91Cal said:
calumnus said:
91Cal said:
calumnus said:
UCLA fans are only mad about Kelly's timing, forcing them to do a late search. Cal fans still defend the timing of Dykes' firing even though it imposed a late search on ourselves, but with a lot less money to spend.
Who was/is defending the timing? As I recall, everyone was PO'd it took so long given his years of wandering eyes…and especially PO'd that it was done so late in the cycle that year!
If instead of firing him when we did, would you wait until the end of the 2017 season? If not, you are defending the timing and only proving my point.
Because however pissed you were about him looking around, he wasn't going anywhere at that point and waiting until the end of the 2017 season would allow you to do a proper search at the beginning of the cycle with $millions more dollars to spend. You might even get lucky and he would get hired by SMU (as he was) saving you even MORE $millions.
Easy pal. I'm not defending anything…I recall that the criticism was that it was bungled by the AD period. We have set ourselves up for failure decade after decade and those events and their timing were yet another example. I don't recall anyone defending the timing as optimal. There was no good way out of the situation, but we might have taken the very worst path at the time. TBF Sonny wasn't exactly behaving and performing in a way that made himself attractive to suitors as evidenced by the lack of an offer after so much shopping around.
Yes, Williams bungled it. He actually thought he could fire Dykes for cause which was absurd. Coaches interview for other jobs all the time: Snyder did, Mooch did (both left), Tedford did, Dykes did and Wilcox has. Coaches you want to keep you counter, coaches you want to leave you let leave. Cal fans that claim that Dykes interviewing for Baylor is the only reason they wanted Dykes fired are not being honest (though possibly just with themselves). Honestly, his getting hired by Baylor is what you WANTED if you wanted him gone after the 2016 season,
My analogy with Kelly is it was a school and a coach that were not happy with each other. Results were not what was hoped for. While Kelly quitting late in the cycle put them in a bad position for finding a new coach, at least they didn't have to pay Kelly $millions and in fact he will pay UCLA instead.
Contrast that with Cal where we put ourselves in a bad position for hiring a new coach late in the cycle and paid Dykes $millions to put ourselves in that position. And Dykes landed the SMU job later the same year (2017) in the very next cycle.
If you are going to fire a coach for anything other than cause, you should always do it at the end of the season (though sometimes mid season with an interim is justified) and you should already have some candidates in mind. Sure, you can say you wish Williams had fired Dykes in November, but not having done that, rather than a late January firing and desperate hiring of a candidate no one else wanted, it would have been better to let Dykes coach his recruits in 2017 and encourage him to take the SMU job that he eventually got anyway with a mutual parting of ways and no money exchanged. Then Cal could have done a proper search at the beginning of the same cycle with many more $millions to spend.
