:rant I'm warning you up front.<br /><br />I realize this is lamenting the loss of the horse long after he's out of the barn, but as I contemplate the results of l'affaire lupoi, and the hysteria about what happened with recruiting this year, I find myself contemplating my position after the Holmoe-caust in 2011, which was: "There are too many institutional barriers, we should just dump football, and concentrate on other sports where we can be competitive."<br /><br />Admittedly, I'm prejudiced, in that while I enjoy the experience of Saturdays at Memorial (less so, because of the night games and the incessant obnoxious promotions, which I know we need financially), I like basketball as a sport much more than football. Football is very corporate, and I just don't feel the same connection to the coaches and players that I feel with basketball. There are no pre-game chalk-talks for football, and no seeing the players in person for the post-game show at Pappy's. It's just starting to seem like NFL-lite to me, a lot of immature coaches running after immature athletes at the behest of immature fans. That's no doubt unfair, but it's where I am emotionally right now.<br /><br />As I've said elsewhere, the idea of football supporting other sports over the long haul is a pipe dream. The Pac-12 is now an SEC-style arms race, in which the more money that football raises, the more money football spends. I think it's probably more likely, going forward, that non-revenue men's sports that can't endow themselves will have to be sacrificed, so that football doesn't have to support them. Do I want to dump swimming, track, or gymnastics, sports that have supplied Olympic athletes that represented not only Cal, but the U.S. and other nations? Not really.<br /><br />Maybe Kline will turn out not only to be a great quarterback, but a great kid, like Joe Roth. I could really use a feel-good story right now. Like I said at the start, we're stuck now, because of the cost of the stadium renovation, but the way we're having to approach football bothers me.<br /><br />Flame away.

Maybe Kline is already a great kid and we are just waiting for him to be a great QB. Roth's key message is simple, Don't Quit. So dont get down and dont quit on Cal football.

Not going to flame you at ALL for this though I do thing with the SHPC that ship has sailed and the trees have been felled.<br /><br />Cal Football exists in a strange place. It really isn't central to the University's identity with either MOST alumni, donors, faculty or the community. It is a pleasant diversion. This is far different than football at the majority of BCS schools - where it is a much more central aspect to the University community. Think of whether Cal would have riots ever over the firing of a football coach like what occurred in Penn State or would have a Chancellor step forward liKE Ohio State's and proclaim that he hoped the football coach would not fire HIM.<br /><br />Furd exists in a strange place largely (entirely) because they have one donor who is vastly wealthy who cares. We have very generous donors but not at that level and not with that kind of commitment with the possible exception of the Haas family and even there I wonder about the long term and sustainable nature of that relationship as the money continues to pass to another generation.<br /><br />And yet what is occurring at the BCS level is the infusion of a HUGE amount of money. To "keep up" football players are really moving into unprecedented waters - with the marketing machine pushing into the recruiting season to attract eyeballs, get clicks, and ultimately sell ads.<br /><br />There is a part of me that wishes, back in 1980, we really DID have a crystal ball and saw that there WAS a path forward (who knew though). I would point out how utterly atrocious Duke Football is. Needless to say they play another sport well, which does not seem to require to this extent hanging on the ever tweet of spoiled 17 year olds that want to pretend they are putting on their hat during the NFL draft.

We already develop and control the nuclear arsenal for this country. I'd like for the long dormant Bear to wake up and control the PAC-12 too. This arms race is not over. We'll have to be smarter and better going forward.

I was joking with my wife last night that Cal should join the Ivy League for football. No scholarships - purely scholar-athletes. I was only half kidding. Those Ivy League players would love to get to go to California every other year in the fall - and the east coast in the fall is beautiful as well. I am very disillusioned with the recruiting process this year. These are 17-18 year olds acting like they are rock stars. I find the on, off, on, and then finally off behavior of Shaq to be in very poor taste. I obviously don't care where he goes to school, but the attention he was given during this process was disturbing. And we have ourselves to blame for it. Like you point out, we are in for the long-haul after the stadium rennovation and SAHPC but this really does feel like minor-leauge for the NFL. This whole process just smells bad and is getting worse.

<blockquote><div class="name-said">socaltownie;700695 said:</div><hr>Not going to flame you at ALL for this though I do thing with the SHPC that ship has sailed and the trees have been felled.<br /><br />Cal Football exists in a strange place. It really isn't central to the University's identity with either MOST alumni, donors, faculty or the community. It is a pleasant diversion. This is far different than football at the majority of BCS schools - where it is a much more central aspect to the University community. Think of whether Cal would have riots ever over the firing of a football coach like what occurred in Penn State or would have a Chancellor step forward liKE Ohio State's and proclaim that he hoped the football coach would not fire HIM.<br /><br />Furd exists in a strange place largely (entirely) because they have one donor who is vastly wealthy who cares. We have very generous donors but not at that level and not with that kind of commitment with the possible exception of the Haas family and even there I wonder about the long term and sustainable nature of that relationship as the money continues to pass to another generation.<br /><br />And yet what is occurring at the BCS level is the infusion of a HUGE amount of money. To "keep up" football players are really moving into unprecedented waters - with the marketing machine pushing into the recruiting season to attract eyeballs, get clicks, and ultimately sell ads.<br /><br />There is a part of me that wishes, back in 1980, we really DID have a crystal ball and saw that there WAS a path forward (who knew though). I would point out how utterly atrocious Duke Football is. Needless to say they play another sport well, which does not seem to require to this extent hanging on the ever tweet of spoiled 17 year olds that want to pretend they are putting on their hat during the NFL draft.<hr></blockquote><br /><br />Even as I was writing the first post, I was questioning whether it was right to feel this way. Recent events have made it really hard to keep things in perspective. I'm sure I'll feel better on the first walk up the hill in the fall.

I'm not gonna throw my refridgerator out just because I don't like the tasteless appliance commercials.

<blockquote><div class="name-said">WhipItOutJoe;700710 said:</div><hr>I was joking with my wife last night that Cal should join the Ivy League for football. No scholarships - purely scholar-athletes. I was only half kidding. Those Ivy League players would love to get to go to California every other year in the fall - and the east coast in the fall is beautiful as well. I am very disillusioned with the recruiting process this year. These are 17-18 year olds acting like they are rock stars. I find the on, off, on, and then finally off behavior of Shaq to be in very poor taste. I obviously don't care where he goes to school, but the attention he was given during this process was disturbing. And we have ourselves to blame for it. Like you point out, we are in for the long-haul after the stadium rennovation and SAHPC but this really does feel like minor-leauge for the NFL. This whole process just smells bad and is getting worse.<hr></blockquote><br /><br />I'm sick of this whole process that is going to do nothing but get worse as the arms race heats up. The media and their money has corrupted the sport beyond repair. B-ball isn't much better with the corporate-controlled chaos of March Madness. Just look at the line-up of pre-planned anouncement times this week to get on ESPN. We've got 17-18 year old kids becoming prima-donnas. It's become a rather dirty little busine$$ that doesn't have a lot to do with amateur sports anymore.<br />However, considering the economy and how cable and satellite systems are losing customers right and left (or removing premium packages from their service), are the networks going to be able to keep paying the big bucks for college sports into the future? Will the college presidents restore any sanity to the process?

Don't know about cable economics and how that might effect future TV contracts. <br /><br />Do think many University Presidents guilty of this. See above Penn State and Ohio State references<br /><br />I do believe that some of this is unsustainable. If you look at MLB its lack of competitive "readjusting" has lead to some serious problems with high revenue teams dominating MONEY LOSING small revenue teams. At some point, we all can not be USC and it will be interesting to see, long term, what happens when some programs become simply uncompetitive to others.

I think it's fine to feel the way you do, Jeff. You bring up some valid points. D-1 football has always had a distasteful element to it and the more money that is involved, the worse it's gonna get, not to mention the diminished fan experience for the typical, loyal Cal alum.<br /><br />However, I think we're in it too far to go back now, not that I'd actually want to. Plus, football $$$ does pay for other sports. The solution? Keep competing and try to stay on the high road, I guess.<br /><br />The people who post here who would seemingly give up their own mother for a BCS championship and those that spend WAY TOO MUCH time reading the tweets of teenagers kind of worry me.

socaltownie;700695 said:

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back in 1980, we really DID have a crystal ball and saw that there WAS a path forward (who knew though)

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Do you think our fortunes are tied to the secret indian burial ground that we desecrated? Dang I knew I should of sided with the Chief Running Wolf!

C6Bear;700753 said:

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I'm sick of this whole process that is going to do nothing but get worse as the arms race heats up. The media and their money has corrupted the sport beyond repair. B-ball isn't much better with the corporate-controlled chaos of March Madness. Just look at the line-up of pre-planned anouncement times this week to get on ESPN. We've got 17-18 year old kids becoming prima-donnas. It's become a rather dirty little busine$$ that doesn't have a lot to do with amateur sports anymore.
However, considering the economy and how cable and satellite systems are losing customers right and left (or removing premium packages from their service), are the networks going to be able to keep paying the big bucks for college sports into the future? Will the college presidents restore any sanity to the process?

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Sums it up very well. College sports is becoming a high dollar industry, and I don't think that bodes well for Cal in the long run given the political environment and spotty support from local academia. And I'm not saying we should engage in a spiraling arms race, as much as I want us to succeed in football.

I miss the old days of seeing who we signed in the paper the next day rather than following what the 17-18 year olds were tweeting day after day, but I only have myself to blame for following this recruiting season so closely. It's just so easy to get overinformation these days, it's damn hard to resist.

WhipItOutJoe;700710 said:

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I was joking with my wife last night that Cal should join the Ivy League for football. No scholarships - purely scholar-athletes. I was only half kidding. Those Ivy League players would love to get to go to California every other year in the fall - and the east coast in the fall is beautiful as well. I am very disillusioned with the recruiting process this year. These are 17-18 year olds acting like they are rock stars. I find the on, off, on, and then finally off behavior of Shaq to be in very poor taste. I obviously don't care where he goes to school, but the attention he was given during this process was disturbing. And we have ourselves to blame for it. Like you point out, we are in for the long-haul after the stadium rennovation and SAHPC but this really does feel like minor-leauge for the NFL. This whole process just smells bad and is getting worse.

---

I am sick of the hero worship, the dissembling of mindless tweets, the facilitation of this by the pederasts and pimps that are the recruiting industry. I keep reminding myself that some of these kids' peers are being shot
at and killed in Afghanistan while all these narcissists strut and preen

Jeff82, where was your outrage when Boyle was making over $600,000? Were we not borrowing money from the Chancellor to pay her? Or is that ok since it isn't FB?

GB54;702773 said:

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I am sick of the hero worship, the dissembling of mindless tweets, the facilitation of this by the pederasts and pimps that are the recruiting industry. I keep reminding myself that some of these kids' peers are being shot
at and killed in Afghanistan while all these narcissists strut and preen

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Yuh, and when those kids (=soldiers) COMMITTED...they meant it, the first time.

:patriot:

manus;702780 said:

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Yuh, and when those kids (=soldiers) COMMITTED...they meant it, the first time.

:patriot:

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Good definition of "character":

"'Character' is your ability to follow up with what you said you were gonna do, long after the feeling in which you said it is gone."
...........

Matters not, your age.
...........

Treggs for President.

My father once told me (actually more than once) that a man who did not honor his word was not a man, and no true man is disloyal. I also played high school football for a man who played for Cal (recruited by Pappy) and he voiced those same ideals. These principles of character are sadly lacking not only in this recruiting year, but also in our society in general. The quotes of Andy Smith seem to fall on deaf ears in the current social media world.

But I doubt anything is likely to change anytime soon given the revenues flooding in from TV and merchandise licensing fees. When you hire a marketing guru as conference commissioner you know the sell out is pretty much complete. I suppose, as an old retired guy who rarely goes to a stadium but does watch a ton of TV games, I probably contribute the corruption. Still, if I were king I'd: 1) shorten the regular season to 10 games and institute a 16 team playoff; 2) reduce scholarship limits to 65; 3) eliminate redshirting except for documented cases of severe injuries; 4) Mandate reductions in the size, if not compensation, of coaching staffs; 5) drastically curtail open recruiting periods; 6) Have an earlier signing date but allow a signed athlete to be released if his head/position coach departed BUT not allow a signed athlete to follow said coach. Of course, none of this is likely to happen because TV execs, the Phil Knights of the world, administrators and coaches would all balk at some or all of these heresies. Even the bleeding hearts who want to pay "exploited" players would find objection in denying 7-9 "needy" athletes per year the opportunity to get an education.

Darby;702777 said:

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Jeff82, where was your outrage when Boyle was making over $600,000? Were we not borrowing money from the Chancellor to pay her? Or is that ok since it isn't FB?

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It looks to me like the alumni are ultimately going to have to choose between having a top-flight football program, and having top-flight programs in non-revenue sports. We don't have a single benefactor willing to underwrite most aspects of the AD operations, like Stanford does, and I the alumni aren't giving enough money to be both competitive in football and competitive in non-revenue sports.

To look at it another way, while having the stadium and the SAHPC is great, our athletic department is still deficient in at least the following areas: no dedicated basketball practice facility, no tournament-level softball facility, and no lighted baseball facility, with no chance of fixing any of these anytime soon. I just see it as an enormous struggle to have to both keep up with our peers in football, and field a large number of sports. Having to choose one or the other bothers me. That's all.

GB54;702773 said:

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I am sick of the hero worship, the dissembling of mindless tweets, the facilitation of this by the pederasts and pimps that are the recruiting industry. I keep reminding myself that some of these kids' peers are being shot
at and killed in Afghanistan while all these narcissists strut and preen

---

Judging from the view count of firefights and sh*t on YouTube, we are not far off from those groups being the same.


Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant

What really has old Jeff82 down is the same thing that we are all suffering from...the emotional committment of being a fan. Not just a Cal fan, but a person who is attached to the program and experiences the highs and lows of football. Many people here have expressed their dissatisfaction with recent results and have called for Ted's head or the firing of Sandy, or both. That emotional committment hurts when things don't go the way they should.

The easiest path is to say we don't need the football program. Let's revert to non-revenue sports and then we won't suffer needlessly when someone from Belarus pole vaults higher than an American. When an engineer constructs a bridge, he distributes the anticipated stress to the structure so the bridge won't collapse. We can distribute our emotional attachment to a variety of sports - some will be winners, some losers, but we don't hurt the same.

It's not facing up to reality to say we should abandon football. Cal had been quiet and irrelevant during the second half of the twentieth century. A doormat. Now that we have tasted the sweetness of victory we want more. The people who will deliver that refreshing drink are the 18 year old prima donnas who have been identified by professionals as future stars. We have to put up with some sour tastes once in awhile in order to enjoy the good stuff. It's part of living in this crazy world and the emotion that goes with it. Deal with it.

I really have to disagree with the whole premise of the OP.

First of all, I find the football players on Cal's team to be great examples of good young people. They are all generally respectful, positive and seem to be pretty good people. We do not have a ton of guys smoking pot and driving at 110 MPH like Oregon, etc. We have a great group of student athletes on the team and they all deserve our support. I absolutely reject your premise that they are self absorbed corporate clones who are interested in only getting to the league. Chris Martin, as an example - was a 5 star recruit who we cut lose because he did not fit the mold of a Cal player. Tedford has done a very good job of getting quality people on the squad.

I think the whole Tosh thing was representative of someone who is more interested in himself and eventually left because of it. Just like any competitive job market, football is a dog eat dog world. By the way, so is basketball.

The idea that if we eliminated football we could fund the other sports better is a joke. If we eliminated football we could cancel all the other sports. Right now Football contributes 6 - 10 million per year to the other sports - are you suggesting that we eliminate that funding? That would kill the other sports. That is the hard reality. The schools that have the best olympic sports on a broad range of sports are the ones that have the biggest athletic programs and do the best with football, like Ohio State, Texas, etc. They fund fantastic sports programs through their football machine. Stanfurd has different sources of revenues, which fund their successful sports programs. Cal is the one who is trying to do all things well, which we should. We should have a successful sports program, including football. We also should have a successful endowment as we produce some of the most highly paid alumni in the country, and quite a bit of them. It is disappointing that so few feel the need to contribute back to the University that gave them a large part of their success.

Football as a corporate enterprise is growing only because the fans want it to - through TV viewing, money spent on tickets, etc. Just like anything else - if there was not a market for it, it would not be there. The difference is, like anything else, the quality of the people you have in the program. I think Tedford does a good job of keeping the Cal program the way a Cal program should be (except I would like to win a bit more). But the commitment to the football program via the new facilities is just a 50 year commitment to Cal athletics in general. I think the OP is wrong - you will get your Basketball Practice facility and softball facility eventually if Football can be a money driver. Another 15 million in revenue or so would be an excellent addition to the athletic department. If the ESP get's sold out, and the team wins, the Bears will be fine.

Oski87;703512 said:

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I really have to disagree with the whole premise of the OP.

First of all, I find the football players on Cal's team to be great examples of good young people. They are all generally respectful, positive and seem to be pretty good people. We do not have a ton of guys smoking pot and driving at 110 MPH like Oregon, etc. We have a great group of student athletes on the team and they all deserve our support. I absolutely reject your premise that they are self absorbed corporate clones who are interested in only getting to the league. Chris Martin, as an example - was a 5 star recruit who we cut lose because he did not fit the mold of a Cal player. Tedford has done a very good job of getting quality people on the squad.

I think the whole Tosh thing was representative of someone who is more interested in himself and eventually left because of it. Just like any competitive job market, football is a dog eat dog world. By the way, so is basketball.

The idea that if we eliminated football we could fund the other sports better is a joke. If we eliminated football we could cancel all the other sports. Right now Football contributes 6 - 10 million per year to the other sports - are you suggesting that we eliminate that funding? That would kill the other sports. That is the hard reality. The schools that have the best olympic sports on a broad range of sports are the ones that have the biggest athletic programs and do the best with football, like Ohio State, Texas, etc. They fund fantastic sports programs through their football machine. Stanfurd has different sources of revenues, which fund their successful sports programs. Cal is the one who is trying to do all things well, which we should. We should have a successful sports program, including football. We also should have a successful endowment as we produce some of the most highly paid alumni in the country, and quite a bit of them. It is disappointing that so few feel the need to contribute back to the University that gave them a large part of their success.

Football as a corporate enterprise is growing only because the fans want it to - through TV viewing, money spent on tickets, etc. Just like anything else - if there was not a market for it, it would not be there. The difference is, like anything else, the quality of the people you have in the program. I think Tedford does a good job of keeping the Cal program the way a Cal program should be (except I would like to win a bit more). But the commitment to the football program via the new facilities is just a 50 year commitment to Cal athletics in general. I think the OP is wrong - you will get your Basketball Practice facility and softball facility eventually if Football can be a money driver. Another 15 million in revenue or so would be an excellent addition to the athletic department. If the ESP get's sold out, and the team wins, the Bears will be fine.

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I agree with everything you've said, especially the parts I've marked. Right now, however, I'm feeling rather depressed about our ability to accomplish it. I agree Ohio State should be the model, and I presume they make enough money from football to fund 35 sports, the most of any public university in Division I, without subsidy from the rest of the University or the State. I'm just not sure Cal can get to that point financially. Right now, my understanding is that a significant chunk of the new TV money has to go to underwrite non-revenue sports, whereas some of our Pac-12 peers are using it to pump up football spending.

As for our players, I hope everyone in this class turns out to be like Bryce Treggs. What he said made the pain of the Tosh affair more bearable, so to speak. On the other hand, let's face it, if this class doesn't get us over the hump against the Oregons and U$Cs, the fact that they are fine young men is not going to ameliorate the no-Rose-Bowl pain all that much. Similarly, there's a lot of admiration for Monty's team, and how hard they play, and what fine representatives they appear to be. Nevertheless, he gets dinged for not recruiting better athletes.

Yes, at the moment my angst is showing. That's what happens if you've been waiting your entire life for your school to win something significant in football or basketball.