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First of all, I meant to post this under the AD podcast thread, and mistakenly created a new thread that looks to be out of left field. That was a mistake.

I was responding to his comments in that podcast, and my questions about his vision and leadership have to do with the fact that the President seems to have given up on Athletics and handed it over to a bean-counter Vice President to oversee.

My questions remain: What is the plan for the Athletic department and the programs in the new NCAA environment? Will the programs be able to continue offering the same number of scholarships, will they be distributing those funds up to the new roster/scholarship limits (as equivalencies), will the Department be leading the way for fund-raising, or will each program be responsible for its own fundraising and allowed to use the funds it raises? This the NCAA reality now and we don't have any idea what the plan is (not to mention that it seems certain that there will be state budet cuts to the CSU of at least 8-10%, which mean enrollment decreases and even layoffs).

As far as academics, what the external public thinks about us is enormously important--I can't believe you actually said the opposite. We are a high demand campus, but our academic reputation has suffered. Long Beach used to be regularly rated only behind Cal Poly SLO and sometimes San Diego State for academics, but we are no longer ranked as Best Values in our category or the Best in the West regional universities. Cal Poly Pomona was recently rated much higher than we were academically (not to mention Fullerton). That's unacceptable.