Why is it so hard to fire football coaches at Cal?

8,041 Views | 92 Replies | Last: 2 yr ago by mbBear
heartofthebear
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remb8888 said:

heartofthebear said:

BTW, I don't know why the OP is using USC as a model. Ever since Carrol left for the NFL, USC has been hiring and firing coaches every few years with no resl improvement in the program. I'm sure that USC will actually be worse without Helton due to the lack of stability now created there. As is the case at Cal, the real problem at USC has nothing to do with the HC. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that too many 4 and 5 star players makes for a roster full of primadonnas. Of course that never stopped tOSU, Bama or Clemson but maybe LA factors into it as well somehow.
Yeah who cares about that Rose Bowl they won in 2016 and going to another BCS bowl the year afterwards. These guys sorta suck and haven't improved.

Yeah sure it's hard to match the Carroll era but I'll take the above as a Cal fan any day.

Blah blah blah 4 and 5 stars are primmadonnas lets generalize some more. We want only 3* diamonds in the rough character guys blah blah blah. Yawn
You wanna be like USC? Be careful what you wish for. I'd like to be a better version of Cal, like the one when White was coaching, or Snyder or Tedford. None of those eras were anything like USC. They were much classier.

I don't get your point about 2016. All of that success was under Helton, the guy they are firing. So, according to your logic, USC is a better program because they are willing to fire the one coach that got them beyond mediocrity over the last decade + because he is mediocre now. Great, I don't like that model.

And maybe 4 and 5 stars in general aren't premadonnas, but they are at USC. Don't forget, University of Spoiled Children didn't come out of nowhere. Honestly, I can't believe you are actually defending USC.
Fyght4Cal
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mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.
dimitrig
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Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?

PtownBear1
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calumnus said:

socaliganbear said:

calumnus said:

HungryCalBear said:

David Shaw reportedly makes $6.8M a year plus bonus and incentive. Is he a better coach than Wilcox? Would you trade Wilcox for Shaw?

Furd's recruit has consistently ranked higher in recent years. Is that because of coaching, or school tradition, or their winning trend?

I seriously want to know ...


Shaw is the perfect coach for Stanford. An alumnus. From the Bay Area. African American. His father coached in the NFL and at Stanford. He played for Bill Walsh and Dennis Green. He coached in the NFL.

He is 91-37. 63-37 in conference. He has won the PAC-12 North 5 times. He has won the PAC-12 Championship 3 times. He has been in the playoffs 4 times. He has had double digit win seasons 5 times.

He is 10-1 in Big Games.

He has taken Stanford to the Rose Bowl 3 times as PAC-12 Champ. He has won the Rose Bowl twice.

We say we want "a Rose Bowl before we die." We revered Tedford and he never won the conference. Imagine if a former Cal player was our coach. Imagine he takes us to the Rose Bowl three times, winning twice. 10-1 in Big Games. Winning record against USC (whereas Tedford was 1-10). Can you imagine?

We pay Wilcox $5 million a year. If we had a HC who was an alum and accomplished what Shaw has we would think another $1.5 million is a bargain. We will probably pay Wilcox that if he just gets a winning conference record once and we extend him.


We pay Wilcox what now?


Shaw makes $1.5 million more than Wilcox

Here are the base salaries, but is not the total compensation:
https://trojanswire.usatoday.com/2020/10/16/how-the-pac-12-coaches-salaries-stack-up-in-2020/



Where are you getting that Wilcox makes $5m? Everywhere I see he's in the 3-3.5 range and towards the bottom for P5 coaches as he should be.
Fyght4Cal
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dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation
oski003
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PtownBear1 said:

calumnus said:

socaliganbear said:

calumnus said:

HungryCalBear said:

David Shaw reportedly makes $6.8M a year plus bonus and incentive. Is he a better coach than Wilcox? Would you trade Wilcox for Shaw?

Furd's recruit has consistently ranked higher in recent years. Is that because of coaching, or school tradition, or their winning trend?

I seriously want to know ...


Shaw is the perfect coach for Stanford. An alumnus. From the Bay Area. African American. His father coached in the NFL and at Stanford. He played for Bill Walsh and Dennis Green. He coached in the NFL.

He is 91-37. 63-37 in conference. He has won the PAC-12 North 5 times. He has won the PAC-12 Championship 3 times. He has been in the playoffs 4 times. He has had double digit win seasons 5 times.

He is 10-1 in Big Games.

He has taken Stanford to the Rose Bowl 3 times as PAC-12 Champ. He has won the Rose Bowl twice.

We say we want "a Rose Bowl before we die." We revered Tedford and he never won the conference. Imagine if a former Cal player was our coach. Imagine he takes us to the Rose Bowl three times, winning twice. 10-1 in Big Games. Winning record against USC (whereas Tedford was 1-10). Can you imagine?

We pay Wilcox $5 million a year. If we had a HC who was an alum and accomplished what Shaw has we would think another $1.5 million is a bargain. We will probably pay Wilcox that if he just gets a winning conference record once and we extend him.


We pay Wilcox what now?


Shaw makes $1.5 million more than Wilcox

Here are the base salaries, but is not the total compensation:
https://trojanswire.usatoday.com/2020/10/16/how-the-pac-12-coaches-salaries-stack-up-in-2020/



Where are you getting that Wilcox makes $5m? Everywhere I see he's in the 3-3.5 range and towards the bottom for P5 coaches as he should be.
I believe his extension, signed in 2018 and lasting until 2023, pays him ~3.25 million.
oski003
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Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.
What is a typical example of a Berkeley professor being hostile to a Black non-athlete and what do you think is the professor's motivation?
BearSD
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remb8888 said:

Can someone with knowledge of the inner-workings of high-end donations, the AD office, whatever, explain to me how schools like USC can do this on whim?
USC gave Helton more time as head coach than Cal has given to any head football coach in my lifetime except Tedford, so I'm not sure why you think USC fired Helton on a whim, or why you think Cal boosters are throwing millions around freely enough to pay the buyouts required to fire head coaches more quickly.
Bears2thDoc
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remb8888 said:


How many more years and time do you want with Wilcox? You think he'll take us to the Rose Bowl soon? RedBox bowl. I'm really proud of that. I go around on Saturdays to my Duck friends letting them know we're sticking with this guy. He took us to Redbox.



LOL!!!


Cheers!
Go Bears!!
Cal Band Great!!!
Fyght4Cal
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oski003 said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.
What is a typical example of a Berkeley professor being hostile to a Black non-athlete and what do you think is the professor's motivation?
Good questions that could best be answered directly by talking to the athletes and professors. Here's a relevant snippet I posted above from The Guardian:




Edited to add white space
71Bear
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wifeisafurd said:

calumnus said:

heartofthebear said:

BTW, I don't know why the OP is using USC as a model. Ever since Carrol left for the NFL, USC has been hiring and firing coaches every few years with no resl improvement in the program. I'm sure that USC will actually be worse without Helton due to the lack of stability now created there. As is the case at Cal, the real problem at USC has nothing to do with the HC. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that too many 4 and 5 star players makes for a roster full of primadonnas. Of course that never stopped tOSU, Bama or Clemson but maybe LA factors into it as well somehow.


USC, Alabama, tOSU and every NFL team. The belief that you can have "Too many 5 and 4 star players" has long infected the Cal fan psyche. Too many people long for a lunch pail group of 3 stars and walk-ons that somehow get us to the Rose Bowl. Hoosiers. It is behind all the vitriol on this board that was spewed towards 5 star Cal greats and difference makers like DeSean Jackson and Keenan Allen, Or Shareef Adur Rahim and Jaylen Brown in basketball. People here even turned on Marshawn Lynch when he faced bogus accusations early in his NFL career.

The key in the NBA or NFL or a place like USC is having a coach like Pete Carroll, that embraces diverse personalities and let's kids be kids and stars be stars. Marshawn was lucky he landed in Seattle. A place like Cal and Berkeley has always embraced individual expression, that is our comparative advantage. That is why guys like Shareef, Jaylen Brown and Demirtis Robertson came here from Georgia. It is goiing to be even more important in the NIL world.
I can recall that the program with the best 10 year record in the Pac was Furd, which has a few 4 and 5 star guys sprinkled in with primarily a lot of 3 star and even 2 star dudes. Great recruiting can make it easier, but it isn't the end all. With the talent SC recruits, even Cal fans would be impatient as SC fans.
Over a period of four years (2011-14), Stanford signed 30 four stars and three five stars. That is more than "a few". Also, as I have said many times, if you sign one Christian McCafferty or Andrew Luck (both Heisman runner-ups), their value is multiplied beyond their star rating because of the attention the opposition must pay to them.

Source- Rivals.com
Alkiadt
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Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.
This is a great post, and spot on in my book. UCLA embraced Jackie Robinson before MLB did.
In the 1960's, UCLA's chancellor (Young IIRC) was firmly on record that he wanted UCLA's two high profile sports, Football and Basketball, televised as much as they could be. He felt the exposure was the most positive thing UCLA could do. Compare that to Bowker and Heyman, who wanted Cal to be either University of Chicago or Ivy League at the most. Heyman once spoke in front of the NCAA convention and his speech to the membership was memorable as he pretty much said that competing teams shouldn't keep score. Something ridiculous like that. Cal's major sports have suffered at the hands at the top.
Fyght4Cal
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Alkiadt said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.
This is a great post, and spot on in my book. UCLA embraced Jackie Robinson before MLB did.
In the 1960's, UCLA's chancellor (Young IIRC) was firmly on record that he wanted UCLA's two high profile sports, Football and Basketball, televised as much as they could be. He felt the exposure was the most positive thing UCLA could do. Compare that to Bowker and Heyman, who wanted Cal to be either University of Chicago or Ivy League at the most. Heyman once spoke in front of the NCAA convention and his speech to the membership was memorable as he pretty much said that competing teams shouldn't keep score. Something ridiculous like that. Cal's major sports have suffered at the hands at the top.
Thank you for adding meat on the bones!
oski003
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Fyght4Cal said:

oski003 said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.
What is a typical example of a Berkeley professor being hostile to a Black non-athlete and what do you think is the professor's motivation?
Good questions that could best be answered directly by talking to the athletes and professors. Here's a relevant snippet I posted above from The Guardian:




Edited to add white space
This did not answer my question.
socaltownie
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation

This is a BAD UCLA take. The alpha and omega in it was the stability that Chancellor Young brought to the southern Branch and how it provided the opportunity to grow athletics without the whims that have been par for the course at CAL. In contrast, Cal has had chancellors with MUCH shorter tenures at Sproul Hall _AND_ has had to deal with the challenges of a number who were actively hostile to athletics/no experience given their Ivy league credentials. Longer response below.....

http://www.pastleaders.ucla.edu/young.html
socaltownie
How long do you want to ignore this user?
The challenge for Cal is that it is in such a no man's land when it comes to revenue sports. There ARE passionate alumni that want the program to succeed. Some actually remember when we were (a couple who post regularly on the BB, for example, about Newell). And they can actually point to places in the history where cal HAS been successful (Tedford, Mike White, some Synder) as examples that "in can be done." They have been, in many ways, a squeeky wheel that has created instability in the coaching ranks. Looking back I think we all can agree that while he (and the poncho) needed a break Tedford WAS a successful FB coach and would likely have gotten to a rosebowl absent being in the conference at the same time as Pete the Cheat.

But those alumni are not enough to really make revenue sports "count." In contrast - you know who will not TOLERATE a ****ty coach and indeed usually recruits the best in the world - Swim and Dive. I wonder why. There is a similar analogy over on the farm (and Oregon) where one alumni is so generous as to really create their own economics.

Add to this is the fact that the compared to institutions that have "grown" their football program into elite status we have had instability in the chancellor's office and have had at least 2 in my lifetimes (Dirks and Hyman) who were anti-athletics.

And thus cal exists in a grey area - not so awful as to simply not care (see Kansas in Football) but not so committeed to do what it takes to compete (retain Synder, hire someone better than Fox or Sonny). Frankly once you start to understand these factors it is actually healthier because it means you don't expect Cal to ever be that good and understand we probably won't be.
Fyght4Cal
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socaltownie said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation

This is a BAD UCLA take. The alpha and omega in it was the stability that Chancellor Young brought to the southern Branch and how it provided the opportunity to grow athletics without the whims that have been par for the course at CAL. In contrast, Cal has had chancellors with MUCH shorter tenures at Sproul Hall _AND_ has had to deal with the challenges of a number who were actively hostile to athletics/no experience given their Ivy league credentials. Longer response below.....

http://www.pastleaders.ucla.edu/young.html
Besides length (lol), what's so bad about it? A careful read (TL: dr) of my post will reveal that it contains nearly every point you just made, minus the name. Nevertheless, thank you for your kind attention.
Fyght4Cal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
oski003 said:

Fyght4Cal said:

oski003 said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.
What is a typical example of a Berkeley professor being hostile to a Black non-athlete and what do you think is the professor's motivation?
Good questions that could best be answered directly by talking to the athletes and professors. Here's a relevant snippet I posted above from The Guardian:




Edited to add white space
This did not answer my question.
Better than giving you answers, it tells you where to find the answers for yourself. Give a man a fish etc…
oski003
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Fyght4Cal said:

oski003 said:

Fyght4Cal said:

oski003 said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.
What is a typical example of a Berkeley professor being hostile to a Black non-athlete and what do you think is the professor's motivation?
Good questions that could best be answered directly by talking to the athletes and professors. Here's a relevant snippet I posted above from The Guardian:




Edited to add white space
This did not answer my question.
Better than giving you answers, it tells you where to find the answers for yourself. Give a man a fish etc…
"But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes)."

My question was related to black nonathletes and you gave me a snippet about athletes and recommending I speak with athletes and professors. If you don't want to elaborate, just say so. You don't have to. This may be better in off-topic anyway. To me, making the accusation that professors are hostile to Black students is fairly bold. Are you just saying that they don't like the athletes and assume other Black students are athletes?
socaltownie
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Fyght4Cal said:

socaltownie said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation

This is a BAD UCLA take. The alpha and omega in it was the stability that Chancellor Young brought to the southern Branch and how it provided the opportunity to grow athletics without the whims that have been par for the course at CAL. In contrast, Cal has had chancellors with MUCH shorter tenures at Sproul Hall _AND_ has had to deal with the challenges of a number who were actively hostile to athletics/no experience given their Ivy league credentials. Longer response below.....

http://www.pastleaders.ucla.edu/young.html
Besides length (lol), what's so bad about it? A careful read (TL: dr) of my post will reveal that it contains nearly every point you just made, minus the name. Nevertheless, thank you for your kind attention.
It wasn't that they were populist or "accepted blacks". It was that Young consolidated power in the office of the Chancellor and because it was a great way of fostering giving had the balls and stature to tell the UCLA faculty that opposed sports just as much as some at Cal to pound sand.

If Young had been at Cal for 30 years (or really ANY Chancellor that care about sports and understood alumni giving and nurturing) far different outcome.

Now arguably Cal could get away with not doing that (not now but in the past) because of Federal $ that flowed to the labs _AND_ because we lacked a medical school. Donor relations just are not that critical when you can skim 60% of NSF and DOE grants off the top for "institutional support".
01Bear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation


Black students, athletes and otherwise, are not the only students who have had professors who think they don't care about them or who think they don't belong there as students. While your snippet from the Guardian may apply to any school (and frankly, it's unclear to which school the article was referring), at Cal there are a ton of professors who don't give a darn about undergrads or even grad students except insofar as to how those students can assist them in their own research or how those students can stroke the professors' egos. There are other professors who only care about grad students. Of course, it doesn't help that Cal actively promotes and encourages "weeder courses" that are designed not to promote learning but instead are designed to eliminate students from entire subject areas and fields of study.

Frankly, in some ways, the student athletes at Cal have it easier than some of the non-athletes. At least they have tutors to help keep them on track academically. They also have priority when it comes to course selection. Of course, that's all balanced out against the amount of work they have to put in to maintain and improve their athletic performance. In other words, the student-athletea earn and deserve every bit of the benefits they do receive by dint of their hard work outside the classroom.

In any case, while I don't discount that there may be some professors at Cal who are less welcoming to black students (athletes or otherwise) than to non-black students, I would suspect the numbers of such to be professors to be fairly low at Cal. Instead, it's likely that what some black students may feel is a professor targeting him/her on account of race is just a professor's general disinterest in undergrad students. That said, I would also not be surprised if there is a lot of unrecognized racial bias among the professorial ranks at Cal. Though, I would be highly surprised if it led to any professor outwardly expressing that a black student didn't belong at Cal or wasn't a real student on account of the student's race. Rather, it would more likely be reflected in the reduced opportunities afforded black grad students to serve as GSIs for or who receive letters of recommendation from those professors.
socaltownie
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01Bear said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation


Black students, athletes and otherwise, are not the only students who have had professors who think they don't care about them or who think they don't belong there as students. While your snippet from the Guardian may apply to any school (and frankly, it's unclear to which school the article was referring), at Cal there are a ton of professors who don't give a darn about undergrads or even grad students except insofar as to how those students can assist them in their own research or how those students can stroke the professors' egos. There are other professors who only care about grad students. Of course, it doesn't help that Cal actively promotes and encourages "weeder courses" that are designed not to promote learning but instead are designed to eliminate students from entire subject areas and fields of study.

Frankly, in some ways, the student athletes at Cal have it easier than some of the non-athletes. At least they have tutors to help keep them on track academically. They also have priority when it comes to course selection. Of course, that's all balanced out against the amount of work they have to put in to maintain and improve their athletic performance. In other words, the student-athletea earn and deserve every bit of the benefits they do receive by dint of their hard work outside the classroom.

In any case, while I don't discount that there may be some professors at Cal who are less welcoming to black students (athletes or otherwise) than to non-black students, I would suspect the numbers of such to be professors to be fairly low at Cal. Instead, it's likely that what some black students may feel is a professor targeting him/her on account of race is just a professor's general disinterest in undergrad students. That said, I would also not be surprised if there is a lot of unrecognized racial bias among the professorial ranks at Cal. Though, I would be highly surprised if it led to any professor outwardly expressing that a black student didn't belong at Cal or wasn't a real student on account of the student's race. Rather, it would more likely be reflected in the reduced opportunities afforded black grad students to serve as GSIs for or who receive letters of recommendation from those professors.
Now I think my prof dad was mostly joking but as he said - "The only thing bad about Cal is that we have to have students." He taught in a school (at that time) without an undergrad program. But least you throw arrows - keep in mind that there are VERY few institutional rewards and an elite R1 Research institution for teaching or "service" compared to publishing and PARTICULARLY winning grants so you become a revenue and not a cost center.
SFCityBear
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calumnus said:

HungryCalBear said:

David Shaw reportedly makes $6.8M a year plus bonus and incentive. Is he a better coach than Wilcox? Would you trade Wilcox for Shaw?

Furd's recruit has consistently ranked higher in recent years. Is that because of coaching, or school tradition, or their winning trend?

I seriously want to know ...


Shaw is the perfect coach for Stanford. An alumnus. From the Bay Area. African American. His father coached in the NFL and at Stanford. He played for Bill Walsh and Dennis Green. He coached in the NFL.

He is 91-37. 63-37 in conference. He has won the PAC-12 North 5 times. He has won the PAC-12 Championship 3 times. He has been in the playoffs 4 times. He has had double digit win seasons 5 times.

He is 10-1 in Big Games.

He has taken Stanford to the Rose Bowl 3 times as PAC-12 Champ. He has won the Rose Bowl twice.

We say we want "a Rose Bowl before we die." We revered Tedford and he never won the conference. Imagine if a former Cal player was our coach. Imagine he takes us to the Rose Bowl three times, winning twice. 10-1 in Big Games. Winning record against USC (whereas Tedford was 1-10). Can you imagine?

We pay Wilcox $5 million a year. If we had a HC who was an alum and accomplished what Shaw has we would think another $1.5 million is a bargain. We will probably pay Wilcox that if he just gets a winning conference record once and we extend him.
SFCityBear
01Bear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
socaltownie said:

01Bear said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation


Black students, athletes and otherwise, are not the only students who have had professors who think they don't care about them or who think they don't belong there as students. While your snippet from the Guardian may apply to any school (and frankly, it's unclear to which school the article was referring), at Cal there are a ton of professors who don't give a darn about undergrads or even grad students except insofar as to how those students can assist them in their own research or how those students can stroke the professors' egos. There are other professors who only care about grad students. Of course, it doesn't help that Cal actively promotes and encourages "weeder courses" that are designed not to promote learning but instead are designed to eliminate students from entire subject areas and fields of study.

Frankly, in some ways, the student athletes at Cal have it easier than some of the non-athletes. At least they have tutors to help keep them on track academically. They also have priority when it comes to course selection. Of course, that's all balanced out against the amount of work they have to put in to maintain and improve their athletic performance. In other words, the student-athletea earn and deserve every bit of the benefits they do receive by dint of their hard work outside the classroom.

In any case, while I don't discount that there may be some professors at Cal who are less welcoming to black students (athletes or otherwise) than to non-black students, I would suspect the numbers of such to be professors to be fairly low at Cal. Instead, it's likely that what some black students may feel is a professor targeting him/her on account of race is just a professor's general disinterest in undergrad students. That said, I would also not be surprised if there is a lot of unrecognized racial bias among the professorial ranks at Cal. Though, I would be highly surprised if it led to any professor outwardly expressing that a black student didn't belong at Cal or wasn't a real student on account of the student's race. Rather, it would more likely be reflected in the reduced opportunities afforded black grad students to serve as GSIs for or who receive letters of recommendation from those professors.
Now I think my prof dad was mostly joking but as he said - "The only thing bad about Cal is that we have to have students." He taught in a school (at that time) without an undergrad program. But least you throw arrows - keep in mind that there are VERY few institutional rewards and an elite R1 Research institution for teaching or "service" compared to publishing and PARTICULARLY winning grants so you become a revenue and not a cost center.

The whole research (publish or perish) versus teaching dichotomy never made sense to me. I mean, what's the purpose of an university? Is it to teach or to conduct research? If the former, then wouldn't the best universities be the ones that had the best teachers who focused on teaching students? If the latter, then why bother having students (or are students just there to help pay the bills)?

Of course, then there were the rockstars who were excellent researchers and teachers. Unfortunately, they tended to be few and far between. Luckily, we had a number of such treasures at Cal (even when I was a student).
SFCityBear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
calumnus said:

HungryCalBear said:

David Shaw reportedly makes $6.8M a year plus bonus and incentive. Is he a better coach than Wilcox? Would you trade Wilcox for Shaw?

Furd's recruit has consistently ranked higher in recent years. Is that because of coaching, or school tradition, or their winning trend?

I seriously want to know ...


Shaw is the perfect coach for Stanford. An alumnus. From the Bay Area. African American. His father coached in the NFL and at Stanford. He played for Bill Walsh and Dennis Green. He coached in the NFL.

He is 91-37. 63-37 in conference. He has won the PAC-12 North 5 times. He has won the PAC-12 Championship 3 times. He has been in the playoffs 4 times. He has had double digit win seasons 5 times.

He is 10-1 in Big Games.

He has taken Stanford to the Rose Bowl 3 times as PAC-12 Champ. He has won the Rose Bowl twice.

We say we want "a Rose Bowl before we die." We revered Tedford and he never won the conference. Imagine if a former Cal player was our coach. Imagine he takes us to the Rose Bowl three times, winning twice. 10-1 in Big Games. Winning record against USC (whereas Tedford was 1-10). Can you imagine?

We pay Wilcox $5 million a year. If we had a HC who was an alum and accomplished what Shaw has we would think another $1.5 million is a bargain. We will probably pay Wilcox that if he just gets a winning conference record once and we extend him.
Some Cal fans like to cherry pick a coach's career and leave out his accomplishments, focusing only on his few failures. I rather doubt that Tedford and his players (especially ones from his first few years) would take kindly to your description.

In comparing Shaw to Tedford, you conveniently leave out that Tedford took over a program in shambles, following the 2001 teams 1-10 debacle under Tom Holmoe. Tedford immediately turned the program around and turned it into a winning team for the next 8 straight seasons, going 5-0 in Big Game wins, and finishing 2nd in conference in 2004. You said Tedford "never won the conference", but he did win it in 2006, as Cal was named Co-Champion, the first time Cal had done that since 1975 under Mike White. I hope that if you meet a 2006 Cal player in a bar some night, you won't try and tell him that his Cal team did not win the conference that year. As to Big Game wins, Tedford was 7-1, tying Pappy Waldorf's record.

Compare that start with Shaw. Shaw was on Harbaugh's Stanford staff as offensive coordinator for 4 years prior to his being named head coach in 2011. The team that Shaw began his head coach tenure with in 2011 was coming off an 11-1 season in 2010, a #4 BCS ranking, and a romp over Va Tech in the Orange Bowl. He also inherited Andrew Luck, the Heisman runner-up. Tedford in the end of his career, split 4 Big Games with Stanford teams coached by Harbaugh and OC Shaw, and then lost the only two head-to head meetings with head coach Shaw.

With the big advantage Stanford has over Cal in money and academic reputation, giving them an edge in recruiting, I think Tedford did very well. Tedford clearly over-stressed himself, and his last few years, he made mistakes in coaching hires, in playcalling, in strategy, and failed to keep up in recruiting. He burned out his health, and really went downhill, and his teams reflected that. Tedford worked his way up in football from humble beginnings. Shaw was destined and groomed for the job, and placed in a position where it would have been difficult to fail. Still, he deserves lots of credit for his longevity, and his long run of success.




SFCityBear
Chapman_is_Gone
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I know many Cal fans feel as I do: Cal did not "win the conference" in 2006. Cal lost to USC. You can't convince me that we finished in some sort of tie with them when we lost to them head to head. USC also had a superior overall record.

And your insinuation that a hypothetical encounter at a bar with a 2006 Cal football player might end in violence is tired and also an insult to the player.
calumnus
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SFCityBear said:

calumnus said:

HungryCalBear said:

David Shaw reportedly makes $6.8M a year plus bonus and incentive. Is he a better coach than Wilcox? Would you trade Wilcox for Shaw?

Furd's recruit has consistently ranked higher in recent years. Is that because of coaching, or school tradition, or their winning trend?

I seriously want to know ...


Shaw is the perfect coach for Stanford. An alumnus. From the Bay Area. African American. His father coached in the NFL and at Stanford. He played for Bill Walsh and Dennis Green. He coached in the NFL.

He is 91-37. 63-37 in conference. He has won the PAC-12 North 5 times. He has won the PAC-12 Championship 3 times. He has been in the playoffs 4 times. He has had double digit win seasons 5 times.

He is 10-1 in Big Games.

He has taken Stanford to the Rose Bowl 3 times as PAC-12 Champ. He has won the Rose Bowl twice.

We say we want "a Rose Bowl before we die." We revered Tedford and he never won the conference. Imagine if a former Cal player was our coach. Imagine he takes us to the Rose Bowl three times, winning twice. 10-1 in Big Games. Winning record against USC (whereas Tedford was 1-10). Can you imagine?

We pay Wilcox $5 million a year. If we had a HC who was an alum and accomplished what Shaw has we would think another $1.5 million is a bargain. We will probably pay Wilcox that if he just gets a winning conference record once and we extend him.
Some Cal fans like to cherry pick a coach's career and leave out his accomplishments, focusing only on his few failures. I rather doubt that Tedford and his players (especially ones from his first few years) would take kindly to your description.

In comparing Shaw to Tedford, you conveniently leave out that Tedford took over a program in shambles, following the 2001 teams 1-10 debacle under Tom Holmoe. Tedford immediately turned the program around and turned it into a winning team for the next 8 straight seasons, going 5-0 in Big Game wins, and finishing 2nd in conference in 2004. You said Tedford "never won the conference", but he did win it in 2006, as Cal was named Co-Champion, the first time Cal had done that since 1975 under Mike White. I hope that if you meet a 2006 Cal player in a bar some night, you won't try and tell him that his Cal team did not win the conference that year. As to Big Game wins, Tedford was 7-1, tying Pappy Waldorf's record.

Compare that start with Shaw. Shaw was on Harbaugh's Stanford staff as offensive coordinator for 4 years prior to his being named head coach in 2011. The team that Shaw began his head coach tenure with in 2011 was coming off an 11-1 season in 2010, a #4 BCS ranking, and a romp over Va Tech in the Orange Bowl. He also inherited Andrew Luck, the Heisman runner-up. Tedford in the end of his career, split 4 Big Games with Stanford teams coached by Harbaugh and OC Shaw, and then lost the only two head-to head meetings with head coach Shaw.

With the big advantage Stanford has over Cal in money and academic reputation, giving them an edge in recruiting, I think Tedford did very well. Tedford clearly over-stressed himself, and his last few years, he made mistakes in coaching hires, in playcalling, in strategy, and failed to keep up in recruiting. He burned out his health, and really went downhill, and his teams reflected that. Tedford worked his way up in football from humble beginnings. Shaw was destined and groomed for the job, and placed in a position where it would have been difficult to fail. Still, he deserves lots of credit for his longevity, and his long run of success.






I am not denigrating what Tedford did. We loved it, especially the first five years. That is my point.

I am talking about why Shaw is so well paid by Stanford. He has taken them to three Rose Bowls, winning two. Harbaugh may have gotten them started (with Shaw as his OC) but Shaw has achieved far more than Harbaugh did. Or has, even at Michigan. And he is an alum.

Imagine If Tedford had jumped to the NFL or a bigger program after his initial success and we hired Ron Rivera and he won the North 5 tines in 11 years, won the conference three times and took us to three Rose Bowls, winning two, had a winning record against USC and was 10-1 in Big Games would you just give Tedford the credit? Or would we love Ron Rivera with our grateful big donors throwing lots of money at him?

Cal and Stanford used to be the dregs of the conference. They have no huge inherent advantage over us. We beat them when the had John Elway at QB. Theder followed Whites' great success. Gilbertson followed Snyder. Winning is not automatic just because the guy before you did. Maybe in the first few years (Gilbertson, Mark Fox at Nevada), but building on that success and sustaining it for a decade? Even Tedford couldn't do that. Neither could Harbaugh.
Rushinbear
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socaltownie said:

01Bear said:

Fyght4Cal said:

dimitrig said:

Fyght4Cal said:

mbBear said:

maxer said:

Our donor base is significantly smaller, and our faculty is considerable more hostile to football. Mostly the first thing.
The faculty stuff/excuse is outdated. A post grad program was created to help the athletic program in terms of losing "grad" students. The chancellor has embraced athletics, and worked with the program to organize debt in a way favorable to the athletic dept. Faculty members have embraced the programs instituted under Knowlton which deal with life beyond football, et. al.
If you want to hunt for some engineering prof who isn't a big fan of sports, sure, you can find that if you want too...
First, Knowlton expends more effort trying to bring faculty around. But too many faculty are hostile to both athletes and Black students (esp those they assume are athletes). Of course this will bring reflexive defensiveness for many on this board. But anyone who has never been a Black student on campus, probably has lots of opinions, very little knowledge and absolutely no experience. Those fans, donors and coaches who have had this conversation with Black students on campus, excepted.

Is this a uniquely Cal problem? Don't Cal and UCLA (and Stanford) pretty much compete for the same faculty members?


It's a uniquely American problem, to the extent that the outsized role that intercollegiate sports play on American college campuses. Black students, athletes & non-, have voiced similar concerns across the country for many decades. Not to mention those decades that they couldn't participate in college sports, or had limited opportunities, outside of HBCUs.

UC Los Angeles is an interesting case. Unlike Cal, it began as a second school, both in the UC system and in Southern California. While building a leading academic profile takes a very long time, intercollegiate athletics is a shortcut to relevance and public acclaim.

Similar to Cal, the Los Angeles campus went through upheaval during the Civil Rights & anti-war movements. In some ways it was worse, as two young Black movement leaders were murdered on campus. Yet, the Bruins kept winning NCAA titles in men's basketball during the entire period & beyond. While Berkeley in the '60s & early '70s rejected sports as part of "the machine", Westwood embraced sports culture as a significant part of its identity and brand.

While Cal was choosing elitism and exceptionalism, UCLA was choosing populism.
And who knows, perhaps those opposite attitudes influenced a generation or two of scholars who applied for professorships at the two campuses. At Los Angeles, the serious pursuit of profitable/winning Athletics comes with the territory.

For at least 70 years, the Southern Branch has clearly asserted its support for big time college athletics from the top. In competition with SC for the hearts & minds of LA, it embraced bringing the region's wealth of highly talented black athletes to campus. During much of the same period, Cal Chancellors reject the modern model of college football & basketball built on the backs of Black athletes, choosing instead to shrink our athletic profile.

Even when I was on the Los Angeles campus years ago, they had 5 campus facilities named for African Americans, 3 athletes, and two non-. I believe that there are one or two more such buildings since that time. There is no question that the Southern Branch celebrated its Black alumni earlier and more enthusiastically than Cal.

So, perhaps over the same period UCLA's faculty accepted/tolerated the necessity of Black athletes on campus, more than its Berkeley counterparts. Certainly Black students/athletes encountered problems with individual LA faculty members. UCLA claims to have raised athlete admission requirements before Cal. But the push to abandon D-1 sports has, heretofore, been a marginal issue among LA faculty.

What will be interesting is what happens going forward, as the Southern Branch grapples with becoming widely-recognized as an elite university. Will the leadership turn their back on a hundred years of athletic excellence, similarly to Cal? As campus athletes begin to profit more and more from their athletic prowess, will the faculty reject this brave, new athletic model? It will be interesting how it all unfolds over the next decade or two on both campuses.

I can't speak specifically for 'furd, since I never attended that school. But it is public knowledge that significant portions of the 'furd campus community want to abandon D-1 sports and adopt an Ivy League model.

Edited to add: An interesting article in The Guardian about Black college athletes' views of the work they do and their place on campus.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/sep/07/race-money-and-exploitation-why-college-sport-is-still-the-new-plantation


Black students, athletes and otherwise, are not the only students who have had professors who think they don't care about them or who think they don't belong there as students. While your snippet from the Guardian may apply to any school (and frankly, it's unclear to which school the article was referring), at Cal there are a ton of professors who don't give a darn about undergrads or even grad students except insofar as to how those students can assist them in their own research or how those students can stroke the professors' egos. There are other professors who only care about grad students. Of course, it doesn't help that Cal actively promotes and encourages "weeder courses" that are designed not to promote learning but instead are designed to eliminate students from entire subject areas and fields of study.

Frankly, in some ways, the student athletes at Cal have it easier than some of the non-athletes. At least they have tutors to help keep them on track academically. They also have priority when it comes to course selection. Of course, that's all balanced out against the amount of work they have to put in to maintain and improve their athletic performance. In other words, the student-athletea earn and deserve every bit of the benefits they do receive by dint of their hard work outside the classroom.

In any case, while I don't discount that there may be some professors at Cal who are less welcoming to black students (athletes or otherwise) than to non-black students, I would suspect the numbers of such to be professors to be fairly low at Cal. Instead, it's likely that what some black students may feel is a professor targeting him/her on account of race is just a professor's general disinterest in undergrad students. That said, I would also not be surprised if there is a lot of unrecognized racial bias among the professorial ranks at Cal. Though, I would be highly surprised if it led to any professor outwardly expressing that a black student didn't belong at Cal or wasn't a real student on account of the student's race. Rather, it would more likely be reflected in the reduced opportunities afforded black grad students to serve as GSIs for or who receive letters of recommendation from those professors.
Now I think my prof dad was mostly joking but as he said - "The only thing bad about Cal is that we have to have students." He taught in a school (at that time) without an undergrad program. But least you throw arrows - keep in mind that there are VERY few institutional rewards and an elite R1 Research institution for teaching or "service" compared to publishing and PARTICULARLY winning grants so you become a revenue and not a cost center.
Most profs consider teaching to be a burden because, to them, it is. Universities are in the business of creating new knowledge and that's how profs get promoted and build empires. Students are an unnecessary impediment to that, except for those for whom reproducing themselves is important. And, for those profs who want to pass along their world view, that can be a good way for them to do it.
Big C
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Chapman_is_Gone said:


I know many Cal fans feel as I do: Cal did not "win the conference" in 2006. Cal lost to USC. You can't convince me that we finished in some sort of tie with them when we lost to them head to head. USC also had a superior overall record.

And your insinuation that a hypothetical encounter at a bar with a 2006 Cal football player might end in violence is tired and also an insult to the player.

Yeah, you can bet that UCLA (1975) and U$C (2006) do not say they were "co-champions" those respective years. They beat the team with the same record head-to-head -- and got the bowl bid -- so they consider themselves the champions, as they should. If they made that claim in a bar, I wouldn't even fight them over it.
heartofthebear
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It's not an individual sport, it's a team sport. A bunch of individual stars guarantees nothing. Just ask Angel (MLB) fans. USC guys play as individuals. It's amazing they win as much as they do.
calumnus
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heartofthebear said:

It's not an individual sport, it's a team sport. A bunch of individual stars guarantees nothing. Just ask Angel (MLB) fans. USC guys play as individuals. It's amazing they win as much as they do.


It is a team of individuals who each play a role. The QB makes the throw, the WR runs the route and makes the catch. They don't have to like each other, they can both be stars.

The only issue is keeping 4 and 5 star reserves happy. Generally you can't, unless they are freshmen and see a path to starting, but you dont worry about it. Play the best player. The guy behind him transfers out and that opens up another slot to bring in more 4 and 5 star talent to compete. Rinse and repeat.

Team cohesiveness in football is overrated.* The biggest mistake the 49ers made was deciding Charles Haley was a detriment and trading him to the Cowboys, surrendering the NFC Championshio to them in the process. Sometimes guys who play like madmen are madmen. You don't have to be friends. You don't have to stand next to him on the sideline.

*The exception is that recruits often cite "a family atmosphere" as a reason to pick a school. So it can help recruit good players. However, the objective is to have good players, and a lot of them including some real difference makers ("stars").
remb8888
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heartofthebear said:

remb8888 said:

heartofthebear said:

BTW, I don't know why the OP is using USC as a model. Ever since Carrol left for the NFL, USC has been hiring and firing coaches every few years with no resl improvement in the program. I'm sure that USC will actually be worse without Helton due to the lack of stability now created there. As is the case at Cal, the real problem at USC has nothing to do with the HC. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that too many 4 and 5 star players makes for a roster full of primadonnas. Of course that never stopped tOSU, Bama or Clemson but maybe LA factors into it as well somehow.
Yeah who cares about that Rose Bowl they won in 2016 and going to another BCS bowl the year afterwards. These guys sorta suck and haven't improved.

Yeah sure it's hard to match the Carroll era but I'll take the above as a Cal fan any day.

Blah blah blah 4 and 5 stars are primmadonnas lets generalize some more. We want only 3* diamonds in the rough character guys blah blah blah. Yawn
You wanna be like USC? Be careful what you wish for. I'd like to be a better version of Cal, like the one when White was coaching, or Snyder or Tedford. None of those eras were anything like USC. They were much classier.

I don't get your point about 2016. All of that success was under Helton, the guy they are firing. So, according to your logic, USC is a better program because they are willing to fire the one coach that got them beyond mediocrity over the last decade + because he is mediocre now. Great, I don't like that model.

And maybe 4 and 5 stars in general aren't premadonnas, but they are at USC. Don't forget, University of Spoiled Children didn't come out of nowhere. Honestly, I can't believe you are actually defending USC.
Yeah I want to be like USC in that we win a Rose Bowl every couple of years. That's about it. Just take it at face value.

Here's the point about 2016 - they won a Rose Bowl. That's it. If we can duplicate that, that's all we want. USC is a better program in that they demand National Championships and Rose Bowls. They don't tolerate 3 years of rebuilding and mediocrity from a coach EVEN AFTER they win a Rose Bowl. We tolerate decades of it. We get excited about seasons when we don't have a winning conference record but win a Redbox Bowl and find that is sufficient enough to extend a guy. We've given our coach 5 years to rebuild and we're starting off losing to freakin Nevada and TCU 0-2.

You think we're headed in the right direction? You think Wilcox is going to get us there?

No one is defending USC. Just take what I write at face value not down the inception rabbit hole. I don't know where that USC defense thing came from.
heartofthebear
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The HC is not the problem, per se, although he may be part of it. Without addressing the bigger problems first, Cal will continue to hire mediocre coaches. As long as the bigger problems aren't addressed, firing Cal HCs because they don't perform at a USC level will actually do the opposite by creating instability and whole new systems that the players have to adapt to. And that hurts recruiting.

Cal would have to hire a big name or big time recruiter to be able to transition quickly and effectively. Otherwise it is another 2-3 years waiting for the new system to show dividends.

The bigger problem is that Cal is not willing to pay for someone demonstrably better than Wilcox. And they certainly aren't paying for a big name.

I suppose many of you think we should fire HCs until we luck out on the next Tedford. Are you willing to risk a lot of losing seasons in the meantime? Wilcox is the first HC in over a decade to put together 3 consecutive winning seasons at Cal.

I would love to have the confidence that Cal would hire someone better than Wilcox but I think it will likely be the opposite.

USC doesn't have that problem, although I think they are going to have problems replacing Helton with someone who will be as successful.

It's a long process to get from where Cal is to where USC is. First of Cal has nowhere near the financial commitment to football that USC has. Additionally, the culture and values regarding team sports is such that football is not valued like it is down south.

I respect your standards
I understand your arguments and
I appreciate that patience is running thin.

I just don't think you understand the depth of the problem, the nature of the problem and the process of recovery.

Yes Wilcox should be repleced, but he won't be. We might get different name, but it will still be Wilcox.
Rushinbear
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calumnus said:

heartofthebear said:

It's not an individual sport, it's a team sport. A bunch of individual stars guarantees nothing. Just ask Angel (MLB) fans. USC guys play as individuals. It's amazing they win as much as they do.


It is a team of individuals who each play a role. The QB makes the throw, the WR runs the route and makes the catch. They don't have to like each other, they can both be stars.

The only issue is keeping 4 and 5 star reserves happy. Generally you can't, unless they are freshmen and see a path to starting, but you dont worry about it. Play the best player. The guy behind him transfers out and that opens up another slot to bring in more 4 and 5 star talent to compete. Rinse and repeat.

Team cohesiveness in football is overrated.* The biggest mistake the 49ers made was deciding Charles Haley was a detriment and trading him to the Cowboys, surrendering the NFC Championshio to them in the process. Sometimes guys who play like madmen are madmen. You don't have to be friends. You don't have to stand next to him on the sideline.

*The exception is that recruits often cite "a family atmosphere" as a reason to pick a school. So it can help recruit good players. However, the objective is to have good players, and a lot of them including some real difference makers ("stars").
The exceptions are the lines, esp OL where they have to work together on the fly/trade off blocking as the DLs rush and stunt. DLs work together on stunts. WRs a little on rubs. DBs on zone trade offs. Come to think of it...
Bobodeluxe
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"Wilcox is the first HC in over a decade to put together 3 consecutive winning seasons at Cal."

5-7
7-6
8-5
1-3
0-2

If close counts, than Sonny had three in a row.
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