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UPDATED: Friday, 1:56 p.m. ET.

The University of California announced today it will not reinstate its baseball program despite vigorous fundraising efforts to save it from the chopping block.

Cal announced in September that it would cut five athletics programs after the 2011 season in order to save $4 million annually. Athletics supporters quickly mobilized to form Save Cal Sports, which secured between $12 million and $16 million in pledges but fell short of the university's stated goal of $25 million needed to save all five programs.

Cal chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau issued a statement Friday saying that enough funds were raised to reinstate men's rugby, women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse, but not baseball and men's gymnastics.

"Regrettably, in spite of the best efforts of a number of their key supporters, men’s baseball and men’s gymnastics fell far short of raising the necessary philanthropic support," Birgeneau said in the statement. "Accordingly, students and staff associated with these teams must now be allowed to move forward to make other plans as these teams will cease competition as intercollegiate varsity sports for the university at the end of this academic year."
Cal coach David Esquer told Baseball America that he is "disappointed and heartbroken" by the university's decision.

"I was absolutely optimistic because of the belief I had in the people behind the effort," Esquer said. "It was an all-or-nothing proposition (to save all five sports), but at the 11th hour it wasn't an all-or-nothing deal, it was save yourselves. I was not expecting that whatsoever. I don't know if it's right to start counting numbers and who raised what when, quite frankly, our message was save all five, try to raise awareness and support and save all the sports. That was never our focus—save yourself. It seems now they want to count who individually raised money, and that wasn't something we were trying to do."

Birgeneau acknowledged that Title IX was a major factor in the decision. The New York Times suggested it would be earlier this week.

"By offering all of our women’s sports, we can meet the requirements of Title IX in a way that will allow the return of men’s sports, provided that the returned sports can cover all direct and indirect costs, including those of support programs and use of facilities," the chancellor said. "Rugby has raised significant funds providing a clear pathway to covering its own full costs as well as contributing to the stabilization of the women’s programs."

The university insisted each cut program come up with sufficient funding to support the team for the next seven to 10 years, and come up with a feasible plan for sustained financial independence. That's exactly what baseball supporters like Doug Nickle were working to accomplish, but their efforts evidently fell short.

"Although the amount of money raised for these two programs is meaningful, the teams’ costs are also significant," vice chancellor Frank Yeary said in another statement. "Both programs would have needed to raise multiples of what they actually did raise to meet our criteria. In the context of both current and forecasted economic and financial conditions, we simply could not agree to short-term, stopgap measures."

Cal baseball has a long history that dates back to 1892. The Golden Bears won the first College World Series in 1947, then won another national title in 1957. Cal's impressive alumni list includes Jeff Kent, Brett Jackson, Brandon Morrow, Xavier Nady, Tyson Ross and Geoff Blum, among recent or current big leaguers. The Bears have been to regionals in two of the last three seasons and head into 2011 ranked No. 17 in Baseball America's Top 25. Esquer and his staff have forged a winning program despite playing in a substandard facility that lacks lights.

"We've spent a lot of time and effort to try to build our program to consistently be a playoff contender, develop the type of kids we have, the coaching staff we brought together," Esquer said. "All that takes a while, and to see it all come crashing down is hard to watch."

The Golden Bears figure to be a force in the Pacific-10 Conference one final time in 2011, and then their players will have to find new homes. They can transfer this summer without having to sit out a year, but that's small consolation for players like sophomore infielder Tony Renda.

"It's kind of an awkward situation," Renda told Baseball America in December. "You're talking to coaches that you're going to try to beat into the ground this year, so it's awkward. I personally would like to stay in the Pac-10, but I would like better to not have to go anywhere else but here. Nowhere's like Berkeley.

"More than anything, I don't want to have to split from these guys, from the team. The work ethic, the people we have, the personalities, you just can't really beat it. I don't want to have to change. We're all optimistic that (the program) will get saved, but you can't bank on it being saved, you can only hope it does. But personally, I'm 100 percent into the team this year, and as long as there is a program at Cal, I will be here. A lot of people on the team feel the same as me."

Esquer said finding landing spots for his players now becomes one of his staff's main responsibilities this spring, taking the place of the time the coaches would have spent recruiting. His primary concern is with his players, who he said have never lacked energy in practice or felt sorry for themselves since the September announcement. But he also expressed concern that Cal's decision to fold baseball will set a bad precedent for college baseball.

"You don't want it to be an option for any athletic department, obviously," Esquer said. "Let alone the flagship public university of the state of California. It's just not good. My whole life has been baseball, trying to develop men through baseball. You don't want to see that, you don't even want to think about (schools eliminating baseball programs). Let alone the school in arguably the best conference in America. To see a school drop the sport, that's hard to swallow."

I'm outraged about UC Berkeley Admin's decision to cut baseball and man's gymnastics.
I totally agree with this blogger:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/..... 

I am a Cal alum. I get lots of phone calls and mailings about giving to Cal. I received nothing about the fund raising effort to save Cal sports from Cal Admin, Cal Athletics, or Cal Alumni. If fund raising efforts over the past 4 months raised $15M of the $25M needed, why can't the effort have more time and why can't Admin help fund raising with publicity.

Posted by Eric Golanty | February 11, 2011 at 2:10 pm | Shortcut

I'm deeply ashamed to be associated with UC Berkeley today. This was a great program that gave a lot to the Berkeley community. Coach Esquer, his staff and his players deserve better than to be the pawns in a political mess created by Birgeneau who has done nothing but lie and hide facts about this situation since the beginning. Cutting Cal Baseball has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with Birgeneau saving face among the academic departments. This is a sad, sad day and an embarrassment to Berkeley.

Posted by Dan | February 11, 2011 at 2:20 pm | Shortcut

Totally unacceptable Cal Administrators!! Breaking a long tradition to save a buck, when all the athletes and supporters went out to canvass extra funds to support the programs, then to simply state you can not reinstate two of the sports is not acceptable and just goes to show you how administrators take athletics to heart when it comes to building team work or showing how you care about the community, especially those community members who support not only baseball, but your other school revenue producing sports!!!

Posted by Bill | February 11, 2011 at 2:42 pm | Shortcut

There is no savings of $5,000,000 or actually it was purported to be $4,000,000. That is the Expense of the five teams per year unbalanced by any revenue generated. The real issue is needing additional recruiting slots for football. Cal Football annually has around 20 Freshmen on the team. The only other Pac 12 team that has anything approaching this few freshmen is Arizona State. Every other team has between 35 and 60. If one looks nationally at other successful programs, most have anywhere from 40 to 50 freshmen recruits. Even ivy league teams have over 30. Cal Athletics is limited to 280 offers of admission under the Athletics Admission Policy and with 29 teams, Football was not allotted enough recruiting slots to make enough offers to get a large enough class to make sure there is enough talent to ensure a winning record that will generate the crowds to pay off the interest on $400,000,000 of bonds that are funding the athletic training center and stadium renovation. That is what this is all about.

Posted by Jones | February 11, 2011 at 2:53 pm | Shortcut

Here is an excerpt from Doug Nickle, who sent me this message through Save Cal Baseball on Facebook:
Cal Baseball has been scapegoated in this process. We’ve been told that we did not contribute enough to prove that Cal Baseball is a sustainable program. Save Cal Baseball has worked tirelessly on behalf of all 5 affected programs. While we know that Save Cal Baseball led the way in the Save Cal Sports effort, the University has turned it’s back on our efforts and is now shielding themselves behind the long-term implications of Title IX.

Posted by Alex | February 11, 2011 at 3:51 pm | Shortcut

It is about property. The baseball field, adjacent to Haas Field House, will be converted to a revenue producing facility-probably a parking structure. Too bad, but the one thing faculty, staff and students all support is additional parking on campus. So baseball suffers despite the efforts of many supporters to save this long standing premier sport.

Posted by Dave | February 11, 2011 at 6:39 pm | Shortcut

How 'bout a little reality here? Instead of howling about how unfair it is, and instead of this publication's writers wringing their hands and playing the blame game, let's look at the facts:

1. When the chancellor cut baseball and other sports in September, he said he was guided by two considerations: Did the program have a realistic chance of competing nationally? Did the program have a solid base of support (had the coaches developed a fan base and reliable financial donors)?

2. Under Coach Esquer, Cal Baseball had a 10-year record barely over .500. They weren't ever Pac 10 champions, were they? I think they went to one regional in a decade. Bear in mind that this was with a boat load of talent. (How many top-10 round drafts last year, alone?) Bear in mind that Esquer replaced a coach who had taken Cal to the CWS twice in the previous 6 years.

3. Esquer did nothing to develop a fan base — nor to raise money for better facilities. Look, Cal averaged 451 fans a game last year. That's little more than players' families, their girlfriends, and a few campus janitors with nothing else to do. LSU averaged more fans for a single home game than Cal attracted for the entire season. In a metro area of 7.5 million, if you can't attract more than 450 fans to a top-tier D-I baseball game, you aren't trying.

West Coast baseball has labored under a dangerous illusion for years: that it doesn't matter whether they have nationally-competitive facilities, or whether they draw fans to their games. At the same time, the other major teams have invested in facilities and have attracted fans. Surely, we all realize that the coaches at LSU and Texas and Nebraska and Mississippi State, etc., etc., have worked their tails off to make this happen.

Now, under a crushing financial burden, UC Berkeley becomes the first West Coast institution to say, "We can no longer afford the luxury of a baseball team which doesn't contribute to its own financial stability." As Esquer implied today, they probably won't be the last.

If this publication wishes to do the college baseball community a genuine service, let it replace columnists caterwauling about "mean old administrators" with a thoughtful discussion of what teams must do to avoid becoming the next Cal Baseball.

Posted by Fred Johnson | February 11, 2011 at 11:41 pm | Shortcut

What is the American Baseball Coaches Association's stance on Cal dropping baseball? You never hear anything out of them when this stuff happens. Last year UMass and Duquesne lose their programs, New Orleans gets dropped to Division III. The ABCA seems to take a lot of credit for all things positive in college baseball, but steers clear of anything controversial or negative. I recently read an article in BA where the ABCA officials were speaking with great pride about Division I college baseball's improved APR scores since they helped push through NCAA legislation to address the poor APR scores. Basically patting themselves on the back for helping create a rule making it illegal to transfer without having to sit out then high-fiving each other when, guess what? the number of baseball transfers went down.
College baseball has become great because of Ron Frasier, Gary Ward, Gene Stephenson, Skip Bertman, Augie Garrido and the other trailblazing coaches. The amazing thing is these legendary coaches built the foundation of college baseball as we know it today at the same time the NCAA was cutting the number of paid coaches, scholarships and games – while the ABCA sat there and scratched their head while the NCAA tried to bulldoze college baseball. Fewer paid coaches, fewer scholarships, fewer games and as of today one fewer major college baseball program. Disgraceful.

Posted by Tyler | February 12, 2011 at 12:04 am | Shortcut

Even if the efforts were to save all 5 programs, I have to think much of that $15 million pledged was made by people who specifically wanted to save baseball. Does the school know for sure they're still going to get $15 million in support? Very dissapointing to hear the news, jeez, could you imagine if the Golden Bears go to Omaha (and even WIN) this season? How awkward would that be?

Posted by Brandon | February 12, 2011 at 4:25 am | Shortcut

It is a sad sad day when a major school in one of the premier conferences in the country can't or won't fund baseball. Best wishes to the student athletes and staff at Cal for this year and a hope for a soft landing next year.

Posted by Bob | February 13, 2011 at 5:26 pm | Shortcut

It will be interesting to see the programs that benefit next year and the year after from the current Cal players who must find new homes.

Posted by Michael Dobreski | February 14, 2011 at 9:35 am | Shortcut

[...] Cal Will Not Reinstate Baseball (Baseball America). The alma mater of ex-Padres Xavier Nady and Geoff Blum, which enters 2011 as the no. 17 team in the country, is terminating its baseball program at season’s end. There is no way to say this other than it sucks. [...]

Posted by Hungry. Thirsty. Whatever. | Ducksnorts | February 14, 2011 at 9:51 am | Shortcut

Fred Johson. Did you not read the article, let me pull this for you:
Cal baseball has a long history that dates back to 1892. The Golden Bears won the first College World Series in 1947, then won another national title in 1957. Cal's impressive alumni list includes Jeff Kent, Brett Jackson, Brandon Morrow, Xavier Nady, Tyson Ross and Geoff Blum, among recent or current big leaguers. The Bears have been to regionals in two of the last three seasons and head into 2011 ranked No. 17 in Baseball America's Top 25. Esquer and his staff have forged a winning program despite playing in a substandard facility that lacks lights.
"We've spent a lot of time and effort to try to build our program to consistently be a playoff contender, develop the type of kids we have, the coaching staff we brought together," Esquer said. "All that takes a while, and to see it all come crashing down is hard to watch."

Fred, what did the University do to promote baseball. The programs you bring out to compare are ones with great facilities, one thing that Cal does not have. Have you ever played the game before???? If you did, then you would know that playing all your weekday games at 1:00pm does not allow for parents to bring their kids to games. Students are in class at that time, and are not going to miss class for a baseball game. You would also know that playing under the lights, the ball looks different, and if you cannot practice as all the other schools can, you enter a Friday game of a weekend series with a major disadvantage. I am sure if you look at the stats and Cal's win loss record on Friday nights away, and I am sure you will see.
As a University, you get what you8 put into a program. When Esquer raised the funds to install lights, it was denied. So please tell me what did the University do to back its baseball program???
You are so quick to point the shortcomings at Esquer, but he has been able to recruit despite the programs shortcomings. Please tell me, how do you recruit against a Stanford, ASU, OSU, U of O and get a steady stream of blue chip recruits??? Please enlighten this baseball message board on how you do it. BA seems to think Esquer has done a lot with the least to work with in a very very competitive PAC 10 Conference.
Please report back to Sandy Barbour that your attempt to justify this decision on a respectable college baseball site as a failure.

Posted by Bradon | February 14, 2011 at 11:10 am | Shortcut

As a baseball fan and Cal alum I am horrified. Baseball is the only sport in which the Bears have remained consistently competitive over the years since I ENTERED Cal in 1960. I have notified the office that requests donations for my beloved alma mater that I will never contribute a penny until the baseball team is fully restored. I wish Coach Esquer and all the players the best and hope they are able to not only fulfill their baseball dreams in new settings, but they go out in a blaze of glory at the College World Series. Shame on you Cal!

Posted by Adele Katz | February 15, 2011 at 2:49 pm | Shortcut