when Cal got "another Holiday Bowl.." Remember those days?? When's the next time the Bears will [U]even[/U] go bowling?? At least six wins?? :rollinglaugh:

72CalBear;842251525 said:

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when Cal got "another Holiday Bowl.." Remember those days?? When's the next time the Bears will [U]even[/U] go bowling?? At least six wins?? :rollinglaugh:

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Thank GOD we fired Tedford.

Not only were his teams mediocre, but he was doing it the wrong way - with dumbassed athletes.

Ending up with an even worse coach is an entirely separate issue.

:tedford

:facepalm

Still blaming Tedford for Dykes failures, I see.

Tedford's recruits were dum dums.
Dykes has to change a culture first.
Tedford had unbalanced recruiting.
Tedford's playbook was too big.
We had too many injuries.
We were too young.
The students didn't support the team.
Wahhhhhh!!!!!!
:cry:

I'd love for a return to the "mediocre days" of our winningest coach in history.

Let's change the academic support system (like we are doing) and see how the next year goes. At SOME point we all have to move on and get back to being competitive, without Tedford, and with or without Dykes.

Tedhead94;842251610 said:

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.....I'd love for a return to the "mediocre days" of our winningest coach in history......

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[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Golden_Bears_football"][COLOR="Navy"]Link[/COLOR][/URL]

Tedford had to go. It was his time. Be that as it may, no one expected this. So hats off to you.

another one of those stupid retreads where the only scenario is Dykes or JT.

f*cking pathetic. neither of them have to be the answer.

72CalBear;842251525 said:

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when Cal got "another Holiday Bowl.." Remember those days??

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Yes.

72CalBear;842251525 said:

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When's the next time the Bears will [U]even[/U] go bowling??

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When Sonny holds practice at 2270 Acton Street or Jim invents a time machine and the team travels back in time to Rheem Valley Bowl circa 1999. :woohoo

72CalBear;842251525 said:

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At least six wins?? :rollinglaugh:

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In one season?

I honestly don't want to return to the days of a Holiday Bowl with a team full of future NFLers. Those days were more frustrating than this past season. This season was a cake walk in comparison. By the end of the first quarter I could enjoy the day with my wife and friends as we discussed various topics and laughed and had a good time. I know how long it will take to get back to 'bowling' but I truly don't want to go back to Tedford in the later years. Those were painful to watch.

72CalBear;842251525 said:

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when Cal got "another Holiday Bowl.." Remember those days?? When's the next time the Bears will [U]even[/U] go bowling?? At least six wins?? :rollinglaugh:

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My feeling is that a coach's performance is either acceptable or it isn't. If it isn't, he needs to go. Tedford's performance had become unacceptable. He needed to go. What we needed to do was hire somebody better.

What is "funny" is people who were convinced Cal was over the hump. That we couldn't possibly be this bad again. Then there is the similar argument for paying coach's buyouts. His losing is hurting ticket sales, and when we fire him and then we somehow automatically win again, we will sell a whole lot more tickets, thus not paying the buyout out is economically stupid. Sorry, but the idea that Cal couldn't blow up its football program (again and again and again) is laughable.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me like 60 times, shame on me.

OaktownBear;842251681 said:

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My feeling is that a coach's performance is either acceptable or it isn't. If it isn't, he needs to go. Tedford's performance had become unacceptable. He needed to go. What we needed to do was hire somebody better.

What is "funny" is people who were convinced Cal was over the hump. That we couldn't possibly be this bad again. Then there is the similar argument for paying coach's buyouts. His losing is hurting ticket sales, and when we fire him and then we somehow automatically win again, we will sell a whole lot more tickets, thus not paying the buyout out is economically stupid. Sorry, but the idea that Cal couldn't blow up its football program (again and again and again) is laughable.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me like 60 times, shame on me.

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I agreed with you until the ticket sales / buyout point. From an economics standpoint, once the contract is signed it's a sunk cost. There was nothing we could do to make us owe Tedford less money (same with Dykes now).

The question (again, from a financial standpoint) was do we believe that spending the extra money on a new coaching staff would have a positive expected return and what kind of variance is there on that return. Maybe the powers that be got overconfident and thought "any idiot can coach Cal to 6 wins a year and if we hire an idiot with a fun offense then people will come out for at least a few years and we'll more than make up the cost of a new staff in incremental ticket sales." But it's very possible that firing Tedford was a smart move from an economics standpoint and it was the hiring of Dykes that made it not work.

I don't have the data but presumably Cal does. They should have been able to put together a reasonable estimate on what revenues look like with Tedford still here and what they look like with different scenarios of new coaches and what they felt the odds of each one are. It's possible that to come out revenue positive all that was needed was a coaching change and an average first season - win a game or so more than the prior year and be competitive more often than not. Hiring a coach whose resume gets no one excited and then proceeds to put out the worst team in school history surely wasn't revenue positive but they probably didn't think that outcome was terribly likely.

boredom;842251708 said:

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I agreed with you until the ticket sales / buyout point. From an economics standpoint, once the contract is signed it's a sunk cost. There was nothing we could do to make us owe Tedford less money (same with Dykes now).

The question (again, from a financial standpoint) was do we believe that spending the extra money on a new coaching staff would have a positive expected return and what kind of variance is there on that return. Maybe the powers that be got overconfident and thought "any idiot can coach Cal to 6 wins a year and if we hire an idiot with a fun offense then people will come out for at least a few years and we'll more than make up the cost of a new staff in incremental ticket sales." But it's very possible that firing Tedford was a smart move from an economics standpoint and it was the hiring of Dykes that made it not work

I don't have the data but presumably Cal does. They should have been able to put together a reasonable estimate on what revenues look like with Tedford still here and what they look like with different scenarios of new coaches and what they felt the odds of each one are. It's possible that to come out revenue positive all that was needed was a coaching change and an average first season - win a game or so more than the prior year and be competitive more often than not. Hiring a coach whose resume gets no one excited and then proceeds to put out the worst team in school history surely wasn't revenue positive but they probably didn't think that outcome was terribly likely.

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My issue wih the ticket sales argument is that people assume that it is an automatice. "We'll fire Coach X. We'll sell 10,000 more seats per game say at an average of $100 per seat over 6 games and we get $6M - there's your buyout!!! Cal is stupid"

Problem is, historically speaking more often than not we don't bring in the next great coach. We bring in the next lousy one and our ticket sales don't go up. It is not an automatic. They are looking at it from the optimistic fan perspective. The person running the economic model has to look at it from reality. (I think they generally do and that is why the optimistic fan thinks they are stupid). Fact is, paying a buyout is more of a gamble than it is an investment. You cannot just count on more ticket sales. You have to, as you have basically done, work in the odds that our ticket sales go up, the odds they stay the same, and the odds they go down.

At least they structured Dykes buyout a little better so his entire salary is not sunk cost - his buyout isn't just the remaining salary on the contract. Frankly, I'd rather we pay the buyout and make up the $3M by hiring a young coordinator at $1M per. (However, I think the bucket of money that the $3M comes out of may be different than the bucket most of the salary comes out of, so they may not have that flexibility.).

Didn't La Tech hire a hot young coordinator for their struggling program? He turned it around in three years and was scooped up by a dying program.

:tedford

Bobodeluxe;842251800 said:

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Didn't La Tech hire a hot young coordinator for their struggling program? He turned it around in three years and was scooped up by a dying program.

:tedford

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Was gonna jokingly say Derek Dooley. Turned out the Vols hired him off of a 4-8 season. WTF?!

My post wasn't to suggest that somehow the Bears are "missing" JT..I simply found that our expectations, as they were raised back then, were false to begin with, and that believing the notion that somehow Cal would or could become a football powerhouse, has always been flawed. We won't see 6 wins in YEARS and a Holiday Bowl again?? And we dumped all those millions into a stadium that will be used for rock concerts, monster truck shows and Kabam video game tournaments. The very nature of our university and its community will NEVER support the kind of team that WE in here are dreaming of..The hiring of Sonny Dykes points this out. Terrible hire because only a few fans REALLY care and only those with money matter very much. Now we will wait 2+ more years for Sonny's replacement and then what?

72CalBear;842251525 said:

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when Cal got "another Holiday Bowl.." Remember those days?? When's the next time the Bears will [U]even[/U] go bowling?? At least six wins?? :rollinglaugh:

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2001: 1-10
2004: 10-2

There was a coaching change in 2001, and yes, we're not going to see one before next season. But still.. crazy things do happen.

72CalBear;842251840 said:

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My post wasn't to suggest that somehow the Bears are "missing" JT..I simply found that our expectations, as they were raised back then, were false to begin with, and that believing the notion that somehow Cal would or could become a football powerhouse, has always been flawed. We won't see 6 wins in YEARS and a Holiday Bowl again?? And we dumped all those millions into a stadium that will be used for rock concerts, monster truck shows and Kabam video game tournaments. The very nature of our university and its community will NEVER support the kind of team that WE in here are dreaming of..The hiring of Sonny Dykes points this out. Terrible hire because only a few fans REALLY care and only those with money matter very much. Now we will wait 2+ more years for Sonny's replacement and then what?

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I'm optimistic that Cal will return to gridiron glory in the not-too-distant future; I have high hopes for the team's success.* It may be under coach Dykes, it may be under some other coach. Also, at the time of Coach Dykes's hiring, the consensus seemed to be that Coach Dykes wasn't a homerun (a la Chris Petersen), but was at least a solid basehit. It's only been after seeing the team's (maybe moreso the coaching staff's) performance this season that Coach Dykes's hiring has been downgraded to a strikeout.

As for the stadium, I think I read before that due to Cal's agreement with the Hill NIMBYs, the stadium can only be used for Cal football and cannot be used for concerts nor even other sports (including rental to professional football teams).

While it's true that it's unlikely that the football team will ever get the support that some on this board would like to see. Still, it's possible for Cal to field a successful program without resorting to SEC-like tactics (e.g., accepting and graduating functionally illiterate students), becoming a "football school" (a la U$C), or even turning into a diploma mill (e.g., the Furd). Coach Tedford's early tenure showed that Cal can compete successfully on the football field--doing it the Cal way. It's unfortunate that Coach Tedford could not sustain those early successes, though, it's also important to note that the backslide coincided with the regression in APR score.

72CalBear, your love and passion for Cal football is obvious**, but I'm sure you'd rather Cal field a successful football team worthy to carry the mantle of guys like Joe Roth, Ron Rivera, Andre Carter, Tony Gonzales, and Nnamdi Asmougha than just a bunch of football mercenaries. Besides, would Joe Kapp's tequila taste as good if it were the result of un-Cal-like behavior?

*I do admit that such hopes are not founded on anything substantive.

**In light of the many more years of suffering you've endured, I'd say it's also awe-inspiring.

OaktownBear;842251681 said:

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My feeling is that a coach's performance is either acceptable or it isn't. If it isn't, he needs to go. Tedford's performance had become unacceptable. He needed to go. What we needed to do was hire somebody better.

What is "funny" is people who were convinced Cal was over the hump. That we couldn't possibly be this bad again. Then there is the similar argument for paying coach's buyouts. His losing is hurting ticket sales, and when we fire him and then we somehow automatically win again, we will sell a whole lot more tickets, thus not paying the buyout out is economically stupid. Sorry, but the idea that Cal couldn't blow up its football program (again and again and again) is laughable.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me like 60 times, shame on me.

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If Dykes goes (which he should), the same athletic director following the same procedure to hire a replacement will likely yield the same result. Our first priority must be to fire Sandy and hire a new athletic director; hopefully, Dirks is up for that challenge. Then, the new athletic director, using a different procedure should hire our new football coach. That's no guarantee of success, but it will at least give us a chance at being successful. Sandy just doesn't have enough football knowledge or interest.

TiredBear;842251643 said:

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Tedford had to go. It was his time. Be that as it may, no one expected this. So hats off to you.

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Well, it's just a mess. An absolute mess. Tedford's downfall just a small piece of it.

Golden One;842252338 said:

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If Dykes goes (which he should), the same athletic director following the same procedure to hire a replacement will likely yield the same result. Our first priority must be to fire Sandy and hire a new athletic director; hopefully, Dirks is up for that challenge. Then, the new athletic director, using a different procedure should hire our new football coach. That's no guarantee of success, but it will at least give us a chance at being successful. Sandy just doesn't have enough football knowledge or interest.

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There's a lot of anti-Sandy sentiment around here. Some of it likely has to do with the handling of the sports cuts and other issues and I get that. But I don't quite understand the vitriol about the hiring process. Maybe I missed it, but what was wrong with the process itself (I don't recall there being a lot of transparency around the process)?

The hire is obviously not working out (and I thought it was a bad one the minute I heard about it) but its way too small a sample size to use to say that Barbour can't hire football coaches. You can have a good approach that doesn't work out for whatever reason; you can also have a bad approach that happens to work out. I'm not trying to defend Sandy, rather I'm curious what the reasoning is for those arguing that she shouldn't be allowed to pick Dykes' successor?

Quote:

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My issue wih the ticket sales argument is that people assume that it is an automatice. "We'll fire Coach X. We'll sell 10,000 more seats per game say at an average of $100 per seat over 6 games and we get $6M - there's your buyout!!! Cal is stupid"

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I don't recall the argument being made like that but if it was then I understand your issue with it.

boredom;842252361 said:

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There's a lot of anti-Sandy sentiment around here. Some of it likely has to do with the handling of the sports cuts and other issues and I get that. But I don't quite understand the vitriol about the hiring process. Maybe I missed it, but what was wrong with the process itself (I don't recall there being a lot of transparency around the process)?

The hire is obviously not working out (and I thought it was a bad one the minute I heard about it) but its way too small a sample size to use to say that Barbour can't hire football coaches. You can have a good approach that doesn't work out for whatever reason; you can also have a bad approach that happens to work out. I'm not trying to defend Sandy, rather I'm curious what the reasoning is for those arguing that she shouldn't be allowed to pick Dykes' successor?

I don't recall the argument being made like that but if it was then I understand your issue with it.

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Ok, fine for the sake of argument I will give you she is entitled to a bad hire now and again. The problem with Sandy beyond the hiring is the contracts. She for some reason likes to sign nobody's to contracts that top tier proven coaches might not even deserve. Based on the Buh contract alone she should not be trusted to make anymore hires.