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It looks like the Pacific-10 Conference will not be an 11-team baseball league after all. California shocked college baseball Tuesday by announcing it will drop five varsity sports, including baseball—after the 2011 season. ESPN and Baseball America columnist Jerry Crasnick first reported the news on Twitter.

"We've been hearing some rumors, but I just can't believe it," said former Cal outfielder Brett Jackson, who was playing a game in Cary, N.C., for Team USA when the news broke. "It was an absolute shock—it's a real shame. There've been some rumors, but you never think they would do that at Cal. I grew up a Cal fan, I'm a Bay Area guy, I just can't imagine there being no baseball at Cal."

That was the reaction around college baseball and the Pac-10, including at Bay Area rival Stanford.

"They've had a very rich college baseball tradition, been to the College World Series a couple of times and won a national title," Stanford coach Mark Marquess said in a statement. "It's a sad day for college baseball.

"It has an effect on all of the Pac-10. You are talking about a program that started playing baseball in the late 1890s. That's over 100 years of tradition. Obviously it affects Stanford, because it's our traditional rival, and obviously we are big rivals, but we have a lot of good friends there. Some great players have gone through that baseball program."

Cal's impressive alumni list includes Jackson, Jeff Kent, Brandon Morrow, Xavier Nady, Tyson Ross and Geoff Blum, among recent or current big leaguers.

USA Today reported that Cal's announcement comes amid an economic crunch that has led to drastic reductions in state higher-education funding in California—while the school's financial support of its 29-team athletics program has steadily increased, from $7.4 million in 2007-08 to $12.1 million in 2009-10.

"This is not sustainable for our campus," chancellor Robert Birgenau wrote in a letter to the Cal community, as reported by USA Today. "The situation has raised heated debate about the size and cost of our Intercollegiate Athletics program among many of our campus constituencies."

In addition to baseball, Cal will cut men's and women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse. Men's rugby will become what Cal is calling a "varsity club" sport. The cuts are scheduled to save $4 million in 2011-12, according to the university.

The baseball program has made 10 trips to regionals, including two of the last three years. The Golden Bears went to the Norman Regional in 2010.

How many other programs in any sport as successful, at the time of being cut, as Cal baseball, have ever been cut by their schools? New Orleans baseball had a good run there but they weren't producing multiple major leaguers off of the same team. Maybe some good football programs at smaller colleges got cut?
I know that USC, Fullerton, Long Beach, Stanford and UCLA are the teams that come to mind when you think of "California NCAA baseball powers" but it still completely blows my mind that the flagship school of the state that has the most major league baseball players would not have a college baseball team.
When do other college coaches get to start recruiting Cal players? Also, could a current Cal player now transfer at the semester break without penalty? This puts tons of talent on the open market.

Posted by Noah | September 28, 2010 at 5:00 pm | Shortcut

Minor correction: Cal was in the Norman Regional in 2010, going 0-2 by losing to UNC and Oral Roberts. 2011 should have been promising.

Posted by Paul Flemer | September 28, 2010 at 5:03 pm | Shortcut

Totally ridiculous. Baseball is always cut at the DI level to save money instead of allowing the program to sustain itself by raising funds through the alumni in advance so there will continually be a program that future players will be able to play for. Oregon did that years ago and has a program again. U Northern Iowa cut baseball, Iowa State cut baseball and while baseball might not be a big revenue producer like football and basketball are for D1 institutions, give the programs a chance to run on a skeleton budget, keep salaries within reason and fund raise to keep the programs alive. Athletics is part of the education experience and last time I checked, baseball is an athletic program! CAL Bears, I hope you can find some former alumni to go to bat for you such as Jackson, perhaps Jeff Kent, and others who were part of the Cal baseball program tradition over the years.

Posted by Bill | September 28, 2010 at 6:52 pm | Shortcut

From a personnel perspective I was sorry to see Cal baseball take a hit. As a Stanford fan I have crossed the bay many times. Cal sits in the first base dugout, in 65 degree sun. Stanford and its fans sit on the third base side in the face of a 20 mph, cold wind. However the visitors' view of the bay and an always competitive game make the experience great.
To put the cut into perspective consider some of the other sports. Cal mens' gym has won at least three national championships, and they have eleven top five finishes in the NCAA finals in 19 years. Mens' rugby is arguably the best team in college sports, winning thirty of the last thirty five national titles if my memory serves me well.
The future? The teams with the football-fueled resources may be able to field broad programs including baseball. (Ohio St, Michigan, Penn St Texas, Oklahoma, most of the SEC). These schools may be vulnerable to close analysis of their book keeping that critics claim include flexible accounting that ignore some of the costs of their sports teams. There will be special situation schools that will field teams – Stanford and Notre Dame come to mind. Some of the vulnerable could be public schools without football success. Fullerton, Beach, Rutgers, N.C. State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Maryland and Virginia could be viewed much like Cal. Finally there are private schools like Rice, Vandy, Ga Tech, Pepperdine and San Diego.
A quick look at the lists shows that there could be a serious rerosion of the college game. Perhaps we will return to ancient history. George H. W. Bush played one sac for Yale in the first NCAA championship game. And of course all you hard core fans know that they were topped by the Cal bears in this contest.

Posted by Aly Palto Chuck | September 28, 2010 at 7:41 pm | Shortcut

Noah, Cal’s players are free to transfer without penalty after the 2011 season. CORRECTION TO CORRECTION: Turns out I was right last night when I said the players cannot transfer at the midyear point without sitting out the 2011 season. NCAA spokesperson Stacey Osburn e-mailed me this morning to say they CAN transfer at the break without sitting out, but she e-mailed back this afternoon to correct herself. They can, however, apply for waivers to gain eligibility in the spring should they decide to leave this winter. There’s an awful lot of confusion on this issue.

Posted by Aaron Fitt | September 28, 2010 at 8:27 pm | Shortcut

Paul, thanks for the correction. And 2011 should still be promising — Cal returns tons of talent from last year’s regional team and could make a run at the Pac-10 title this year, even with the dark cloud now hanging over the program.

Posted by Aaron Fitt | September 28, 2010 at 8:28 pm | Shortcut

This is a sad day for our national pastime. I am truly shocked. I am a member of the John Purdue Club , and at Purdue we fund all of our 500 athletes through member donations. How do the Cal alum's feel about this move? This is wrong.

Posted by J. Vode | September 29, 2010 at 12:27 pm | Shortcut

Aaron, that would be great for Esquer and the program, to win the PAC 10 Title and go as far as they can in the post season. I think all of them including the coaching staff will be auditioning for their next move. Maybe Esquer will be considered for the USC job if it is opened up next year. You cannot contend with 100% graduation rate.

Posted by Bearfan | September 29, 2010 at 1:06 pm | Shortcut

Good stuff Aaron. Thank you.
It will be interesting to see what response comes from this, both from the 2011 Cal teams and other institutions. A move like this really forces people to think critically about the role athletics should play in educational institutions.

Posted by Adam Foster | September 29, 2010 at 2:40 pm | Shortcut

There are almost 500k Cal Alum living in California today, but yet the total number of people donating to Cal each year is only about 10-20k worldwide. I have donated something every year for the last 20+ years but yet I am in a very small minority. Too many people go to places like Cal, take scholarship money (even if it is small like in my case), and don't even consider giving money back to the school even when they can do it without affecting their lifestyle. It's my opinion that any graduate, capable of giving money back to a school, should plan to give back their entire scholarship amount.
I have already contacted someone within Cal to say that I am willing to donate extra money this year to help keep these sports going. It looks like Cal needs to setup some foundations which help support lesser funded sports (not football & not basketball). It sounds like some of these cuts might not have been needed to be made if Cal hadn't spent all the money to renovate the football stadium.
Cal grads need to get off their butts and realize that we got an awesome education and owe something back to the system.

Posted by Bear Grad | September 30, 2010 at 5:03 am | Shortcut

Football stadium gets a $300 + million dollar facelift but baseball and four other sports are cut to save $4 million ??? and I don't want to hear about separate budgets. just wrong.

Posted by larry | September 30, 2010 at 10:35 pm | Shortcut