The San Diego Union-Tribune Kevin Acee column

Nov. 28--The founding chancellor of UC San Diego helped develop the first atomic bomb.

Members of the university's faculty have won or shared three Nobel Prizes. One alumnus has done so.

One of UCSD's professors co-founded San Diego's first biotech company. The school's hospital was the county's first Level 1 trauma center. Its research on the ocean, cancer, autism and AIDS are ranked among the world's finest.

It is almost an insult to cut so short a list of the exploits of the county's largest employer.

The place is all about excellence, only embraces achievement at the highest level.

And now, finally, that can truly be the case in its athletics program.

At a festive and impressive news conference Monday afternoon inside RIMAC Arena, UCSD Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla made what he called a "landmark announcement -- UCSD's move to Division I athletics."

The Tritons will begin play in most sports in the Big West Conference in the 2020-21 academic year.

"This has been a very long time coming," Khosla said.

Indeed.

This won't be easy. The Tritons are going to eat some humble pie served up by schools with more athletic resources but fewer research grants. This is a bigger jump than when UCSD went from Division III to Division II in 2000, especially in its core sports of men's and women's basketball, baseball and softball.

But striving against the best is the only way to be the best.

"When you change levels, everyone is bigger, faster, stronger," men's basketball coach Eric Olen said. "It will be a long process."

This needed to happen.

The large size of the school, the staggering quality of the education, pretty much everything about San Diego's bluff-top university screams Division I.

"This move will significantly increase our visibility and will align us with similar universities with which we already compete," Khosla said. "...This move demonstrates UCSD's continued growth and trajectory as one of the globe's leading universities."

When you're the best, you want to go against the best.

UC San Diego is tied with UC Irvine and the University of Florida as the ninth-ranked public university in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report's latest rankings. (Those three comprise a tie for 42nd among all universities.)

Among public schools, UC San Diego is the only one in the top 28 that does not sponsor a Division I athletic program. That's not a principal criterion, but neither is it a coincidence.

You might think the world would be a better place if people packed arenas or sat in front of the television to watch math geniuses work out calculus problems on giant white boards. But that's not the world we live in.

Fact is, the mathletes are often better off because of the athletes. (By the way, you can be both at UCSD. Scott Everman, the kid who led the Tritons in scoring in a basketball victory over Alaska-Anchorage the other night, won the Santa Barbara County Math Super Bowl as a fifth grader.)

"Being in Division I will make people more aware of who we are," Khosla said. "More young men and women who are looking at schools will know who we are."

Khosla pointed to the fact the university will now provide more scholarships and that a Division I athletic department generally increases a campus' diversity.

There is simply no doubt this move will bring more of cream of the crop to UCSD. Tritons coaches in every sport have long lost out on top athletes because they don't offer kids the chance to play at the highest level.

"There are plenty of kids that are smart," softball coach Patti Gerckens said. "They just want a D-I program. They want to be Division I athletes."

This might seem paradoxical to some, but there are really good students who turn down admission to seaside UCSD in order to attend UC Riverside. That's right. Riverside! See, UCR is Division I.

The occasional would-be Triton, especially in the Olympic sports, ends up at Stanford or a WCC school like Pepperdine or USD. Often, it is Harvard or Columbia or Princeton that get the kid UCSD was after.

No more. Or at least not as often.

"We will be able to get the student-athletes we usually lose to Stanford and the Ivy Leagues," said Athletic Director Earl Edwards, the tireless champion of this move.

Said Gerckens: "We've got a public Ivy League school now."

Don't worry, Aztecs and USD Toreros. There's room in this town for another Division I program.

And UCSD isn't really shooting for you anyway.

What the Tritons are after is something multiple coaches referred to as "The Stanford model."

Essentially, that is a program that doesn't bend on its admission standards, only admitting those with at least a 4.0 GPA and the kind of extracurriculars that suggest they might someday cure cancer while teaching yoga and helping feed orphans.

"Our academic standards are not going to change," women's hoops coach Heidi VanDerveer said. "We already recruit only the best and the brightest. (Being Division I) opens up the breadth and depth of recruiting."

Heck, even SDSU alum Kevin Faulconer understands.

"Today is about taking (UCSD's) reputation for excellence to the next level," the mayor said.

The Tritons have essentially conquered Division II.

In 17 years, they have finished in the top five in that division's Learfield Directors' Cup standings, which rank the top overall athletic programs, eight times and in the top 10 all but four years.

Enough of second.

"The level of competition is fine," Khosla said. "But it's not the highest level."

And that's what UCSD is about.

kevin.acee@sduniontribune.com

___

(c)2017 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.