SFCityBear said:
socaltownie said:
And lets be blunt - in my lifetime Cal has NEVER hired a coach would would be considered a great recruiter who had charisma and who was a natural sales person. MAYBE Tedford was good. MAYBE.
OK. I'll be blunt. You are younger than I am. In my lifetime, judging solely by the number of great players they recruited, there have been three coaches at Cal who were really good or maybe great recruiters: Pappy Waldorf in football and Jim Padgett and Todd Bozeman in basketball. Maybe Tedford, maybe Snyder for a couple of years. Waldorf was the most successful, taking Cal to three straight Rose Bowls, but he landed Cal on NCAA probation, with under the table recruiting practices. Tedford and Snyder had brief success, as did Bozeman, until he landed Cal on NCAA probation with under the table recruiting practices. Padgett was never found guilty of any recruiting violations, recruited the best basketball players as a group ever seen in Harmon or Haas, and his teams were all a failure. Of course, UCLA with Wooden and Kareem stood in his way, but Padgett's Cal teams couldn't even finish 2nd in the conference under Padgett. Cuonzo was not a great recruiter. He had only one good class, where he got two highly ranked players, neither one the kind you can build a program around. He had no great success on the court, in conference, or in post season, and then he dumped Cal for Mizzou and bigger bucks.
It's a small sample, but it is not a very good advertisement for hiring a coach who is a great recruiter to lead you to success, is it? It also indicates that Cal would take a risk hiring a great recruiter, because there is a good chance that great recruiter gets Cal put on probation, and we don't have an administration or big donors who are willing to back him and overlook his behavior, like coach Miller has at Arizona. When Pappy got caught, and eventually forced to retire, we got Pete Elliot, a terrible coach, who lucked out in getting Cal to the Rose Bowl when the conference had been depleted of good athletes due to several recruiting scandals and several teams on probation. He then went to Illinois, where he was forced to resign because of a slush fund scandal. Or take the case of Todd Bozeman, who put Cal on probation, and the University hired Ben Braun, to give Cal a squeaky clean program that would recruit well, but not outstanding recruiting, and Cal would have winning seasons, but never achieving much. His best recruiting class, with Leon Powe, et al, contributed to teams which were no better than his teams which had lower ranked recruits.
The solution is to find a coach who can recruit good players and coach them to championships, and that clearly is still not the university's goal. If you want that, you may want to change loyalties, or try and change the administration's mind. If I were looking for the next coach, I would not look for a great recruiter. There is way too much risk in that. The NCAA will always be looking into his recruiting practices. I would look at success. I am not interested in a coach who can wow fans by bringing in top recruits. I want a coach who can win a conference or at least get to the Final Game in the NCAA. He would have to have both of those things on his resume for me to put him at the top of my list. When Montgomery was hired (how did Sandy get away with hiring a guy who could coach real basketball?), I said at the time, all he has proven is that he can get a team to the Final Four, and it took him several years to do that, and that is his proven ceiling. He can win you a conference (which he did at Cal).
When Cal hired Newell, he had already won a national championship. Then he left for Michigan State, where he had four very mediocre years, and many Cal fans and administrators were against hiring Newell. They felt he was burned out, done, that he couldn't do it anymore, and also that it was harder to recruit at Cal than it had been at USF, etc. Well, Cal hired him, and the rest is Cal history, the best in Cal history. So if it was me, I'd be looking for a coach who has had proven success. No more assistant coaches, no more retreads like Fox, no more small school coaches like Braun. I would look at the NCAA and find coaches who have taken teams other than the top 5 or 6 schools, to the championship game, and maybe to a Final Four. Texas Tech, Loyola-Chicago, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Virginia. If the price range is too high, then I would look for coaches who have a record of consistently knocking off teams ranked higher than them, winning games they are not supposed to win. I would give less importance to bringing in high ranked recruits, because unless you have a coach who can get them to play together well enough to be a winner, you have nothing, and are wasting your time. Padgett, Braun, and Bozeman all proved that, didn't they? And if your problem is that Cal won't spend the money for a proven head coach, then come up with some creative ideas to raise the money, start organizing support and meeting with Cal administration to convince them they can do this, and if you aren't willing to do this, then we need to stop whining.
Tedford and Snyder were very good recruiters and very good coaches. They were good enough to get Cal where we want Cal to be. Snyder didn't get to finish the job. There were other issues under Tedford that I believe led to the decline in the program, some of them Tedford's fault.
Cuonzo sucked as a recruiter. Maybe he'd be better somewhere else. But he clearly was more interested in stamping his feet to no avail in the admissions office than adjusting what he needed to do. I in a lot of ways liked Cuonzo, but he thoroughly wrecked the program. Had he stayed it still would have been wrecked.
Padgett is before my time but I've heard the stories. I'm sorry, but just because we hired one recruiter who was a crappy coach doesn't mean we should forever avoid guys who are good recruiters.
Braun was not a great recruiter. He was okay. He was a good talent evaluator. He wasn't great at landing it. He also had a problem of thinking he could reform kids. When you talk about his supposed great class, I'll just tell you that the seeds of its destruction were there and it wasn't the coaching. Cal would have been far more successful if only half that class had shown up. His best class was the Patrick Christopher class. I'm a firm believer in coaches only having a certain amount of time to succeed and by that time Braun's window had passed. Braun is not an example of great recruiter bad coach.
Bozeman was a salesman. He wasn't a talent evaluator. He could go to the recruiting services, pick out the highest ranked guys he thought he had a shot at and sell the hell out of them. He had zero coaching ability. I think there were obvious recruiting issues from the beginning. He was certainly able to attract talent we couldn't sniff otherwise. However, he wasn't good at putting together the right components and the fact is his pipeline had dried up to nothing by the end. And with schollies on the shelf, he didn't offer one to Eddie House. Bozeman is not an argument against getting a recruiter. He's an argument against getting Bozeman.
No one is arguing to hire a great recruiter with no coaching ability. They are saying we need a skilled recruiter. The fact is you need both.
On recruiting, you need a coach that can recruit to Cal. Who can deal with the academics. Who can identify the guys who will thrive at Cal and who will find Cal appealing. You also need a guy that can recruit a team, not just parts. You need a guy who will recruit some leaders. And no, it can't be a guy who has no coaching ability.
In 2001, Tedford was that guy. IMO, we hired a great coach because we had two great coaches leading the process.
If you can find Pete Newell, great. You aren't finding Pete Newell. This is not the 1950's when you did not have the kind of competition for coaches you have now. You aren't finding Mike Montgomery unless you find another former great coach who retires from the NBA, wants to coach at a power conference school in the Bay Area and doesn't want it to be named Stanford.
Individual alums aren't coming up with creative ideas to raise the $50M it is going to take to hire today's Pete Newell. And, let's suppose that one of our extremely wealthy alums walked in and said, "I've suddenly taken an interest in basketball. Here is $100M. I want you to go out and find the best coach out there and pay him $10M year over 10 years to coach here" 1. There is no way Cal is doing that and taking the political ramifications on campus of paying top coaching money. 2. If Cal would do that, the Pete Newell that is out there today is going to look at Cal, look at the admissions requirement, look at the lack of administrative support, look at the lack of media coverage, look at the lack of fan base, and say "you know what - I'm good making $8M over here thanks."
Cal has to actually do some work and identify a young coach. They have to stop interviewing two candidates from a search firm and deciding in 24 hours. They need to find their Tedford.
In football, we have had 3 reasonably successful coaches since Waldorf. An assistant from Stanford. A Runningbacks coach from the Rams. And an assistant from Oregon. In basketball, it hasn't been very good. Monty fell into our laps. Other than that, I'd say our best coaches have been mid major coaches, but that isn't saying much.
If you want to dream about Cal paying the $6-$8M it would take to attract a Newell coach, you aren't getting anywhere. I see three options (first two total flyers):
1. Jason Kidd - not that I'm enamored with it. He'd attract recruits. He has coached NBA, not sure how good he'd be at the actual coaching. Don't think he is interested.
2. Hire the best damned woman coach you can find because no one else will do it and you can get her cheaper and get media attention and political brownie points. The top womens coaches make like 1/3 to 1/4 the top men's coaches, so if you are willing to take a chance that basketball is basketball then...
3. Or most likely, actually do a really hard job of not farming out the decision to a search firm that is going to give you the same names they give everybody. Call Monty. Call Sean Marks. Call Jason Kidd. Call Theo Robertson. Find anyone with Cal ties who is around the industry and might know who the good young coaches are. Put them on a committee and let them tell you who is the guy that has a real shot at developing into something. Cal is not paying for a Blue Chip stock here. Cal needs to find the stock that is poised to take off.
