Oski vs Everyone said:

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8 weeks ago a couple of guys got banned permanently for saying the exact same thing -- that there shouldnt be any additional support for the collective until Cal fires Wilcox and Knowlton.

It turns out they weren't wrong. They were just early.

Same thing happened with the early folks who wanted Tedford or Dykes fired.

In the future, we should try to listen to other people and engage with the merits of their arguments instead of just booting them.

But this is a message board, so that probably won't happen.

Go Bears!

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Any idiots against supporting the Bears don't have a place on a Cal Bears fans forum. Go to the Farm or to LA, you trolls!

AceBear said:

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Let's spend the $3.3M to buyout Jim Knowlton and get in an AD that can bring in some quality assistant coaches to assist Wilcox and minimize his responsibilities.

Wilcox's buyout is $14.6M (thanks to Knowlton), let's be real, he's not going anywhere.

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Perhaps a donor would be open to this option if said donor was allowed to personally sack Knowlton.

How much would a group of donors pay if they're allowed to pack up Knowlton's office and physically usher him out the door? lolol

BarcaBear said:

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AceBear said:

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Let's spend the $3.3M to buyout Jim Knowlton and get in an AD that can bring in some quality assistant coaches to assist Wilcox and minimize his responsibilities.

Wilcox's buyout is $14.6M (thanks to Knowlton), let's be real, he's not going anywhere.

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Perhaps a donor would be open to this option if said donor was allowed to personally sack Knowlton.

How much would a group of donors pay if they're allowed to pack up Knowlton's office and physically usher him out the door? lolol

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I will contribute $1000

I think people believe NIL means it's a paycheck,

it's suppose to be for their name, image and likeness opportunities. I hate the age of NIL, it's ruining fan bases, NCAA football is suppose to be about going to college and getting a free education(room and board), that's your compensation for being good at a sport. Then we came up with some stupid form of athletes able to collect checks legally and the entire sport now is basically the NFL Jr league.

I'll ask you a question, if you were a business right now, which players would you pay for their Name, Image and Likeness because of their spectacular play. How many extra widgets are you going to sell?

MinotStateBeav said:

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I think people believe NIL means it's a paycheck,

it's suppose to be for their name, image and likeness opportunities. I hate the age of NIL, it's ruining fan bases, NCAA football is suppose to be about going to college and getting a free education(room and board), that's your compensation for being good at a sport. Then we came up with some stupid form of athletes able to collect checks legally and the entire sport now is basically the NFL Jr league.

I'll ask you a question, if you were a business right now, which players would you pay for their Name, Image and Likeness because of their spectacular play. How many extra widgets are you going to sell?

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NIL is a generally complete 'scam' in that the actual advertising value of a person's NIL is not what they are getting paid in all but a few exceptional cases. At the same time, the NCAA was found in violation of anti-trust laws by a federal court and cannot restrict NIL at the moment. Prohibiting schools from sharing TV revenue with players is alao likely a violation of antitrust laws. So unless the federal government passes some kind of revised national laws in regard to college athletics, there is no going back to the old NCAA. And yes there are a lot of things that willmake being a fan harder going forward from way to many transfers to pay disputes.

I think there could be severely deteriorating fan interest, but at the current time, it's illegal for the NCAA to operate as it used to, so what's the solution? One is cosolidation of money to a small super league model. That might be very bad for Cal (and certainly bad for 50-100+ other schools). I haven't seen anything resembling a desirable second option though.

rkt88edmo said:

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pingpong2 said:

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rkt88edmo said:

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Attacking and withholding from NIL is counter productive unless you disagree with the direction that NIL is taking and even then you should be able to direct to just the players you are interested in and not general fund. This is not a Wilcox slush fund. If you want better Cal FB and BB, give to NIL

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Here's my question to you; if we donate more money, will we get materially more wins with this coaching staff? Are better players able to compensate for the hole the coaching staff is putting us in? Because if the answer is no, then what is the point?

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Sure, dig a bigger crater for the next coach to climb out of, totally sounds like a winning strat.

NIL is gonna keep the players who are good and buy in (Nando Ott), regardless of staff.

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Crazy that likely 4 of our top 5 NIL earners on offense have been hurt every single game this year.

Big props to SebastaBear for steering well clear of this dumpster fire of a shoutout thread . He's got way more relevant stuff to do than entertain uneducated suggestions.

pingpong2 said:

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sycasey said:

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pingpong2 said:

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sycasey said:

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pingpong2 said:

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sycasey said:

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DoubtfulBear said:

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WalterSobchak said:

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pingpong2 said:

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rkt88edmo said:

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Attacking and withholding from NIL is counter productive unless you disagree with the direction that NIL is taking and even then you should be able to direct to just the players you are interested in and not general fund. This is not a Wilcox slush fund. If you want better Cal FB and BB, give to NIL

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Here's my question to you; if we donate more money, will we get materially more wins with this coaching staff? Are better players able to compensate for the hole the coaching staff is putting us in? Because if the answer is no, then what is the point?

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The point is if we crash NIL we know for sure the result will be lots of losses. Right now even with Wilcox ****ing everything up our NIL has made us competitive. It's the only thing that's made us competitive.

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What's the point of being competitive if we are going to lose close games anyways? Might as well save the cash to buyout Wilcox's contract

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Yes, but paying coaches is not what NIL money is for.

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I guess the question is; why can't it be? Money is fungible after all.

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As I've said, I think the people behind the collective COULD flex their muscles and get the administration to make big changes through indirect influence. I don't think that works if they actually have less money to play with. Having a lot of money is what would give them the clout.

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I'm not sure I follow. Every dollar spent on NIL funds for players is one less dollar that goes towards the buyout, no?

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No, because these are totally separate piles of money.

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Ok let me be more clear. Donate less money to the NIL fund, and send that money towards the buyout fund. Every dollar put into the NIL fund is one less dollar that goes into the buyout fund. I'm not talking about money already in the NIL fund unless it can be backed out to the donor to redistribute

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The people who donate to the NIL are separate from the folks who donate to Cal. NIL donors are folks who want to win now. Cal donors are generally people who are happy with how things have been and want to continue to support the University. Those donors are not always the same - sometimes they are - but they both are meaningful to the University and to Cal athletics. They are not going to hamstring the current team for some future benefit not in evidence.

No one who actually donates money in a real way decides not to donate because of a bad year. They know that next year without the donations will be infinitely worse - we have had a lot of those years.

Of course there are a lot of people who stop donating because of hurt feelings, perceived slights, petty grievances and other assorted excuses (they moved my seats, they gave away my parking sport, the changed the donor levels, etc). But if you want Cal to fail stop donating. If you want to succeed, continue to do so. Coaches will come and go and on occasion we may get someone who is great. When that happens, we can generally hold onto them. Not a lot of Cal coaches have moved on for better pastures for football in the past 135 years. I think one or two. We generally fire them, or they die (RIP Andy Smith).

This is not a job where you get to fire people as a fan. This is a passion. You do not have the ability to change Cal's behavior - we have all seen that over the decades that have preceded all of us. So just donate or do not - but stop trying to get others to stop donating because it makes you feel better when you don't want. It is unproductive and silly.

Being effective as a fan is what Sebastabear is doing, or the burners, or the stealth marketers. Being a fan is more impactful when you do stuff that makes other come to the games, or support the team, as opposed to whinging on a message board about the donations you are no longer making. I can say that the folks who are making the life changing donations are doing so for the very good reasons that not doing so is going to hurt. Its a dumb argument and discussion every time it has come up and continues to be one.

I get why people may want Wilcox and Knowlton gone. But if you want a replacement you need to have a place for them to come to that provides support - not a place where the winds of change mean you can no longer field a team or show support to your athletic base. That proves exactly what everyone said about Cal - they do not care about football. Caring about football is not withdrawing all support when things do not go your way and the team is 3-3 having lost by a total of 8 points against two top 25 teams and FSU.

Instead of cash, we need to get Ron Rivera to donate his services as HC for three years while we pay off Wilcox who can go fishing or land a DC job somewhere to mitigate.

calumnus said:

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Instead of cash, we need to get Ron Rivera to donate his services as HC for three years while we pay off Wilcox who can go fishing or land a DC job somewhere to mitigate.

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I only want this to happen so that we would no longer have to see your obsessive crush with Rivera played out all over this fan forum. lolol

Oski vs Everyone said:

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Oski87 said:

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pingpong2 said:

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sycasey said:

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pingpong2 said:

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sycasey said:

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pingpong2 said:

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sycasey said:

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DoubtfulBear said:

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WalterSobchak said:

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pingpong2 said:

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rkt88edmo said:

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Attacking and withholding from NIL is counter productive unless you disagree with the direction that NIL is taking and even then you should be able to direct to just the players you are interested in and not general fund. This is not a Wilcox slush fund. If you want better Cal FB and BB, give to NIL

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Here's my question to you; if we donate more money, will we get materially more wins with this coaching staff? Are better players able to compensate for the hole the coaching staff is putting us in? Because if the answer is no, then what is the point?

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The point is if we crash NIL we know for sure the result will be lots of losses. Right now even with Wilcox ****ing everything up our NIL has made us competitive. It's the only thing that's made us competitive.

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What's the point of being competitive if we are going to lose close games anyways? Might as well save the cash to buyout Wilcox's contract

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Yes, but paying coaches is not what NIL money is for.

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I guess the question is; why can't it be? Money is fungible after all.

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As I've said, I think the people behind the collective COULD flex their muscles and get the administration to make big changes through indirect influence. I don't think that works if they actually have less money to play with. Having a lot of money is what would give them the clout.

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I'm not sure I follow. Every dollar spent on NIL funds for players is one less dollar that goes towards the buyout, no?

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No, because these are totally separate piles of money.

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Ok let me be more clear. Donate less money to the NIL fund, and send that money towards the buyout fund. Every dollar put into the NIL fund is one less dollar that goes into the buyout fund. I'm not talking about money already in the NIL fund unless it can be backed out to the donor to redistribute

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The people who donate to the NIL are separate from the folks who donate to Cal. NIL donors are folks who want to win now. Cal donors are generally people who are happy with how things have been and want to continue to support the University. Those donors are not always the same - sometimes they are - but they both are meaningful to the University and to Cal athletics. They are not going to hamstring the current team for some future benefit not in evidence.

No one who actually donates money in a real way decides not to donate because of a bad year. They know that next year without the donations will be infinitely worse - we have had a lot of those years.

Of course there are a lot of people who stop donating because of hurt feelings, perceived slights, petty grievances and other assorted excuses (they moved my seats, they gave away my parking sport, the changed the donor levels, etc). But if you want Cal to fail stop donating. If you want to succeed, continue to do so. Coaches will come and go and on occasion we may get someone who is great. When that happens, we can generally hold onto them. Not a lot of Cal coaches have moved on for better pastures for football in the past 135 years. I think one or two. We generally fire them, or they die (RIP Andy Smith).

This is not a job where you get to fire people as a fan. This is a passion. You do not have the ability to change Cal's behavior - we have all seen that over the decades that have preceded all of us. So just donate or do not - but stop trying to get others to stop donating because it makes you feel better when you don't want. It is unproductive and silly.

Being effective as a fan is what Sebastabear is doing, or the burners, or the stealth marketers. Being a fan is more impactful when you do stuff that makes other come to the games, or support the team, as opposed to whinging on a message board about the donations you are no longer making. I can say that the folks who are making the life changing donations are doing so for the very good reasons that not doing so is going to hurt. Its a dumb argument and discussion every time it has come up and continues to be one.

I get why people may want Wilcox and Knowlton gone. But if you want a replacement you need to have a place for them to come to that provides support - not a place where the winds of change mean you can no longer field a team or show support to your athletic base. That proves exactly what everyone said about Cal - they do not care about football. Caring about football is not withdrawing all support when things do not go your way and the team is 3-3 having lost by a total of 8 points against two top 25 teams and FSU.

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I myself cannot give until Wilcox is gone.
I do not want to support him as a coach anymore, and unfortunately in my opinion nil plays a role in his continuance as head coach by keeping his head just far enough above water.
I will donate to basketball but absolutely no football from me anymore while Wilmoe is at the helms.
Unfortunately college athletics are now a business and wilcox is failing ours.
This is not sustainable.
If getting rid of Wilcox requires nil taking a hit then so be it.
I cannot be more serious when I say that Wilcox will drive this program into relegation during the next round of realignment.
The man cannot win at football and how anyone continues to subsidize his existence at this great university is downright disgraceful.
And as a reminder just remember he is the one who got tosh to Judas us for Sark and UW.
Sark made his UW offer contingent on him luring away Tosh. I'll guarantee it.
He is not a good dude.
He is a snake who conned our hapless ad into an absurd extension so he could build a mansion in Idaho knowing full well his lack of abilities as a coach were known to the rest the cfb universe at that point.

That's not really fair to pingpong. He is advocating for program support. He is just advocating to use the donations in a different manner. Unless you are assuming someone has an unlimited pool of donation money so should do both, I think it is a valid argument at this point that the more urgent need might be to upgrade the coaching staff instead of the roster.

You could also argue that since the transfer portal can turn a roster around very quickly, a better strategy might be to essentially hold your donation in escrow for the next coach and not give it to Wilcox to use. After one year you effectively double the amount you are giving the new coach to work with. Hell, I could see an unsatisfied fan starting an NIL fund where all donations are contingent on the coaching change so you could help lure a new coach with $__million waiting for them. That might have a bigger impact on the fortunes of the program. I understand why Cal Legends couldn't or wouldn't do that, but I bet a lot of NIL money could be raised that way right now. Is that the best strategy? I don't know. But you don't know that yours is either. Again, OP didn't say not to give. He said to give for a different purpose.

I don't think you get to decide what it means to be an effective fan. And I don't think you get to decide that people have to donate money year after year with no results or they aren't an effective fan.

To be clear, I appreciate anyone who wants to donate and I don't at all agree with those taking their anger on them and claiming they are the problem. Everyone is a fan in different ways. But the barrier to entry to being a fan is not donating hard earned money with no results. It's a charity not a requirement.

I want to make it clear, when I criticized NIL, it was a criticism of the whole NIL concept, not the work Sebastabear and Co. has done which has been phenomenal work. In fact it shouldn't be on Sebasta's shoulders to get funding for NIL for the University, but clearly the university cares very little (at least in the recent past, Lyons seems better but we'll see). Anyway I think this is a distinction that should be made because I would never want Sebasta to feel their work isn't appreciated.

BarcaBear said:

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calumnus said:

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Instead of cash, we need to get Ron Rivera to donate his services as HC for three years while we pay off Wilcox who can go fishing or land a DC job somewhere to mitigate.

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I only want this to happen so that we would no longer have to see your obsessive crush with Rivera played out all over this fan forum. lolol

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Yeah, Cal has plenty of opportunities to get a former NFL coach who knows the football industry as a whole in a way that isn't even understood here.

That's fine if you don't think Rivera is that good of a coach, I mean, plenty of coaches have been in the Super Bowl? Okay, let's leave the sarcasm aside, and point to other key factor in college football: recruiting. "Hey, Rivera has never done that, he will suck!" If you have ever seen Ron interact with people, then you know that not only won't he "suck", it will be a strength. I get it, for most Ron is just another name on a sheet of paper...but for those of us who have seen it: people react to him-he has a Super Bowl ring to wear (AS A PLAYER, the "he played in the league" aspect of this gets thrown aside quickly) and "academics-athletics" conversation is easy for him.

I have always preached that Cal should be finding the right guys on the way up. In the 70s/80's Cal had members of their football coaching staff that would go on to be assistants and influencers at the highest level of the sport. So yeah, you want younger than Ron, get the next "great one," you know what-that's a solid argument. But, if Cal doesn't use him as a significant resource, then that's a huge mistake...

dha said:

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Losing these close games is certainly frustrating. But when the season started did anyone realistically think we could beat FSU, Miami or Pitt on the road? The NYTimes Athletic projected Cal to have just 5 wins in their first ACC season. Some forecasts might have been 7 wins, o the most optimistic side. And that was before our best offensive player, Ott, was injured. And then there are the two four star portal WR transfers that were supposed to start and have yet to play. And our experienced transfer FG kicker would be a bust. We all knew the OL was going to be a weak point. Defense has been solid for the most part, except for the second half against North Carolina State. Out talent level is not the top tier of the ACC that is pretty clear. You can blame the coaches for some bad calls, I was at the Pitt game and witnessed some of those. But more realistic is that our overall talent level and depth is yet not up to the top tier of the ACC, just like in the Pac 12. And it is unlikely to be so in the new world of college athletic and pay fo play. Let's see how they do the rest of the season. Hopefully some of these injured players will be able to play and contribute.

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We need a downvote button on this site.

dha said:

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Losing these close games is certainly frustrating. But when the season started did anyone realistically think we could beat FSU, Miami or Pitt on the road? The NYTimes Athletic projected Cal to have just 5 wins in their first ACC season. Some forecasts might have been 7 wins, o the most optimistic side. And that was before our best offensive player, Ott, was injured. And then there are the two four star portal WR transfers that were supposed to start and have yet to play. And our experienced transfer FG kicker would be a bust. We all knew the OL was going to be a weak point. Defense has been solid for the most part, except for the second half against North Carolina State. Out talent level is not the top tier of the ACC that is pretty clear. You can blame the coaches for some bad calls, I was at the Pitt game and witnessed some of those. But more realistic is that our overall talent level and depth is yet not up to the top tier of the ACC, just like in the Pac 12. And it is unlikely to be so in the new world of college athletic and pay fo play. Let's see how they do the rest of the season. Hopefully some of these injured players will be able to play and contribute.

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I was not scared of Pitt at all. And no, I didn't expect to beat FSU but that was before I knew they would suck.

Pre-season the games of concern were:

• Auburn
• Florida State
• Miami (to an extent)

Auburn is much worse than expected, Florida State is awful, Miami is a title contender (which is not too surprising), and Pitt is much improved after going 3-9 last year, so 2 teams that we thought were going to be a problem are terrible, we had Miami in a chokehold and gave the game away (along with Pitt), and of course NC State was another Wilcox special...

We have the talent to beat all those teams (which was obvious against Miami), that is not the issue and NIL money won't mean anything if players know these coaches will **** them over from winning games

dha said:

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Losing these close games is certainly frustrating. But when the season started did anyone realistically think we could beat FSU, Miami or Pitt on the road? The NYTimes Athletic projected Cal to have just 5 wins in their first ACC season. Some forecasts might have been 7 wins, o the most optimistic side. And that was before our best offensive player, Ott, was injured. And then there are the two four star portal WR transfers that were supposed to start and have yet to play. And our experienced transfer FG kicker would be a bust. We all knew the OL was going to be a weak point. Defense has been solid for the most part, except for the second half against North Carolina State. Out talent level is not the top tier of the ACC that is pretty clear. You can blame the coaches for some bad calls, I was at the Pitt game and witnessed some of those. But more realistic is that our overall talent level and depth is yet not up to the top tier of the ACC, just like in the Pac 12. Even the opt Pac 12 schools, with the expcetion of Oregon, have been struggling with their conference moves this year - USC, UW, UCLA. And it is unlikely to be so in the new world of college athletic and pay fo play. Let's see how they do the rest of the season. Hopefully some of these injured players will be able to play and contribute.

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When the season started, did anyone realistically think that Indiana, BYU, Iowa State, or Pitt would be undefeated in November? Or Duke would be 6-2 with their first win ever against FSU? Or Vanderbilt would topple Alabama?

Why do other teams get to exceed expectations, while we always stay the same? Our wins are against vastly inferior teams while we continue to give winless teams their only victory.

DoubtfulBear said:

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dha said:

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Losing these close games is certainly frustrating. But when the season started did anyone realistically think we could beat FSU, Miami or Pitt on the road? The NYTimes Athletic projected Cal to have just 5 wins in their first ACC season. Some forecasts might have been 7 wins, o the most optimistic side. And that was before our best offensive player, Ott, was injured. And then there are the two four star portal WR transfers that were supposed to start and have yet to play. And our experienced transfer FG kicker would be a bust. We all knew the OL was going to be a weak point. Defense has been solid for the most part, except for the second half against North Carolina State. Out talent level is not the top tier of the ACC that is pretty clear. You can blame the coaches for some bad calls, I was at the Pitt game and witnessed some of those. But more realistic is that our overall talent level and depth is yet not up to the top tier of the ACC, just like in the Pac 12. Even the opt Pac 12 schools, with the expcetion of Oregon, have been struggling with their conference moves this year - USC, UW, UCLA. And it is unlikely to be so in the new world of college athletic and pay fo play. Let's see how they do the rest of the season. Hopefully some of these injured players will be able to play and contribute.

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When the season started, did anyone realistically think that Indiana, BYU, Iowa State, or Pitt would be undefeated in November? Or Duke would be 6-2 with their first win ever against FSU? Or Vanderbilt would topple Alabama?

Why do other teams get to exceed expectations, while we always stay the same? Our wins are against vastly inferior teams while we continue to give winless teams their only victory.

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Because they actually try. When a HC underperforms for an extended period of time, they replace them rather than double down. You know, like pretty much every organization or business in history except Cal.