Guest Column: Straight from the horse’s mouth

Athletic Director Rocko DeLuca lied.

DeLuca downgraded the UC Davis three-time conference champion equestrian team to club status, effectively ending many student athletes’ collegiate careers because most can’t transition to club competition under existing rules. Internal emails and documents suggest the team was targeted for elimination long before any “analysis” took place, with numbers later inflated to justify that outcome.

This issue became personal for me, because my daughter rides on the team. What began as confusion over a puzzling decision quickly turned into a deeper investigation. Why eliminate a successful women’s equestrian program at one of the nation’s leading agricultural universities?

The administration’s response only raised more concerns. Requests for transparency were denied. A so-called “third-party report” was withheld, then later revealed to have been completed after the decision to end the program was made. When donors stepped forward to fund the program, DeLuca stated that “no amount of money” could save it, despite claiming finances were the reason for cutting it. That contradiction alone demands scrutiny. Internal communications minimized the impact on athletes and framed the fallout as manageable “short-term negative publicity.”

Documents and emails from the administration show that they inflated the equestrian team expenses by over $700,000 per year. The third party, which produced a document that we now know was only in “notes” form the day the team was cut, used those same inflated numbers and was instructed by DeLuca to confirm the approach: “…this action is approved contingent on an external review to confirm this approach.” This violates all ethical standards and the certificate of insurance (COI).

Basic accounting issues further undermine the decision. DeLuca misrepresented the equestrian team's operating expenses as if it were their operating budget; there was no credit logged to account for substantial team revenue. In fact, the Athletics Department's own financial reports show that over the last four years, the UC Davis Equestrian team generated revenues of over $5 million. For accounting purposes, horse donations must be offset with a corresponding expense, which DeLuca slid into the equipment category of his budget, which is why their equipment expenses are 78 times as expensive as comparable equestrian teams. These revenues, and more importantly, the expenses, aren’t real and have inflated the equestrian team's expenses by almost $2.1 million over the last three years.

Other costs are also incorrect. The university owns the equestrian center, yet boarding costs were cited as a major expense. Scholarship funds would need to be reassigned to maintain Title IX compliance, meaning those costs wouldn’t disappear. Proposed replacement sports would also require substantial funding, offsetting any projected savings.

And then there’s fundraising. DeLuca and his staff were continuing to solicit donations for the “future of the equestrian program” for the whole year after they planned to cut it. Parents and friends were being asked to provide bank and credit card information up until moments before the decision was announced. This conduct is now under investigation.

What about other programs? For comparison, the UC Davis Football Program loses $5 million every year. To be clear, I’m not advocating for the demise of UC Davis football. But the equestrian program’s total expenses fall near the average across sports. So why was it singled out? We don’t know, but I do know that in the past years he has made disparaging remarks about them publicly, embarrassing them at the banquet a few years ago in front of hundreds of equestrians and fellow coaches. He reportedly told a potential recruit that Davis should have added crew as a sport instead of equestrian, and he’s posted about men’s sports 58 times more than women’s sports in the past years on social media.

That should be enough, right? But that’s not all. In addition to the deceptive nature of the equestrian team’s cancellation, when DeLuca finally produced his third-party report about a month after his decision, it not only relied on the same fraudulent budget numbers that we now know were never independently verified, but it also included a breakdown of costs and expenditures for men’s and women’s sports that revealed DeLuca was funneling a disproportionate percentage of financial aid to men’s sports — in violation of Title IX.

Every year DeLuca was in charge, the university’s scholarship obligation was out of compliance by about $400,000. Don’t forget that the equestrian team was added as a varsity sport about eight years ago for the express purpose of solving their last Title IX lawsuit, and now, conveniently, they are ditching it again. That’s what we call a “sham” — putting a program in place just long enough to meet a legal need and then terminating it immediately when the opportunity arises (or in this case, is manufactured). The lives and careers of student athletes shouldn’t be pawns on DeLuca’s career chessboard. DeLuca lied about the budget, DeLuca lied about changes to the equestrian championships, DeLuca lied about when and how he came to the conclusion that equestrian should be cut and STUNT elevated and he is also in violation of Title IX for his entire tenure as athletic director, putting the university at risk of over a million dollars in damages.

It’s important to note that UC Davis Athletics is funded over 50% by you, the students. Another 26% comes from institutional support, which is money that the university is collecting primarily through student tuition. This was a deal the administration made a few years ago, and in exchange, the administration agreed that students could get physical education (PE) credits. But the administration revoked the PE credits.

You also may have heard that Davis just opted into the House Settlement and is moving into the Mountain West… DeLuca also now gets a big pay raise to align his salary with other Mountain West athletic directors. Why did he decide to move to Mountain West without football? The big potential upside of that conference move is eliminated, but leaves Davis with the downside of his increased salary and operating expenses due to the move. More money taken from student pockets with some great public relations work to convince us all that killing an award-winning equestrian team at a top agriculture school somehow aligns their priorities better.

You’re essentially stockholders in UC Davis Athletics: You decide. Is this how you want your business to be run? Are these the people you want in positions of fiscal authority? Look at the data. Analyze the facts. You’re all incredibly smart. You decide.

Use your voice. Not to protect the equestrian team in particular — but to protect your rights in general. To protect your women athletes. To protect the integrity of UC Davis. To show DeLuca that his career is not more important than his job.

Written by: Greg Close — close5@llnl.gov

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