeping the Promise campaign. They get on what’s called the Berkeley Foundation board. They served on the board.

01-01:25:29 Steiner: I think Johnathan Rodgers is on the board.

01-01:25:29 Cummins: Yes, yes, that’s right. And I remember who he is now. So—and the major donors at Cal, for the most part, are donors to athletics. There’s really not any question about that. The Haas family, Gary Rogers, Ned Spieker.

01-01:25:56 Steiner: Spieker, Stu Gordon.

01-01:25:56 Cummins: Yes, Stu Gordon is another one. There are a fair number. When you look at the major donors to Cal, say the top one hundred or something, well over half are donors to athletics. So even though—

01-01:26:12 Steiner: Can you earmark when you make a donation?

01-01:26:14 Cummins: Oh yeah, definitely. The whole concept of fundraising changed. In Heyman’s era there were specific things that he wanted to accomplish. One was reorganizing the biological sciences because of changes in genetic engineering, and it’s a huge effort, as you can imagine, on the campus.

Buildings had to be built, et cetera. So they go out and they do these surveys—what are people interested in giving to? That was not high on the list, and so he had to basically convince people and he was very successful at doing it. And that got this fundraising operation going. In that first campaign they raised $420 million. In the second campaign, under Tien, they raised $1.3. In this current campaign—

01-01:27:13 Steiner: One point three billion?

01-01:27:12 Cummins: Billion, I’m sorry, yes. And in the current one they’re going to raise over $3 billion, so you can see this increase. But it changed, because how to go about doing it changed to what they call donor-centric fundraising. So instead of convincing people to give to something you find out what they’re interested in and you give them—

01-01:27:36 Steiner: You create—if you have to you create something.

01-01:27:39 Cummins: Or you give them options. Here’s a bunch of things, or you educate—you still have to do some educating, but you give them a bunch of options to look at. And that’s a huge change. Anyway, again, a very fundamental change. So you think about fundraising, you think about Pete Newell fundraising, and you look at what we do today. It’s like my God! It’s astounding.

01-01:28:10 Steiner: A simpler time, a simpler time.

01-01:28:14 Cummins: Yes, exactly. So any—what about—so you talked a little bit about admissions. You talked about Brutus Hamilton being an assistant dean at one point. Certainly Pete Newell talks about—

01-01:28:31 Steiner: Was Arleigh Williams dean of students?

01-01:28:33 Cummins: Yes, he was.

01-01:28:33 Steiner: And of course his athletic background is phenomenal. He interviewed me, took me to have a drink after work over at the Durant Hotel. And we were talking about—this was the aftermath, I’m sure, of Isaac Curtis. But it was— and he was heading up a part of—investigation may be too strong a word— but looking into what was going on.

01-01:29:04 Cummins: And he was very close to Ray Willsey, right? Because he talks about that in his oral history.

01-01:29:11 Steiner: Arleigh does?

01-01:29:12 Cummins: Yeah. He said, “Maybe I was too close.”

01-01:29:14 Steiner: Well, that may—he maybe even was too close—okay. I didn’t remember any particular—between—but if there was a football—Arleigh was—but Arleigh was not unlike Brutus in their view of things, it seemed to me. But I remember him saying to me—“They certainly did use you, didn’t they?” And that was the first—and I didn’t pursue that with him asking him how—

01-01:29:56 Cummins: What do you think he meant by that? On the Curtis matter?

01-01:30:05 Steiner: Because I thought—what I was saying, what I was putting out, I didn’t believe. But so I—either I didn’t make that point to Arleigh or it’s something else, that—I wasn’t about to go and say, “Hey, I’m not going to do this.” I guess you could make the case maybe I should have.

01-01:30:39 Cummins: Oh, it’s exceedingly difficult—at that young age? What do you know really, about the politics—

01-01:30:48 Steiner: But I knew what we were doing was wrong, was not correct, was not true. But you get caught in everybody else’s doing it—that kind of which is a lame excuse for misbehavior. SC was always the—of course they were breaking every rule, you know. But I remember Arleigh saying that, “They’re certainly using you.”

01-01:31:17 Cummins: I wonder if he was giving you some guidance?

01-01:31:21 Steiner: That’s possible, that’s very possible.

01-01:31:24 Cummins: Or he was concerned about you? Maybe be—

01-01:31:25 Steiner: No—I believe that. I believe that.

01-01:31:30 Cummins: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01-01:31:31 Steiner: I believe that.

01-01:31:31 Cummins: That’s a very tough position.

01-01:31:35 Steiner: Yeah, I’ve never viewed myself as a very complex person. My loyalty was to Pete, whoever was running the program—to Dave, to Paul, and I always felt if I didn’t then I ought to leave. And the same thing has served me very well with the Lakers and my relationship with Jerry Buss. There was never anything—never any agendas or anything.

01-01:32:18 Cummins: See, it’s interesting—one of the things that I came across in my research is that there’s two sociological theories. One is called the art of muddling through. [laughter] And I thought yeah, that’s kind of what we’ve done vis-à- vis athletics. We don’t do that in everything, by any means, but for athletics, that’s kind of what we do.

01-01:32:45 Steiner: That sounds right.

01-01:32:48 Cummins: The second one is a—there’s a woman who studied the Columbia and Challenger disasters, the space shuttle disasters, and spent a long time reviewing all kinds of records, years and years. She said in the United States, when we have a disaster like that, we like to set up a commission and identify a couple of people that screwed up and fire them, and then we think we’ve solved the problem. And she said in looking at the record, very carefully, she came up with this term called the normalization of deviancy.

01-01:33:35 Steiner: Normalization of deviancy?

01-01:33:36 Cummins: Of deviancy—not deviancy like bad people.

01-01:33:41 Steiner: I understand, not deviant, not deviant.

01-01:33:43 Cummins: Deviant, yeah.

01-01:33:44 Steiner: No, I understand.

01-01:33:44 Cummins: But a culture in an organization, where people become accustomed to a way of thinking that if you could get outside the organization you’d say wait a second.

01-01:33:57 Steiner: You’d look at it totally differently.

01-01:33:58 Cummins: You’d look at it totally different[ly], and that leads them to certain consequences. And I thought yeah, that’s also what I—

01-01:34:05 Steiner: Which become ongoing.

01-01:34:06 Cummins: Which become ongoing. You buy into it. I certainly did! When I had Athletics—and I often ask myself the question in terms of what I’m writing— am I still doing it? But I don’t think there’s any value to writing a big exposé. There’s all kinds of exposés. They don’t lead anywhere. The reality is you’ve got this program; it’s not going to go away. How do you make it the best program you can? You know?

01-01:34:38 Steiner: Well, you hope history is instructive.

01-01:34:40 Cummins: Yes, yes.

01-01:34:41 Steiner: But if there’s this normalization of deviancy maybe it could never become—

01-01:34:49 Cummins: Well, that’s a good question. Maybe it can’t. I don’t know that.

01-01:34:52 Steiner: Certainly either way.

01-01:34:52 Cummins: Because you get such conflicting values, and as you say, it’s just getting so much worse.

01-01:35:02 Steiner: Oh, it really is a conflict. But then you go, Saturday afternoon at the stadium. Of course I’m not sure whether it’s the same, but then you go to Carl Stoney’s tailgate or somebody else’s tailgate. The sun is shining—it’s marvelous. But I once saw a Brown-Harvard or something, football game on television, where maybe twenty thousand or fifteen thousand people [were] there and they were all excited. And well, this isn’t so bad!

01-01:35:41 Cummins: Exactly, but you can’t do that unless you find some other people that are going to go along with you.

01-01:35:46 Steiner: Oh no, it is—it is irreversible until it hits some sort of a wall or something. It’s going in a direction that I have no idea how you could curtail.

01-01:36:00 Cummins: Basically what I say in the—I’ll send you the paper—but what we say, Kirsten [Hexstrum] and I—Kirsten, her father played for Mike White. Hexstrum, Hexstrum is his last name.

01-01:36:09 Steiner: Oh yeah! And he was a lineman, and he was on the good football—the ’75 year. Chuck Hexstrum. And his—oh yeah, she is a rower?

01-01:36:24 Cummins: It’s his daughter. She was the rower.

01-01:36:23 Steiner: She’s a PhD student. Okay.

01-01:36:26 Cummins: Yes, yeah, so that’s the connection there. I forgot what I was going to say.

01-01:36:35 Steiner: Did Dave talk about his firing of Mike White?

01-01:36:37 Cummins: Obliquely, obliquely.

01-01:36:39 Steiner: I was so proud of him when he did that.

01-01:36:39 Cummins: Yeah, well and it was out of the blue. Talk about that.

01-01:36:42 Steiner: Well, I was gone.

01-01:36:45 Cummins: Yes, you were. Right after you left, I guess.

01-01:36:46 Steiner: I was gone. And boy, I’ll tell you. What Else Would I Rather Do?—whose book was that? [Where Else Would You Rather Be?]

01-01:36:57 Cummins: Marv Levy.

01-01:36:58 Steiner: Marv Levy. So I was sitting there at Cal, and there was an old guy who had been at Stanford, Don Liebendorfer. And I’m sitting there—I don’t want to become Don Liebendorfer. I don’t want to be here thirty years. But what else would I rather do? And so I went for a couple of years, and people who I was

very close to in the sports information group—Bob Sprenger, who was the conference PR director—he left to go to the Kansas City Chiefs. John Reid who was at Washington left to go—Pete hired him to be the PR director for the San Diego Rockets, and John is driving down with his family in a trailer and he hears on the radio that the San Diego Rockets have moved to Houston. [laughter] So he says, well I just—his line is, “Well, I just turned left.” [laughter] And then of course Pete was chagrined. Pete didn’t know it, and Pete wouldn’t go. He stayed on, but he commuted. Pete wasn’t going to go— anyway, so those guys were leaving and I didn’t necessarily want to be an NFL PR director and be a PR director, but what else would I rather do? But I knew I had to—there had to be a change. I was getting in a routine. I was probably becoming indolent in the job. And so pro track started and I knew it couldn’t last. I felt it couldn’t last, but it would be a transition for me because I loved the sport, and it would transition for me and it worked out just wonderfully. So what else would I rather do?

01-01:38:45 Cummins: But so then your view of Dave when he made the decision—

01-01:38:50 Steiner: Oh, okay, so now—Mike hastened the decision. When we go on probation again—I mean I was sick. And I heard about it—I was up in Washington. We were playing Washington. In those days you’d go up for five days and advance the game. And I heard about it, and I’m sitting in [the office of] George Meyers, a super guy, the sports editor of the Seattle Times, and I’m sitting there in his office and I’m just downcast. And he says, “What’s the matter?” And it hadn’t been released yet but I knew, but I told George. And he said, “Come to the house for dinner tonight.” And we did and just talked—and he never wrote it. He waited for it to be released. So I was just—not again I’m saying. Mike, who I went to school with and you meet him and he’s this wonderful, warm guy. Pete never trusted him. He’d finesse you. Rather than say, “Hey come into the office, sit down,” and say, “Bob I need this done.” And it happened with Vince Ferragamo. You remember Vince?

01-01:40:07 Cummins: Yes, absolutely.

01-01:40:09 Steiner: He comes and he ultimately transfers to Nebraska, but this is—he’s down in LA during the summer and he may not be coming back. And Mike says, “We’ve got to stop this because it’s killing our recruiting that Vince is going to leave.” I said, “Mike, have Vince say he’s not going to leave and we’ll go to war on it.” So then he has Paul Hackett come in and tell me, “Well, Vince is ready to say that.” So it’s great and we talk to Vince. Vince comes in and I’m talking to him—and he’s not ready to say that. I’m poised to write, “I’m staying at Cal,” and he’s not ready to say that. And I said, “Vince, have you made up your mind?” And he said no. And I said, “Well, gee, I’m really sorry that they put you in here. And I’m really sorry they put me in this.” And I

went to Hackett and I called him every name under the sun. And it was a manipulative thing to get Vince, maybe I could— There was a radio show, Bob Murphy, who had been the Stanford SID, a terrific guy, Bob. He and Mike got very close with Michael Kushner so he put together these radio shows for the Stanford and Cal coaches. We’d drive down to San Jose or someplace. So Mike and I would be driving together, and we’re having a tough time and Mike is saying the same—“You know, I think tomorrow it’s just going to be me and the team. I’m going to lock out all the assistant coaches. Just me and the team.” And I said, “Mike, I think that’s one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. What are you telling your assistant coaches.” And he said, “Oh, you’re probably right.” And the next day he locked them all out, did it. So he probably hastened my decision. I did not want to be there when we got put on probation again. So now—

01-01:42:14 Cummins: And that was shortly after the—

01-01:42:15 Steiner: He’s only there a couple years, isn’t he?

01-01:42:21 Cummins: Well, let’s see—Willsey gets fired by [Bob] Kerley in ’71, and then Mike White comes in and he’s there till ’77.

01-01:42:36 Steiner: Dave becomes the athletic director.

01-01:42:39 Cummins: And Dave is the AD, ’72.

01-01:42:42 Steiner: But he—the job has already been offered to Mike by a committee.

01-01:42:47 Cummins: Yes, exactly right. By committee, huh?

01-01:42:50 Steiner: By a committee. So Dave is named AD after the job is offered to Mike, so Mike’s got it on the table. Now he’s got a job offer to go with [John] Ralston to Denver or Stanford, become the head coach at Stanford. So Dave says to me, “Mike’s going to take the Cal job.” I went home and I told my wife. I said, “Mike White’s going to take the Cal job.” And she says, “Why would a guy come to a school that’s on probation and turn down a school that had just won two Rose Bowl Games? That’s stupid, and we don’t need another stupid coach.” [laughing] Bob Murphy tells me out in Contra Costa County someplace, Mike calls me and says I want you to emcee this dinner I’m going to—I’ve got a bunch of Cal donors and Cal football supporters. And Bob says, “Where’s Dave?” He says, “I didn’t invite Dave.” So whether he’s trying to raise money for a slush fund or something, but—and Murphy said when he heard that he just—blech.

01-01:44:12 Cummins: So right from the start?

01-01:44:14 Steiner: Well, this was late. This was after I was gone.

01-01:44:16 Cummins: Oh, okay, so this is after you were gone.

01-01:44:20 Steiner: And so when Dave fired Mike I’m not surprised. When’s the last time Cal fired a winning coach in football? I’m not surprised, and I admire Dave for doing that.

01-01:44:35 Cummins: Now, did that get much public attention? I know the firing did, but the fact that we were on probation again, the NCAA put us on probation? Because Dave doesn’t talk about that. He says that there was—a lot of faculty were upset. [Chancellor Al] Bowker was upset.

01-01:44:54 Steiner: Well, he inherited the probation from Willsey, and then Lonnie Crittenden and other things—we’re put on probation. Lonnie Crittenden is a wide receiver who’s going to two different junior colleges at the same time—Laney and somewhere else.

01-01:45:20 Cummins: And then we go through this again in ’88, I think, there’s a junior college problem with grades. And that’s another—see, I don’t get it. How—

01-01:45:32 Steiner: That’s what cost [Jeff] Tedford a bowl appearance in his first coaching year.

01-01:45:39 Cummins: No, that was—

01-01:45:40 Steiner: [Tom] Holmoe.

01-01:45:41 Cummins: Yeah, Holmoe. It was—let’s see, I’ve got to get these dates right.

[portion sealed until 3032]

When Pete retired, resigned as general manager of the Lakers—and I wasn’t working for the Lakers—this sports writer, Dan Berger, called me and said— he worked for AP and he was doing a story. And he said, “Give me one stat on Pete, a coaching stat.” I said, “Well, he beat John Wooden the last eight games he coached against him.” And Dan said, “I love it.” And it’s in the story. So I later told Pete that conversation and he said, he looked at me and he said, “Don’t ever do that again.”

01-01:50:15 Cummins: No kidding!

01-01:50:17 Steiner: So he ultimately—I guess two war horses go to graze together or something. And he did not want to demean Coach Wooden in any way.

01-01:50:36 Cummins: Is that interesting. Well, there is this—

01-01:50:39 Steiner: And later—let me just finish.

01-01:50:40 Cummins: Yeah, I’m sorry.

01-01:50:42 Steiner: When there’s the Wooden award, the college basketball player of the year, so Pete and I go to a luncheon where Wooden is announcing the nominees, and I’m sitting there with Pete. And John gets up to talk and he pointed at Pete— he says, “If he hadn’t retired when he did, this award would be in his name, not mine.” Which was a humbleness we didn’t know to associate with John Wooden before that. So as that old war horse aged—and then they did a clinic for Bill McClintock up together at Monterey, up at UC Monterey [CSU Monterey Bay?]. And John came to Pete’s memorial. He had to be helped there, but he was there.

01-01:51:28 Cummins: Yes, yes, is that interesting. What a story. Wow.

01-01:51:34 Steiner: But he was embarrassed to demean Wooden in any way.

01-01:51:41 Cummins: So what was your view of Dave Maggard?

01-01:51:45 Steiner: Probably the best or the first good administrator to—

01-01:51:57 Cummins: —run that program.

01-01:51:58 Steiner: —run the Athletics Department. And I’m not sure where that came from, because he was a teacher, a coach, a—but he had it. He brought a professionalism to athletics. I liked Dave a lot. When he got tired as track coach, at the time leading up to that, Pete was the athletic director and I took an active role in advocating for Stan Wright, who I knew and liked. But Stan was the coach who, in the Olympics, the sprint coach, and Eddie Hart and another sprinter [Rey Robinson] didn’t make it to the starting line on time. Stan was a really nice guy. But we didn’t have any black coaches, and I really

felt strongly about that at that time and had a sympathetic ear with Pete, but he felt that Dave was the better hire.

01-01:53:19 Cummins: Interesting. And was that public?

01-01:53:22 Steiner: Was it Pete? Or was it—what year did Dave—no, that might have been Paul Brechler. It might have been Paul.

01-01:53:28 Cummins: Right, yes. Brechler. Yeah, it was Brechler. Yes, definitely.

01-01:53:34 Steiner: So—but Dave knew that, because I told him.

01-01:53:35 Cummins: It was real close whether it was Brechler or Pete, I guess, at that point. Sixty- eight Pete leaves and Brechler—I don’t know. It’s right in there.

01-01:53:44 Steiner: Well, Dave competed in the Olympics in ’68, so he was not the Cal coach then.

01-01:53:49 Cummins: Yeah, that’s right. That’s correct. It’d be ’69.

01-01:53:50 Steiner: And Sam Bell, he replaced Sam Bell. And I was open with Dave and the reason I was for it. I thought we needed a black coach, not that I was opposed to Dave. So I don’t think—then when he became athletic director, I don’t think he had any lingering bad feelings, or at least I would certainly hope not. My motives were not bad. But Sam Bell—so, he is about 180 degrees different than Brutus Hamilton, and he becomes the Cal track coach. And he belongs at Corvallis or at Bloomington, Indiana, not at Berkeley. So there’s a black boycott of the New York Athletic Club indoor meet in New York because of the racist policy of the New York Athletic Club. Now, we don’t compete indoors, but we had a good mile-relay team and they’re invited to run in the meet. And so Sam is going to send them to this meet that is being protested, and I cannot believe it! We’re such a tinder box!

01-01:55:30 Cummins: And the year would be?

01-01:55:32 Steiner: Oh, it was before I left, so when Sam became—Dave was hired as track coach when?

01-01:55:40 Cummins: It had to be—

01-01:55:40 Steiner: Seventy-one. The track season, we win the NCAA championship in his first year.

01-01:55:47 Cummins: Yeah, and that was seventy—

01-01:55:48 Steiner: Seventy or ’71.

01-01:55:50 Cummins: Yeah, I’m not sure.

01-01:55:51 Steiner: So Sam was there in ’69, so ’69, ’68—’69. And I can’t believe it. And I go to Pete, “How can you let this guy do this?” And Pete, he says, “Bob, I’m going to give him all the rope he needs, and if he hangs himself…” So it was Pete’s not interfering—

01-01:56:14 Cummins: That let—

01-01:56:16 Steiner: —with a coach’s—when he’d watch a basketball game Rene Herrerias was coaching he’d be in the top row as far away from sight as possible. He wanted absolutely nobody to think that he was interfering—

01-01:56:32 Cummins: [loud beeps in the background] Influencing.

01-01:56:33 Steiner: —overlooking anything. And so there was Pete, and he says, “I’m going to give him enough rope. If he hangs himself, he hangs himself.” [laughing] Got it. Pete—the athletic director, now when we had the black boycott, student boycotts—those are interesting times. And so Rene resigns.

01-01:57:03 Cummins: No.

01-01:57:04 Steiner: No, Pete has resigned.

01-01:57:05 Cummins: Well, let’s see—why don’t you start with what happened.

01-01:57:13 Steiner: Give me a minute. [brief interruption for a quick break]

01-01:57:15 Cummins: Let me turn this off for a second. Okay, so this is a continuation, same interview. We were talking about what we’ll call the [Bob] Presley period, dealing with that issue.

01-01:57:29 Steiner: Bob should never have been at Cal. You know—ultimately you know what happened to him?

01-01:57:42 Cummins: Yes.

01-01:57:47 Steiner: He’d blow up on a court, technical fouls or whatever, and the next Monday he’d come in and start apologizing to everybody. We—you can lay it all to Padgett, to Jim Padgett and his recruiting, and he brought in terrific players: Charlie Johnson and Phil Chenier, who coped well at Cal. But we—and then we got the Laney group in football. I always had the feeling that they were never going to find a better environment, the Laney people, than they had at Laney, no matter what four year—and certainly not at Cal, at that time. And I don’t know what came first. There was that spring football boycott, in ’68. I’m going to be a little self-serving, okay? Sam Skinner, a black radio/newspaper reporter. A terrific guy, a marvelous guy, called me and he says, “How many black athletes do you have at spring practice.” And I said, “Well, I don’t know, Sam, I’ll count them.” And he said, “No, you don’t have to. You’ve got none.” And he told me, the boycott, and he told me what their demands were. And he says, “They’re going to say they’re non-negotiable, but they’re not. Here’s what they’re really trying to say.” And he really saved my ass, because when you hear they’re not there you want to say well, fuck ‘em, I’m going to—so I went up to Ray Willsey. He says, “I’m kicking them all off the team.” And I said—

01-02:00:07 Cummins: You’d better give a year here too.

01-02:00:09 Steiner: Pardon?

01-02:00:09 Cummins: A year, just for the [record].

01-02:00:10 Steiner: Sixty-eight.

01-02:00:11 Cummins: Sixty-eight.

01-02:00:12 Steiner: The spring of ’68. So I said, “Ray, if you had your druthers would you like them all here tomorrow?” He said, “Yeah, of course.” I said, “Well, give me a half hour.” I went up and wrote a release, that by their not coming to practice they’ve taken themselves off the team. One of the demands was that Bernie Keeles, who was quarterback, but Ray was playing him at defensive back, be given a tryout as quarterback. So they’d taken themselves off the team. However, it’s only the head coach’s prerogative who plays where, and that’s

not—I didn’t use the word negotiable—so I brought it up to Ray, fine. He got hailed in the coaching profession for taking this tough stance on them, but it enabled the conversation to continue with this group of athletes. My goal was to say nothing that would continue the story. You make some statement about what they’ve done, they come back and make some statement—and I didn’t want that. I wanted to end the conversation and get in behind closed doors, and we did that.

That fall I was in New York and we were playing Army, so I was advancing that game and I called this fellow Bob Lipsyte, who was a columnist for the New York Times. I called him out of the blue. And he said, “Well, you and I have talked before.” I sat there and wondered—and he says, “I called you when your black football players went out and boycotted. You politely told me to go fuck myself.” [laughter] He was not offended, which was exactly what I was trying to do, and we did it. We had a meeting that—now, I’ll never forget this, with a lot of the athletes in football and Ray and Pete, in that big conference room we had in the middle of Eshleman—I think it was Eshleman Hall. And they all came back and Ray had his best football season in ’68.

So then the boycott—they’re known as Bob Presley—and was Trent Gaines part of that? They had a news conference and debate in the ground floor of Eshleman, and all black scholarship athletes were there. Except one of their complaints was tutoring benefited the white, and Bob [Robert T.] Tanenbaum, who was a former player and had been one of the tutors, now he was irate. He later became mayor of Beverly Hills, and he’s written mystery books, but in the city council in Beverly Hills and they rotate the mayor. So he’d come up and say, “Aren’t you going to rebut this?” I said, “Bob, I’m not going to say a word at this time.” Because there’s nothing—again, you don’t want to—I don’t want to keep this going. I want to get a conversation in private going. He was just irate with me.

The next Monday—Bobby Smith was the captain of the football team and he’s the organizer of all this. He and I are talking in Eshleman Hall in the elevator, and Charlie Johnson walks by—you know who Charlie—became a tremendous NBA player walks by, he’s a freshman. And he wasn’t at the news conference. And so there’s six three Bobby Smith looking down at six foot Charlie Johnson and he says, “Where were you Friday?” And Charlie just locked eyes with him and said, “I had things to do,” and looked at him and then walked away. And Bobby Smith turns to me and he says, “You know, that guy’s an asshole.” [laughing] And I said, “Bobby!” Anyway—so you laugh about it, but those were grim times.

01-02:04:37 Cummins: Oh, very difficult.

01-02:04:40 Steiner: John Reid was at Washington at the same time and they were going through a lot of the same problems. He called it our first annual black athletes’ boycott. [laughing]

01-02:04:50 Cummins: Right, right.

01-02:04:53 Steiner: It’s obvious—you laugh about it but it’s not a laughing matter.

01-02:04:55 Cummins: No, it’s very tough.

01-02:04:58 Steiner: It is tough. And to whatever extent there was racism on campus or in the admissions policy, all that was—

01-02:05:10 Cummins: And were they—how did that—who got to them to do that? Was there a great deal of upset just among themselves or do you think they were used by—

01-02:05:21 Steiner: It was Harry Edwards and that thing going on at San Jose State.

01-02:05:32 Cummins: Right, right, that precipitated it all.

01-02:05:35 Steiner: But it’s going on elsewhere.

01-02:05:36 Cummins: Yeah, sure it was. Right.

01-02:05:38 Steiner: Washington—I’m not sure. I’m sure it was across the country.

01-02:05:42 Cummins: Yes, it was. Right.

01-02:05:43 Steiner: So it’s something that’s endemic in the industry or business, whatever you want to call it. And Dick Gregory is—there’s a whole movement at that time. Dr. King, and the Vietnam War is going on. So those were—

01-02:06:06 Cummins: So then what happened? Just do the sequence of events then.

01-02:06:11 Steiner: Well, so during this time Ned Averbuck, who is a super guy, a bench-sitter for Pete and then played a little bit for Rene and just is a great guy, taught at Laney. And so Ned and I are going to go to Pete to hire Jim Padgett, because

he relates to black athletes. Ned’s father was a Communist Party labor organizer down here in East Los Angeles, and at the time that’s no badge— you wouldn’t call that a badge of honor, but that’s Ned’s background. Ned’s father sent three kids to Cal. When the last one graduated he went to college and got his degree. So anyway, so Ned’s this—he’s further out there than I am, and so we’re going to go to Pete. “You’ve got to hire Jim Padgett.” Pete listened to us, and the point was, he says, “If I hire Jim Padgett as the outgoing athletic director, the new athletic director will have no loyalty to him, and I’d be doing Jim a disservice. Of course Ned and I just go—he’s right. But he wasn’t critical of us for what we were doing. He didn’t say hey, you dumb-shits. He explained it, and then it turned out Jim couldn’t coach a lick, but he could recruit.

01-02:07:42 Cummins: Now did he—did Pete feel pressured by the administration to get rid of Rene Herrerias, in your view? Because he mentions—he says in his oral history that the administration was not happy with Herrerias. And Budd Cheit says that doesn’t ring a bell. Do you have any—

01-02:08:09 Steiner: No, but I find it hard to believe that if Pete felt that Rene should not leave that he would buckle to the pressure. His loyalty to Rene would have been much greater than anything else.

01-02:08:26 Cummins: Exactly, yeah, because Budd said, “I never—”

01-02:08:27 Steiner: I don’t remember that becoming an element in anything.

01-02:08:34 Cummins: And then there was an issue about—we’ll come back to this, by the way, but there was an issue about playing the national anthem.

01-02:08:42 Steiner: Yeah, and that—the black players or blacks in the audience didn’t rise for the national anthem and there might have been some egg—I guess there was egg- throwing on the court. And it was just all part of a black identity or anti—

01-02:09:11 Cummins: But I guess Pete stopped playing the national anthem and then some alums started complaining, and then there was a meeting with Budd Cheit.

01-02:09:19 Steiner: Huh! Well, I wouldn’t dispute that. I don’t remember—

01-02:09:24 Cummins: Oh, okay, but you don’t recall. Okay. That’s fine.

01-02:09:26 Steiner: I’m not sure why we play national anthems at all when we have sporting events. I’m not quite sure of that. But with the protests over the national anthem by blacks, you could explain it as well or better than I can. It was just a part of the major protest that was—what was happening in our society.

01-02:09:50 Cummins: So go ahead then. So the players, the black basketball players resign or boycott?

01-02:10:01 Steiner: I need to put a—so Presley—and Bob wasn’t an instigator in any of this.

01-02:10:09 Cummins: Being used.

01-02:10:17 Steiner: There’s a—Herb Michelson wrote a book about Bob Presley [Almost a Famous Person]. I’m not sure it ever—he sent it to me but it was not bound or anything—I’m not sure how much of a circulation it got—and asked me to read it and asked me what I thought of it. I remember telling him, “I think you treated us much more kindly than we deserved.” And I couldn’t give you the specifics, but we weren’t very sensitive in those days. We weren’t very good.

01-02:11:06 Cummins: And was a lot of it over the hairstyle and all of it?

01-02:11:09 Steiner: Those were just—

01-02:11:10 Cummins: The symbols of it.

01-02:11:12 Steiner: Yeah.

01-02:11:12 Cummins: Yeah.

01-02:11:16 Steiner: Dave did a great thing. Sam Bell was concentrating on all the things, a lot of the things that were absolutely irrelevant, like hair. And so we got this kid John Drew, half-miler/miler from Texas comes to Cal. Now, why would the state champion, Texas, come to Cal? Well, John Drew had a rebel attitude, and so a terrific runner who ultimately never realized his potential—and I hope he did as a person—but he wore his hair long. I remember Dave being criticized by coaches, another coach, for lack of discipline. And Dave says, “No, no. Discipline is him doing nine repeat 200s. That’s discipline.” And so Dave, of all people, who you would have thought—close cut. So he didn’t get, he wasn’t hung up on that, and that was an element I hadn’t known about Dave until then. And that was terrific. So Dave was a breath of fresh air, and

he wasn’t raising the temperature; he was lowering the temperature in his area.

01-02:12:45 Cummins: Now when they—so they, the black basketball players go out, and then they come back, and then the white players—so talk—

01-02:13:02 Steiner: Did they ever boycott? They protested. For that Bob Tanenbaum would be available for you if you wanted or Russ Critchfield—are both—Russ was the star white player.

01-02:13:26 Cummins: And I got Steve Desimone, of course, who was there. He talked to me about this.

01-02:13:29 Steiner: Yeah, he was there. Good, yeah, he was a freshman. I don’t know that he ever played varsity basketball.

01-02:13:35 Cummins: No, I don’t think he did. Yeah.

[portion of transcript sealed until 2032]

01-02:18:08 Cummins: Exactly.

01-02:18:09 Steiner: Say it was another—for Trent. But the coincidence that I should be there when he writes.

01-02:18:19 Cummins: So basketball, at the intercollegiate level, everybody says is probably the most corrupt of the sports, in that you can’t—it’s exceedingly difficult to control the agents and to control the money.

01-02:18:47 Steiner: Not only that, but the summer traveling leagues, the AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] leagues and the influence of the coaches and the influence of sponsorship money—I’m not sure how anybody passed any sort of a strict litmus test. The money has become—college basketball has become, through the NCAA—they call it major fundraising now.

01-02:19:18 Cummins: Huge, yeah.

01-02:19:21 Steiner: And one player makes such a huge difference in a program. It’s amazing that Kentucky—five guys drafted one year, five guys drafted. I don’t how they—

01-02:19:34 Cummins: Right, one and out.

01-02:19:36 Steiner: One and out. I don’t know what you do about that. I don’t know whether the NCAA can put in any rules and it would pass a legal test. At the start the NBA preferred that a player play four years, because then you know when he’s going to come out, you know what you’ve got, and then Spencer Haywood took the league to court.

01-02:20:01 Cummins: Exactly. Yeah, it’s a very, very difficult situation, and it’s another example of this—why the connection with academics is so difficult. I mean my God, it’s a—

01-02:20:14 Steiner: I guess a football player can play a year without ever going to a class. Or they have to pass certainly monthly—

01-02:20:25 Cummins: No, now they have to take—they have to be enrolled in a certain number of units.

01-02:20:27 Steiner: Yeah, but enrolled.

01-02:20:30 Cummins: Yes, and then they have to show progress towards a degree.

01-02:20:35 Steiner: Okay, and is that monitored during the semester?

01-02:20:41 Cummins: Yes, so that it’s possible to go on—what happens to a lot of these players is they go on academic probation during the season, and then they take classes to get them off academic probation, just enough to be minimally eligible to continue to play. And the eligibility established by the NCAA is less than the eligibility that Berkeley requires. So you can be on academic probation on Berkeley standards but not on NCAA standards. And then with this home rule issue, where the institution is the one that is determining and can make the determination about who is on and who’s not—not on probation but, you know—it becomes very, very difficult for these players, and particularly in football, where they practice so much. They’re putting in year-round football.

01-02:21:56 Steiner: Yeah, and football in the classroom and film—

01-02:21:58 Cummins: Film and everything, yeah, so it makes it exceedingly difficult, and so this paper that I mentioned to you that we’re—one of the things we recommend is

that if you go to Summer Bridge, which is the summer program for incoming students—

01-02:22:17 Steiner: Freshmen or all the incoming—

01-02:22:20 Cummins: No, it’s freshmen—typically they do the Summer Bridge while they’re doing football full-time, okay? And this is supposed to be the help in transitioning to higher education, okay? So we say their football participation should be minimized, a certain number of hours, that’s it. If they go on probation, currently they can still be full-time. They can play, they can practice, et cetera. Imagine if you’re a student at Cal and you’re on probation—are you going to be working thirty-five hours a week on football?

01-02:23:04 Steiner: I cannot imagine how they do it.

01-02:23:04 Cummins: Absolutely, it’s just—it’s incomprehensible.

01-02:23:07 Steiner: I used to go on probation every other semester. I’d take too many reading courses and then I’d find out well, I can’t—

01-02:23:14 Cummins: I can’t keep up!

01-02:23:16 Steiner: I can’t handle it, so I’d drop a course but it would be after the deadline and so I’d get an F. So the next year I’m always behind a couple grade points.

01-02:23:26 Cummins: Yes, exactly. Anyway, that’s the—

01-02:23:28 Steiner: So why are we in this insanity?

01-02:23:36 Cummins: Well, yeah—I guess my conclusion now is that we can’t get out. We’re trapped.

01-02:23:43 Steiner: No! No, absolutely.

01-02:23:48 Cummins: Especially with the money involved. The stadium and high performance center is a $500 million debt that you’ve got to pay off, and you’re not going to pay that off unless you win. Nobody’s going to come to a losing team.

01-02:24:04 Steiner: Well, and you’ve got to fill the boxes and the seating that you’ve created.

01-02:24:10 Cummins: The ESP [Endowment Seating Program] seat licensing.

01-02:24:11 Steiner: Ben Howland got fired at UCLA for the same reason. They remodeled the Pauley [Pavilion] and—

01-02:24:20 Cummins: Right. They can’t sell the tickets. So it’s this bizarre—the other point that we push in the paper is first of all look at this program comprehensively. Don’t muddle through. Try and figure out what the hell you want. Second, look at sports overall, the value of sports, both recreational and intercollegiate. Why doesn’t Cal—it used to have a physical education program. It’s over in 1997. It’s gone. There’s no physical education program. A place like Michigan, okay, has a very big program. It’s called kinesiology and sport science or something—it’s a school. Just a few years ago the president elevated it to the level of a school, so they have recreational sports in there. If you want to be an athletic trainer you can get that there, sports management, okay—the whole thing. So I’m pushing that, to say why don’t we have something? It isn’t that you require athletes to take it, but every other student that we admit through special action has some academic home.

01-02:25:42 Steiner: Some academic—

01-02:25:43 Cummins: Home.

01-02:25:43 Steiner: Home.

01-02:25:44 Cummins: Whether it’s music, dance, theater—whatever it is. Athletes come in here— they’re completely separate over here, that kind of thing. So you can see—

01-02:26:03 Steiner: Universities are—one of my hobby horses—have become trade schools. They call them professional schools—you’re being trained to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, whatever it is, as opposed to just being educated.

01-02:26:23 Cummins: True.

01-02:26:23 Steiner: So there’s a growing industry in recreational sports, professional sports, sports medicine—all this thing. Leisure, things that fill leisure time. So why isn’t that as justifiable as a program as law?

01-02:26:52 Cummins: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s my point.

01-02:26:53 Steiner: The world needs more good physiologists than it needs more lawyers.

01-02:26:56 Cummins: Exactly, yes. But Cal, again, across the board—there was a big fight to have a business school at Cal, because it was too applied, okay? So now—

01-02:27:14 Steiner: An undergraduate business school.

01-02:27:15 Cummins: Yeah.

01-02:27:15 Steiner: Okay.

01-02:27:15 Cummins: And so the business school now is looked upon, as contrasted with the Stanford Business School, for example, at the graduate level, as being too theoretical, not applied.

01-02:27:32 Steiner: Ours is?

01-02:27:33 Cummins: Ours is. The Music Department is theoretical. That’s why if you remember being at Cal, the UC Jazz Ensemble, Choral Ensemble, et cetera—they’re student groups, because they’re too applied. Okay, so the students create these on their own, because of this view that somehow Cal has to be theory-based, which is another—

01-02:28:02 Steiner: I guess I fall into that, and so I’m probably wrong. [laughing] No! If you want to be a musician you ought to be able to play the darn thing!

01-02:28:14 Cummins: Of course, and UCLA, of course, they have two different or three different music departments, so if you’re interested in performing that’s where you are. If you’re interested in the history of music it’s here—you know.

01-02:28:29 Steiner: Hard to factor. I’d probably fall on the wrong side of that argument and I apologize.

01-02:28:36 Cummins: No, and that’s what side I’m on.

01-02:28:37 Steiner: I’ll not say that again.

01-02:28:37 Cummins: That’s the side I’m on, absolutely. Yeah, it’s a very strange—

01-02:28:47 Steiner: One of the—in those years, the late fifties, so I’d stay up—the first year or so I’d go—summers I’d come back down to LA. And then I became summer editor of the Daily Cal and I stayed up at Berkeley. And one of the—they used to have a folk music festival, Hertz Hall, when Hertz Hall was first built. It was just—four or five days and it was just absolutely—maybe three days, marvelous! Just wonderful folk music that came over from England through Appalachia and western—anyway, so that was all part of the experience that I had at Cal in the late fifties, and it was just super! Just super!

01-02:29:44 Cummins: Well, at that point in time there’s a huge change, and it—Clark Kerr would talk about the fact that—this was a bit earlier than that—but where the faculty were just routinely available to students. And then you get into the sixties, you’ve got all the protests, you’ve got major funding of research coming now from the federal government. Your loyalty and allegiance starts being directed to the funding agency and to your peer organization rather than to the campus.

01-02:30:23 Steiner: Right.

01-02:30:27 Cummins: You get people moving out, because of the protests and everything, to Walnut Creek and Lafayette, Orinda, et cetera. So it’s harder for them to get back into campus to come to events and things. And you get this gradual separation of the faculty and what you referred to, okay, is this spirit about being at Cal. It starts to dissipate, and you never quite recapture it, that sense of what you had.

01-02:31:00 Steiner: Yeah, but—a thing that I resist, try to resist, is what’s becoming of this generation? They’re not—

01-02:31:14 Cummins: It’s true, yeah, me too.

01-02:31:17 Steiner: I just have to resist it. Your parents said what’s becoming of your generation? You said that about your kids; they’re going to say that about their kids. And it’s somebody else’s—it’s their world, and you just hope they’re enjoying it as much—the students at Cal, you say: are you having as much fun as I had?

01-02:31:47 Cummins: Yes, yes. Well, if you go on the campus, you still pick up that incredible enthusiasm and engagement in all kinds of issues. You go out on Sproul Plaza and there’s two hundred student organizations there. The focus shifts because more of those organizations than you think are religious-based and they’re conservative—not by any means all, but there’s a shift. You’ve got 50 percent of the student body is Asian. That’s a big shift. But—

01-02:32:25 Steiner: And the administration is starting to control that number from rising to 70 or 80 [percent].

01-02:32:29 Cummins: Yeah, and so, but highly—

01-02:32:33 Steiner: Who practices discrimination?

01-02:32:35 Cummins: Yes, yes, highly dynamic, thoroughly engaged, still—

01-02:32:43 Steiner: That’s good, isn’t it?

01-02:32:42 Cummins: Oh absolutely—extremely lively.

01-02:32:46 Steiner: Well, the part that I miss always, will always miss, is the students. When I was working there then it was the athletes, but it was working with the Daily Cal, and you’re just walking the campus. Yeah.

01-02:33:02 Cummins: Absolutely, no question. Anything else you want to—let’s see, have we—at least we’ve touched the bases. Now what will happen is you’ll get this transcript back and I can come back. And anything—when you think about geez, we didn’t talk about this or that. Or I want to say this—we can do that. So it’s not closed by turning this off. It’s—wow! It’s ten to one! So we’ve been going for three hours, which is a lot longer than normal. I said two— Bob, this was very interesting.

01-02:33:39 Steiner: Well, yeah—I obviously enjoyed it, John.

01-02:33:45 Cummins: So thank you very much for doing it, and I’m going to turn this off now and—

[End of Interview]