With future of Cal’s Olympic sports teams in question, this program just received a $10 million gift
For decades, Andy Rogers’ family has been an ardent supporter of the Cal men’s rowing program. But with the ever-present threat of budget cuts to Olympic sports heightened by the destruction of the Pac-12 conference, Rogers believed he needed to dig deeper.
To that end, Rogers, on behalf of the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Family Foundation, is committing up to $10 million to the men’s rowing program at Cal. The gift, which will be announced by the school Wednesday, includes a $5-million guarantee to be paid over 10 years plus a 1:1 match of donations up to $5 million.
Cal says it’s the third-largest gift in the 10-year history of its “Campaign for Cal Athletics Excellence.” The other two were $12.5 million to establish a holistic student-athlete development program and $10.8 million to support six women’s sports.
“For Olympic sports — especially men’s rowing – to stick around, you have to support them,” Rogers said, “or watch them go away.”
Rogers’ father, known as Gary to his friends and family, was a prominent rower at Cal who competed in the 1964 U.S. Olympic Trials. In 1977, he and a partner brought Dreyer’s Ice Cream and he was the company’s chairman and CEO for 30 years. He also served as chairman of Safeway Inc., the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Levi Strauss & Co. Rogers died in 2017 at age 74.
Regarding crew and team sports, Andy Rogers said his dad, “would always (say) that the lessons and friendships that you get from being in that kind of circumstance goes way beyond what you learn in a classroom.”
Cal’s rowing program, which has won a record 19 national championships including the last two, wasn’t in immediate financial danger, according to coach Scott Frandsen. He attributed that to donations from alumni, especially the Rogers family.
“They’ve always led the way to provide us with everything that we need to have an elite program and have always encouraged the other alums to step up as well,” Frandsen said. “That’s the philosophy behind this matching gift. They’re in for a very large amount of money but are also encouraging others to get involved as well.”
Frandsen said the annual budget for the Bears men’s rowing program is between $1.7 and $1.8 million. Most of that money is drawn from yearly fundraising efforts and an endowment that’s handled by the university.
Frandsen said getting to full endowment would mean raising between $40-$45 million.
“We’re not there and this will hopefully help take a big step towards that,” Frandsen said. “But it is very much an ongoing mission to get the endowment to $40-$45 million so that we can be self-sustaining and fund ourselves. This is a big piece of that effort.”
“That’s the dream that’s been going on for a long time,” Rogers said of having the program become fully endowed.
UC Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ, who is stepping down next year, declared on Sept. 1 that there would be no cutting of sports “on my horizon” after the school announced that it, along with Stanford, would join the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2024. But Cal’s athletic department is severely in debt, and the school’s financial report last year indicated that the men’s Olympic sports teams lost more than $5 million.
As part of the arrangement to join the ACC, Cal and Stanford will only receive 30 percent of the conference’s TV revenue during the first seven years of their membership.
Cal men’s rowing is not affected by the move to the ACC, but the program’s budget realities remain the same. Rogers estimated that the school spends roughly $500,000 on scholarships and a lesser chunk on that in salaries, plus other costs, including travel and recruiting.
“I think Crew has been on the chopping block multiple times,” Rogers said. “But the alumni, we’ve made it very important to know that we want this sport to stick around and be successful.”