Dues and don'ts

Their contributions are as integral to UCLA as a legendary coach
or a most valuable player. Their photos and stories grace the
inside of game-day program guides and their names adorn campus
buildings. But collectively, they only enter the spotlight in times
of scandal or corruption. UCLA athletic support groups, commonly
referred to as boosters, philanthropically provide the funds that
allow UCLA to compete at the highest level. However, it is the
sensationalized stories they occassionally generate garner the
attention. In 2003, the Bruin athletic department received
$8,543,000 from boosters, providing funding for equipment,
scholarships, traveling and other necessities. Last year, these
donations made up about one-fifth of the athletic
department’s entire budget. “They’re definitely a
necessity,” athletic director Dan Guerrero said.
“We’re pretty much a self-sustaining operation, so
donations are critical to allowing us to make our budget.”
The controversy arises when these boosters look to overextend their
activity in the operation. The task of dealing with boosters who
want to influence decision-making is not an easy one, particularly
when it comes to coaching personnel. But Guerrero insists he has
not felt any pressure of this form. “I have not received any
overt pressure from anyone relative to who I should hire or why I
should hire someone,” Guererro said. “That’s not
to say that people don’t recommend that I look at a certain
candidate, but in terms of external pressure to make a decision in
any particular manner, that has not occurred. That is my personal
situation. It’s not to say it doesn’t occur in a
different manner at different institutions.” Just because
Guerrero has never felt pressure from boosters does not necessarily
mean they haven’t pushed for him to take drastic action.
Though only entering his third year, Guerrero has reportedly
already rejected booster pleas on multiple occasions. Several
boosters allegedly offered to buy out both football coach Bob
Toledo and basketball coach Steve Lavin’s contracts in the
middle of each of their respective seasons. “When I walked in
the door, there was a lot of scrutiny about both of those
programs,” Guerrero said. “I get e-mail and phone calls
weekly from people who are very supportive or would like to see
changes made. They have a love for UCLA athletics and want to see
us clicking on all cylinders at all times.” With attention
heavily focused on football and men’s basketball, many
boosters begin grumbling when either of the programs are
struggling. Having attended UCLA during the John Wooden or Red
Sanders years, they are eager for a return to those glory days.
Chuck Winter, a lifelong Bruin fan who endowed a scholarship four
years ago, acknowledged that some boosters have already begun
venting their frustration among themselves regarding football coach
Karl Dorrell. “Donors all have opinions on who the coach
should be or what the style of play should be,” Winter said.
“They’re fans and have opinions. Some feel their
opinion should be counted more than others and since we have a
relationship with the athletic department, we have more opportunity
to make our opinions known.” None of the boosters interviewed
for this article claimed to have actively sought influence in these
matters, and indicated that they would not expect the
administration to accomodate them if they did. “People that
donate and think they have some kind of influence find out quickly
they essentially have no influence,” said Jim Pagliuso,
another booster who has endowed a scholarship. Refusing to cater to
personnel demands and denying that he ever received pressure to do
so reflects Guerrero’s adamant stand that he makes decisions
based on his own best judgment. In the past however, rumors have
swirled that boosters at UCLA have exerted pressure in the athletic
department. In 2001, reports surfaced that boosters pressured the
previous athletic director, Pete Dalis, to call Rick Pitino while
Lavin was in the middle of his fifth year coaching the team.
Although Dalis would not admit that the two discussed UCLA’s
coaching position, the situation nevertheless tainted his legacy
and prompted public speculation that boosters do indeed have some
influence in the athletic department. Guerrero does not forsee any
imminent pressure from boosters if football coach Karl Dorrell
struggles in his second season, noting that he doesn’t
anticipate things going sour with the team. However, the
possibility of a second consecutive losing season is a real one,
and the athletic department would inevitably be adversely affected.
“People will choose not to buy season tickets if you’re
not winning in a particular sport,” Guerrero said.
“When you start to win, they will get back on board.”
Boosters, on the other hand, may respond to these struggling times
by threatening to withdraw their donations if the athletic
department doesn’t make changes to the program. Of the
boosters interviewed for this article, none claimed to have ever
considered ceasing donations, but one did acknowledge that such
threats are made. “I’m sure there’s attrition in
any given year,” Guerrero said. “Generally speaking, if
you look at any program, you typically lose about 10 percent of
donations. If you want to increase by 10 percent, you seek to
increase by 20 percent.”

Booster Guidelines The difficulty of appeasing
every single booster parallels the difficulty in monitoring all
their relationships and potential infractions. Although support is
most directly shown through financial donations, boosters are
involved in other facets of the program that become subject to
intense scrutiny. The NCAA definition of boosters includes
individuals, independent agencies, corporate entities, or other
organizations that are known, or should be known, by the athletic
department to have participated in promoting the
institution’s athletics program, made financial contributions
to the department, assisted in or asked to assist in helping
recruit prospects, or assisted in providing benefits to enrolled
student-athletes or their families. This broad definition
incorporates a wide range of actors who hope to bolster
UCLA’s program in substantially different manners. Though
boosters may be extremely ambitious in their efforts to lure
recruits, they are extremely limited in the permissable contact
they may have with prospects. They are restricted from initiating
contact with prospects and from answering many questions.
“Let’s say a recruit called up a booster who majored in
their major,” UCLA Director of Compliance Richard Herczog
said. “Generally, they can answer the questions asked, but
boosters must forward any questions related to sports to the
athletic department.” The difficulty of monitoring booster
relations with prospects reflects the challenge athletic
departments across the country face when dealing with booster
activity in general. From a free meal to free merchandise,
student-athletes are often confronted with tempting offers that
violate NCAA guidelines. “As an athlete everyone is looking
at you, because one mistake will get you,” said Brigham
Harwell, a freshman on the football team. “You have to be
more careful and more cautious, but it shouldn’t ever be a
problem.” The “˜extra-benefit rule’ adopted by the
NCAA prohibits athletes from receiving benefits that would not
reasonably be available to any other student. Although there is
consensus that athletes should not be given special privileges,
some boosters feel athletes are at a disadvantage because of the
close watch kept on them. “You can take a member of the band
out to dinner, but not a member of the team,” Winter said.
“Certain rules are so confining. You have to have a copy of
the rulebook any time you talk to (student-athletes).”
Although the language of the extra-benefit rule is straightforward
and generally understood by athletes and boosters alike, there have
been numerous situations that have presented a gray area in the
policy. In the fall of 2001, a UCLA athlete developed a
relationship with someone from his hometown who bought him multiple
gifts. The athlete, who considered the person a friend, did not
understand he was violating an NCAA policy, but was still ordered
to pay restitutions by giving to charity the equivalent value of
goods he received. “It’s not always an exact
science,” Herczog said in reference to the situation.
“You could have made a good case for the other side that this
person was just a friend helping out.” The parties offering
the benefits are often times just as unaware as the athletes that
they are breaking the rules. For example, shortly after a local
newspaper article describing Dave and Mat Ball, former standouts on
UCLA’s football team, and their difficulty in finding
affordable housing in Westwood a couple years ago, the brothers
received a check in the mail from a non-booster. “Most of the
time, they just don’t know,” Herczog said of
individuals offering benefits. Other situations, however, are more
blatant and egregious. Herczog noted an incident when a booster
offered to sublet a room to a student-athlete for $28 a month.
“He said his house was paid for, but you just can’t
think that way,” Herczog said. “You have to be able to
show that the amount paid is commensurate with the
neighborhood.”

Breaking the Rules When infractions are
committed, the consequences can be severe. UCLA students need only
look back three years ago to when an entire football season
imploded because of DeShaun Foster’s violation of the
“˜extra-benefit’ rule. When a story broke in early
November 2001 that Foster, the Bruins’ Heisman Trophy
candidate, was driving a car lent to him by a non-booster Hollywood
movie producer and UCLA alumnus, the star running back was forced
to sit out the last three games of the season, including a 27-0
loss to USC. “It was a high-profile situation because Deshaun
was a high-profile athlete,” Guerrero said. “When you
have a program that has between 600 and 700 athletes, you’re
constantly wary about those kinds of issues.” Other schools
have suffered deeper setbacks as a result of violations of the
extra-benefit rule. For instance, the University of Michigan was
recently placed on probation when a booster had given a total of
$616,000 to four basketball stars when they were enrolled in school
in the 1990s. The school was forced to forgo postseason play in
men’s basketball for two years, forfeit 117 wins and four
scholarships over a ten-year period, and repay the NCAA $450,000
for its postseason appearances during that time period. While the
athlete or school faces disciplinary measures for their
infractions, the boosters themselves are largely immune from severe
forms of punishment. An athletic department’s best recourse
is to refuse to sell tickets to games to individuals who violate
the extra-benefit rule. They are dependent on boosters’
senses of ethics and their athletes’ abilities to avoid
temptation. “It is incumbent upon NCAA colleges and
universities to make sure that persons who might be considered
boosters know and understand the NCAA bylaws pertaining to extra
benefits, and how violations can bring harm to student-athletes and
the institution,” said Eric Christianson, NCAA director of
media and public relations. The NCAA’s policy in the area of
boosters and extra-benefits has remained fairly static for the past
fifteen years. However, in recent years, schools have gone to
greater lengths to ensure they are complying with these policies,
hoping to avoid the embarrassment and penalties that can result
with a single slip up. Ironically, this greater degree of
institutional control often times results in more infractions being
discovered. “There’s no rhyme or reason to the
slip-ups,” Herczog said. “Sometimes you have more
things to report just because you work harder to find them. Other
times you didn’t have time to scrutinize when they were
there.” Scrutiny is particularly tight on the football and
basketball teams, where boosters and the public generally focus
their attention. “There is (a stricter scrutiny) only because
of their celebrity,” Herczog said. “They’re more
recognizable and when mistakes happen, they’re more likely to
be seen. In lesser known sports, it takes a long time to figure out
extra-benefits.” As all the attention becomes directed
towards the athletes who are offered benefits, the boosters tend to
slip under the radar screen.

The Philanthropists However, despite all the
scandals and allegations surrounding boosters, the overwhelming
majority of them play by the rules. While many of them are alumni
who have developed an attachment toward their alma mater, a
significant number of boosters never attended UCLA. “Some
have moved in from different areas and adopted UCLA as their school
in terms of collegiate athletics,” said Ken McGuire, an
assistant athletic director of development. Others have been
lifelong Bruin fans and their financial success has made them eager
to give back to the program. Pagliuso, who attended UCLA for
undergraduate and law school, developed his allegiance to UCLA as a
young boy watching his father spend his free time recruiting
athletes and entertaining coaches and athletes in their home. By
endowing a scholarship valued at over $100,000, he has been able to
maintain a close relationship with those in the athletic
department. Many boosters begin donating in order to develop this
type of relationship, yet the ones who endow scholarships, the most
coveted of donations, are the least interested in what they receive
in return. “People who give the most expect the least and the
people who give the least expect the most,” McGuire said.
Carl McBain, a world-class hurdler at UCLA sixty-five years ago,
exemplifies this purely philanthropic attitude, cherishing the
ability to give current student-athletes the same opportunity he
had. “I’ve enjoyed participating just as much as the
university has enjoyed receiving,” said McBain, who with his
wife has endowed four scholarships in the last fifteen years.
Besides endowing scholarships, McBain, Pagliuso and Winter are also
among the approximately 330 boosters in the Coach’s Round
Table, which includes boosters who donate at least $5,500 annually
to the athletic department. With their generous donations come some
highly prized perks. Although courtside seats for men’s
basketball games are reserved for those who pay $10,000 a year for
them, members of the Coach’s Round Table have the option to
purchase season tickets near the 50-yard line in football and
half-court in basketball for just $8 more than a regular season
ticket. And despite the hefty donation required to become eligible
for these seats, there still exists a high demand for them.
“There’s a waiting list for the best seats in
Pauley,” Ken Weiner said, the associate athletic director of
business operations. “There’s very little turnover in
that area.” According to McGuire, these prime seats are the
major motivation for boosters who donate annually. However, a host
of other benefits exist for members of the Coach’s Round
Table, including free campus parking, invitations to exclusive
engagements with coaches and press box passes to a football game.
These tokens of gratitude are not lost on the boosters. Each
booster interviewed for this article was quick to praise the
athletic department for reaching out and making the donors feel
appreciated. “If you choose to make the effort, there are
always events to go to,” said Terry Brigham, another UCLA
alum who has endowed a scholarship. “UCLA is a great
institution and I enjoy giving.”

Small Sport Relationships Although many of the
endowments go to the football program, where there are 85 potential
scholarships available, some donors have become enthralled with
contributing to the smaller sports on campus. For example, Pamela
Woods and her husband Kirk Pasich have endowed two women’s
basketball scholarships after their children’s positive
experience at coach Kathy Olivier’s summer camp. “We
were just so impressed by the way she ran her program and the kind
of young women she had that we just really wanted to support
her,” Woods said. The impression Olivier has left on Woods
reflects the effort coaches make to develop a good relationship
with boosters. Coaches routinely talk with boosters over the phone
and bond with them at special events put on by the university. For
coaches of small sports, they work in an environment that is more
conducive to developing these relationships. “There’s
not as many (boosters),” Olivier said of the small sports.
“It’s a little easier to maintain a relationship and
have time to visit with them.”

The Legacy of Boosters Cultivating strong
relationships with boosters is a vital component to the success of
the entire athletic department. However, it is when booster
relationships become too close that turmoil frequently arises. A
single incident can tarnish the reputation of an entire program and
UCLA has felt the consequences of isolated scandals related to the
extra-benefit rule and alleged booster influence in its athletic
department. Nevertheless, the checks keeping pouring in, from
individuals who just want a prime seat in Pauley Pavilion to those
who wish to have influence in the program’s director to those
who could care less about the team’s wins and losses. The
donations boosters provide and the perks they receive are some of
the most coveted at UCLA. The limits are not on how much they can
give, but on how much they can do.