jyamada;842251388 said:
Ace4ever
You bring up a lot of good points. The best one is you have to give a coach some time to do things. I think that is the bottom line with the current Cal football situation. So many variables this past year ........,injuries, academic performance, new offense, new defense, youth. These may be excuses but it is reality and dealing with all this needs time, certainly more than a year. Dykes may be a shitty coach but after a year, his grade is an incomplete, IMHO.
Oaktown is one of my favorite posters on the board. If he has something to say on any matter, I'll try to read what he has to say. But I do think he is premature on his assessment of Dykes. He may eventually be proven right but again, at this point, it is hard to assess whether it's coaching or some of the other variables or a combination of both. Dykes isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Again, that's the reality of the situation.
I think Oaktown has a lot of influence on the board. In that regard, I believe he has helped to shape the tenor of the board negatively towards Dykes. He thinks Dykes is Holmoe.2. I'm of the belief that Dykes needs three years to prove whether he can coach or not , whether he can administrate a football program or not. I also believe all this negative campaigning to get rid of Dykes hurts the football program. He's here for another year maybe two. Talking **** about him isn't going to get rid of him any sooner and certainly could influence recruits and or fans the wrong way.
Your point on trashing players by name is spot on. I do think the talent level was down on the defensive end when your two deep is riddled with 3rd stringers and walk ons. In any event, I also wish Kam the best in his future endeavors. I always follow the progress of ex Cal players at the next level...., hopefully we can do the same with Kam.
You give me way too much credit for influence. The primary thing creating the negative view of Dykes is 1-11 with 9 blowouts and a 7 point win against Portland State. This season was worse than anyone could have imagined.
If you really look at posters you will see what I see. A lot of posters that were either positive or giving him a chance changing sides as they had enough. davetdds and I got into a pretty good sized spat early on (something about me calling him an idiot). He was big time arguing against the anti-Dykes posters. Look at him now. He's more ticked off with Dykes than I've come close to being.
For me, early on, my annoyance was not with Dykes. It was with posters declaring everything about him awesome, basically with no basis. Not understanding his record. Calling every coaching hire a great fit. Lauding getting a commit from a 2 star receiver who spurned Idaho to come here and declaring him a future NFL player. That kind of stuff. I kept quiet most of the time except a few times I warned the overly rosy that they were writing checks Dykes couldn't cash and that they risked blowback when he did not win 8 games. I had a postive view of our Northwestern game (back when I thought we were playing a top 20 team.) I wasn't happy about Portland State, but I wasn't that concerned. I did argue pretty good with people who tried to portray it as not that bad a performance by hyping Portland State because that was clearly not fact based. But I wasn't down on Dykes. The six minute blowout against OSU started the downturn. But okay. It was OSU. Then I was really ticked that we were so poorly prepared for the weather at Oregon and that Goff was made to look like an idiot by his coaches. But monsoon is a freak thing. But now we've got 3 freak things in a row. Then Washington State - and I was done. A lot of people were. Many people had pointed to that game as the real start because the early season opponents were just to tough to judge. We'd know at WSU. Well, we did. And every game thereafter supported the conclusion.
Others had different breaking points. I'm blanking at the name of the poster who was writing long defenses of Dykes for a few weeks saying with our depleted roster we could only judge him by the Colorado game and we would win handily. We lost. He got ticked.
I've watched one by one as most of the people who argued with me before turned or went silent. They aren't turning becaue I'm so eloquent. They are turning because the conclusion is becoming more and more obvious. There really is no good argument for Dykes at this point.
I asked people to come up with one positive thing about this season, not an excuse, but a positive. No one came up with anything Dykes had any influence over. You actually came up with the best positive - one I had noted before several times - the young players were getting a lot of experience. That has nothing to do with Dykes, but it is a positive.
As for speaking ill when we are supposedly stuck with Dykes. I firmly believe we are stuck with him for two reasons. 1) The major donors don't have the confidence in Sandy to right this wrong if they put up the money and 2) The administration doesn't think we care enough to burn the house down if they don't do something.
I believe Dykes needs to be fired. I want Cal to know that. I want them to know about everybody who thinks he needs to be fired. I want them to know about every person who has had it with how they have treated Cal football. I do not want them ending next year thinking that people are accepting these results, so they can go cheap yet again and not fire him. I think that everyone who thinks he should be fired and isn't saying so because "we can't" is making a mistake. If we "can't" I want it to happen as soon as we "can". Remaining silent doesn't make that happen.
As for negativity impacting the program, I've made this argument when I supported coaches who were being criticized. Every program has negative fans. Every 1-11 program has tons of them. Expressing our opinion is not hurting this program. This 1-11 team is losing recruits because it is 1-11, not because fans are upset at being 1-11.
