Baseball might be America's national pastime, but it's not UC Berkeley's.

The university on Tuesday eliminated the sport and demoted the most successful team in school history, men's rugby, in moves designed to reduce the athletic department's bloated budget by $4 million and keep Cal in compliance with Title IX gender equity requirements.

Also cut were men's and women's gymnastics, and lacrosse, a sport only offered to women at Cal. The changes are effective in the 2011-12 academic year.

Cal's revered men's rugby program, winner of 25 national championships since 1980 and like baseball more than a century old, was reassigned to the newly created category of "varsity club," a status yet to be fully explained. Campus facilities and sports medicine services will be available to the team.

"Everyone deeply regrets the human toll these decisions take," Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said in an afternoon news conference. "The cutting of teams is over. This is it. (It) will result in a sustainable, financially responsible" department.

The budget under athletic director Sandy Barbour has increased in recent years as Cal attempts to remain a player among major colleges at a time when the state of California is experiencing its worst financial crisis in decades.

Cal's athletic department expenses are $69 million for the current fiscal year, yet revenues are only $57 million. The $12 million gap is bridged by student registration fees and the chancellor's discretionary fund. The athletic department's revenues come from ticket sales, broadcast rights and donor contributions.

The university wants its support to the athletic department to be no more than $5 million annually starting in 2014, an amount it considers "sustainable."

"Cal athletics is not immune to the effects of the recession and the financial realities on campus," said a grim-faced Barbour, sitting next to Birgeneau. "Making sports cuts was the best available option. The impact of this decision is far-reaching. I am deeply saddened by the impact this decision will have."

163 athletes removed

Tuesday's announcement will remove 163 of 814 male and female athletes from varsity status in Cal's current offering of 29 sports. The breakdown is 118 male (61 in rugby, 38 in baseball, 19 in gymnastics) and 45 female (30 in lacrosse, 15 in gymnastics).

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Brandon Morrow, a former Cal baseball player, told the Associated Press, "I think it's awful. I think it's embarrassing that a Pac-10 school is going to cancel their baseball program." Cal has had a baseball program since 1892.

On her Twitter account, Berkeley graduate and Olympic swimmer Natalie Coughlin wrote, "Extremely disappointed to hear about UC Berkeley having to cut five sports teams due to budget problems ... If it wasn't for my time as a student-athlete at UC Berkeley, I wouldn't have earned my 11 Olympic medals."

A year of consideration

It was Barbour who made the recommendations that the five sports teams be eliminated from intercollegiate athletics after more than a year of carefully scrutinizing such factors as financial impact, history of competitive success, donor impact, ability to comply with Title IX, contributions to student-athlete diversity and opportunities for NCAA and Pac-10 success.

"I congratulate Sandy for having the courage to bite the bullet and endorse a level of (campus) support that is sustainable," Birgeneau said.

Removing men's rugby from varsity status was a move not born of financial considerations but gender equity ones in an effort to remain compliant under Title IX, the federal law requiring public institutions to provide equal opportunities to all students.

"You can say it. I'm not going to," rugby coach Jack Clark said when asked if his sport was a victim of Title IX imperatives. "There are an awful lot of people counting on me for leadership in this. I want to be well-informed and responsible."

Currently, Cal has about 150 more male than female student-athletes, and the elimination of rugby, with 61 men, provides a quick and easy fix in the name of proportionality because UC Berkeley's undergraduate population is 52.9 percent female and 47.1 percent male.

The rugby program under Clark is endowed and receives substantial annual donations. It is virtually self-sufficient save for what the university calls such indirect expenses as the cost of providing care from the sports medicine staff.

Birgeneau said the university will continue to honor its scholarship commitments to athletes in the affected sports who choose to remain at Berkeley, where the total amount spent on athletic scholarships is about $10 million annually.

Athletes who wish to transfer to other schools to continue to compete in their sports may do so immediately under NCAA rules without having to sit out a year because their sport was eliminated.

Academic priorities

Computer science Professor Brian Barsky, one of the university's most outspoken opponents of spending on athletics, was co-author of a resolution called "Academics First" passed a year ago by UC Berkeley's Academic Senate.

"I'm not happy to see anything get cut, but I believe we should look at this in the context of far more serious losses we've had over the past year," Barsky said. "We've had hundreds upon hundreds of staff fired, libraries closed and roof leaks. All we've asked for is for the university to keep its academic priorities."

At a time when coaching salaries are escalating (football coach Jeff Tedford makes $2.5 million annually while men's basketball coach Mike Montgomery is paid $1.5 million), Birgeneau noted that the university went two years without hiring new faculty and over the last year or so laid off 500 employees.

Staff writers Nanette Asimov and Tom FitzGerald contributed to this report.