EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Men’s soccer head
coach Todd Saldaña is under review.
By Diamond Leung
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The UCLA Athletic Department is reviewing men’s soccer
head coach Todd Saldaña’s background after learning that
he had obtained his bachelor’s degree from a fraudulent,
distance-learning university.
UCLA, which requires all its head coaches to have earned a
minimum of an accredited bachelor’s degree, hired
Saldaña in 1999 to coach the team.
Saldaña received his B.A. in psychology in 1997 from
Columbia State University, according to the UCLA men’s soccer
media guide. Columbia State, a fake university claiming to operate
in Louisiana, was shut down in fall 1998 after it was discovered
that it lured students into spending money for phony college
degrees.
Through his lawyer, Bruce Gelb, Saldaña denied any
wrongdoing Thursday. According to Gelb, Saldaña spent a year
pursuing his degree in good faith at Columbia State, buying
textbooks and writing papers.
“Coach Saldaña believed that CSU was a legitimate
accredited academic institution and that he had earned his
degree,” Gelb said. “He did not find out about any
problems until he was notified by the Athletic Department in the
last two weeks. I don’t believe either side knew about any of
CSU’s improprieties.”
“Mr. Saldaña was an innocent victim of CSU.
It’s an unfortunate situation. Nobody’s claiming that
Mr. Saldaña misrepresented himself,” Gelb said, adding
that thousands have fallen for the scam.
Columbia State brochures claimed the university was accredited,
and students could earn degrees in 27 days.
But there is no such university. The building shown on the
school’s brochures is actually in New York, and mail sent to
Louisiana was forwarded to a drop box in San Juan Capistrano,
Calif.
Students would receive phony diplomas and transcripts in the
mail after completing Columbia State’s minimal
requirements.
“It was just bogus, none of the classes were
accredited,” said Pam Laborde, assistant public information
officer for the attorney general of Louisiana.
The Athletic Department is reviewing the situation.
“We can’t talk about this situation because it
involves personnel,” said UCLA sports information director
Marc Dellins.
Dellins refused to comment on when UCLA first learned of
Saldaña’s situation, but did say the university became
aware of it prior to a high-profile background case involving
football coach George O’Leary and Notre Dame University.
O’Leary resigned as Notre Dame head football coach Dec.
14, five days after being hired. O’Leary admitted that he
lied about playing football at the University of New Hampshire and
about earning a Master’s degree in education from New York
University.
John Bear, co-author of “Bears’ Guide to Earning
Degrees by Distance Learning,” has trouble understanding how
UCLA might have overlooked Saldaña’s questionable
background.
“Unlike the Notre Dame case, this one should have been a
lot easier to pick up,” Bear said. “In the Notre Dame
case, they were dealing with an accredited university. All I did
was type in “˜coach’ and “˜Columbia State
University,’ and it hit on Saldaña. It took me two
minutes.”
Saldaña has compiled a 43-17-4 record in his three seasons
as men’s soccer coach at UCLA. He led the team to the NCAA
semifinals in 1999.
He was originally hired at UCLA to coach the men’s team in
1989 as an assistant and remained until 1994. UCLA has no
bachelor’s degree requirement for assistant coaches.
From 1995-96, Saldaña was the men’s and women’s
head coach at Cal Poly Pomona. Cal Poly Pomona athletics director
Dan L. Bridges said the school requires its head coaches to have
bachelor’s degrees or equivalent experience in the sport.
Saldaña also served as men’s head coach at Loyola
Marymount University in 1997. According to the LMU sports
information office, LMU had no knowledge of Columbia State’s
status as an unaccredited university and, like UCLA, requires its
head coaches to have bachelor’s degrees.
Saldaña returned to UCLA as women’s head coach in
January 1998 ““ before Columbia State shut down.
UCLA senior men’s soccer team captain Ryan Futagaki
expressed shock when told his coach’s degree is invalid.
“(The Athletic Department) should have checked up when it
hired him (for the men’s team). It’s his fault and the
Athletic Department’s fault in the same sense. I just
don’t know why it didn’t come up before when he was
hired for the (women’s) team.”
With reports from Timothy Kudo, Scott Schultz, Christina Teller
and Bruce Tran, Daily Bruin Senior Staff.