That's why he was hired - to say what he does, behave as he does. Can't stand the idiot. Perhaps it's time we go after the person who hired him!!!

Dgoldnbaer said:

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That's why he was hired - to say what he does, behave as he does. Can't stand the idiot. Perhaps it's time we go after the person who hired him!!!

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Been saying that for a while. We need the anti-Christ. Our swimming program has always been great - he gets no credit for that. He's tanking our revenue programs so our swimming program will drown along with them in due time...Christ being supportive of football is the biggest scam in Cal athletics history ..bigger than Bozeman's bucks!

fat_slice said:

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Dgoldnbaer said:

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That's why he was hired - to say what he does, behave as he does. Can't stand the idiot. Perhaps it's time we go after the person who hired him!!!

---

Been saying that for a while. We need the anti-Christ. Our swimming program has always been great - he gets no credit for that. He's tanking our revenue programs so our swimming program will drown along with them in due time...Christ being supportive of football is the biggest scam in Cal athletics history ..bigger than Bozeman's bucks!

---

If you compare Chancellor Christ with her predecessors going back 50 years or so, she is probably the most athletics-friendly, athletics-advocating Chancellor we have had... and I doubt it's close. Granted, she needs some help hiring ADs (forget if she hired the previous guy). Not to say she is great, but look at the other guys, who bordered on downright hostile to football and basketball (although Albert Bowker did attend most every home basketball game).

stu said:

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Not a word about FB, MBB, or WBB records or prospects. Led with swimming then moved on to academics and random events.

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Yeah, he doesn't seem to have a clue about what's really important. Only a limited few care anything about swimming and the other sports he mentions in his email. We need a chancellor and AD who understand that the only sports that really matter are football and men's basketball. They fund the entire athletic program. We need to put all of our horsepower in these two programs. Everything else is "take it or leave it", subject to title IX requirements.

Golden One said:

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Big C said:

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fat_slice said:

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Dgoldnbaer said:

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That's why he was hired - to say what he does, behave as he does. Can't stand the idiot. Perhaps it's time we go after the person who hired him!!!

---

Been saying that for a while. We need the anti-Christ. Our swimming program has always been great - he gets no credit for that. He's tanking our revenue programs so our swimming program will drown along with them in due time...Christ being supportive of football is the biggest scam in Cal athletics history ..bigger than Bozeman's bucks!

---

If you compare Chancellor Christ with her predecessors going back 50 years or so, she is probably the most athletics-friendly, athletics-advocating Chancellor we have had... and I doubt it's close. Granted, she needs some help hiring ADs (forget if she hired the previous guy). Not to say she is great, but look at the other guys, who bordered on downright hostile to football and basketball (although Albert Bowker did attend most every home basketball game).

---

That's damning Christ with very faint praise. She talks a good game, but she has done absolutely nothing during her tenure to get results. Words and smiles mean nothing. Cal has continued its slide into football and basketball oblivion under her watch.

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I'm not an expert on this subject, but wasn't she the driving force in getting the university to absorb 50% of our debt from the SHPC and CMS renovation? If true, that was probably the single best thing a Chancellor has done for Cal Athletics in over 50 years. Because until that, we were potentially royally screwed.

As I understand it, she has also used her Cal credibility to tamp down the anti-athletics naysayers among the faculty... the "Barsky types".

I can name you a few recent Chancellors who never did anything close to either of those. Quite the contrary. Take a Chancellor Tien, who was out leading cheers front-and-center, while cutting $$$ behind the scenes and letting anti-athletics faculty rule the roost.

I will give a student's perspective on Chancellor Christ, if anyone is interested. My brain is quite tired from my homework (which is still in progress), so as I sit here writing this at 1 in the morning, please forgive any spelling & grammar mistakes.

In terms of academics/non-athletic aspects of the university, she inherited a poor situation and has done quite a bit to grapple with several of the problematic "sources of pain", in my opinion.

Firstly, housing & development. Cal's housing situation is atrocious to say the least, and her pivot to making it a #1 priority was more than needed. The main inhibitive factor from making more progress on this front is two-fold: First, a small fraction student populace of Cal is (annoyingly) opposed to any sort of development, because they try to find something wrong with any sort of change. In this case, it would be "displacing the homeless people" in Peoples' Park, or "removing a community green space", or some other ridiculous nonsense when clearly the developments would increase housing stock and help Berkeley as a whole. As a result, housing projects have been delayed, changes to architectural plans have been commenced, and costs have risen when we could've been halfway through construction by now. Second, Berkeley has to be possibly the most annoying, headache-inducing place ever to develop. The insane cost of development ($120 million for the practice facility?!?) is further amplified by the ridiculous bureaucratic layers which ensures that a million+ hoops have to be jumped through in order for approval. Christ has done a good job making relationships with the mayor & town to foster partnerships that will get things built, as noted by the mayor himself & some news outlets, is a major departure from previous administrations' views that the city & university are at odds.

Secondly, administrative costs. In my opinion, the administrative costs at Cal are egregious. I wish I could show you all some of the ridiculous emails regarding new positions of various "provosts" and "vice-deans" I get to my student email. There is a running joke among the students that the next open position will be the "Assistant Vice Provost Head Chair of Breathing", a remark on how there are tons of useless positions that probably eat up hundreds of thousands of $ in annual salaries each. I wish Chancellor Christ would address this, but rather it seems that she has compounded the issue (this semester alone I've gotten at least 4-5 emails regarding new positions being created). I understand that Cal is known for its immense bureaucracy, and that this isn't necessarily an enormous chunk of the budget, but I figured it was worth commenting on.

Thirdly, donations/capital raising. I know for certain this is an area she has invested a lot of time in this year. She has made several trips to the east coast to increase donations from particularly wealthy alums & donors. One of the areas that has been identified as Cal's weakness is engaging out-of-state alumni, supposedly. There has been a lot of effort between the Chancellor & the alumni groups to increase engagement from non-California alumni, which I would assume has the added benefit of building relationships to the East Coast/Midwest/South, thereby helping with Berkeley's reputation & funding. From what I have heard, she seems to be a savvy & adept "marketer" of Cal, and a pretty solid capital-raiser too. For a university perennially short of $$, this is pretty valuable. One of the important things to note regarding this will be in the next paragraph.

Finally, sports (which I suppose was the main point of the thread). From what I have heard from some of her alumni-engagement trips & capital raising ventures, she does (at least outwardly) seem to be a very vocal supporter of Cal Athletics. As someone mentioned, she did a huge favor with the debt situation on CMS, and appears to really buy-in on the notion that investments in revenue sports (FB & MBB) will yield nice ROIs for the university. Here is what really seems to sell her engagement on the athletics' front: universities with strong, engaged sports programs tend to yield higher donations from alumni & pad university pockets. You can see this with Stanford, for example. Even logically, I can assume that students who recall watching their FB or BB team win lots of games, or take home a conference championship, will remember their experience at Cal more happily than those who had to suffer through embarrassing losing seasons (even if only marginally).

However, I do understand the frustration with handing Knowlton such a long extension. My 2 cents on this: I think the decision is largely driven by optimism surrounding the football program, which overshadows the pessimism around the basketball program, because the FB program are where the major $$ is and is generally viewed as more important. I have no idea comparatively how Christ holds up to previous Chancellors (though I will say there must've been at least one really poor Chancellor over the years, given some of the structural problems I see the university facing).

Anyways, these were just my thoughts. If any of you reading this happen to have a few million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, I could direct you to a dining hall or two that need to be razed and replaced with an establishment that provides edible food (my friends and I have a theory that the dining halls are secretly helping the students build an induced tolerance to poison).

Go bears!

Thanks for your perspective!

eastcoastcal said:

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I will give a student's perspective on Chancellor Christ, if anyone is interested. My brain is quite tired from my homework (which is still in progress), so as I sit here writing this at 1 in the morning, please forgive any spelling & grammar mistakes.

In terms of academics/non-athletic aspects of the university, she inherited a poor situation and has done quite a bit to grapple with several of the problematic "sources of pain", in my opinion.

Firstly, housing & development. Cal's housing situation is atrocious to say the least, and her pivot to making it a #1 priority was more than needed. The main inhibitive factor from making more progress on this front is two-fold: First, a small fraction student populace of Cal is (annoyingly) opposed to any sort of development, because they try to find something wrong with any sort of change. In this case, it would be "displacing the homeless people" in Peoples' Park, or "removing a community green space", or some other ridiculous nonsense when clearly the developments would increase housing stock and help Berkeley as a whole. As a result, housing projects have been delayed, changes to architectural plans have been commenced, and costs have risen when we could've been halfway through construction by now. Second, Berkeley has to be possibly the most annoying, headache-inducing place ever to develop. The insane cost of development ($120 million for the practice facility?!?) is further amplified by the ridiculous bureaucratic layers which ensures that a million+ hoops have to be jumped through in order for approval. Christ has done a good job making relationships with the mayor & town to foster partnerships that will get things built, as noted by the mayor himself & some news outlets, is a major departure from previous administrations' views that the city & university are at odds.

Secondly, administrative costs. In my opinion, the administrative costs at Cal are egregious. I wish I could show you all some of the ridiculous emails regarding new positions of various "provosts" and "vice-deans" I get to my student email. There is a running joke among the students that the next open position will be the "Assistant Vice Provost Head Chair of Breathing", a remark on how there are tons of useless positions that probably eat up hundreds of thousands of $ in annual salaries each. I wish Chancellor Christ would address this, but rather it seems that she has compounded the issue (this semester alone I've gotten at least 4-5 emails regarding new positions being created). I understand that Cal is known for its immense bureaucracy, and that this isn't necessarily an enormous chunk of the budget, but I figured it was worth commenting on.

Thirdly, donations/capital raising. I know for certain this is an area she has invested a lot of time in this year. She has made several trips to the east coast to increase donations from particularly wealthy alums & donors. One of the areas that has been identified as Cal's weakness is engaging out-of-state alumni, supposedly. There has been a lot of effort between the Chancellor & the alumni groups to increase engagement from non-California alumni, which I would assume has the added benefit of building relationships to the East Coast/Midwest/South, thereby helping with Berkeley's reputation & funding. From what I have heard, she seems to be a savvy & adept "marketer" of Cal, and a pretty solid capital-raiser too. For a university perennially short of $$, this is pretty valuable. One of the important things to note regarding this will be in the next paragraph.

Finally, sports (which I suppose was the main point of the thread). From what I have heard from some of her alumni-engagement trips & capital raising ventures, she does (at least outwardly) seem to be a very vocal supporter of Cal Athletics. As someone mentioned, she did a huge favor with the debt situation on CMS, and appears to really buy-in on the notion that investments in revenue sports (FB & MBB) will yield nice ROIs for the university. Here is what really seems to sell her engagement on the athletics' front: universities with strong, engaged sports programs tend to yield higher donations from alumni & pad university pockets. You can see this with Stanford, for example. Even logically, I can assume that students who recall watching their FB or BB team win lots of games, or take home a conference championship, will remember their experience at Cal more happily than those who had to suffer through embarrassing losing seasons (even if only marginally).

However, I do understand the frustration with handing Knowlton such a long extension. My 2 cents on this: I think the decision is largely driven by optimism surrounding the football program, which overshadows the pessimism around the basketball program, because the FB program are where the major $$ is and is generally viewed as more important. I have no idea comparatively how Christ holds up to previous Chancellors (though I will say there must've been at least one really poor Chancellor over the years, given some of the structural problems I see the university facing).

Anyways, these were just my thoughts. If any of you reading this happen to have a few million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, I could direct you to a dining hall or two that need to be razed and replaced with an establishment that provides edible food (my friends and I have a theory that the dining halls are secretly helping the students build an induced tolerance to poison).

Go bears!

---

Thanks for your view and, I know you are mostly just reporting the news, but Knowlton getting a 7 year extension because of "the football program" is a head scratcher. For better or worse, he did not hire Wilcox, who after 5 years has a losing record and has finished near the bottom of the conference every year with 5 years of some of the worst offenses in the country. Hopefully, Wilcox turns it around this year, but what if he doesn't? It seems to me that 7 year extensions of near 7 figure salaries should be given based on more than hope. And if the destruction of the basketball program is considered inconsequential, then Christ and Knowlton are no great saviors of Cal athletics.

HearstMining said:

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Good points, Eastcoastcal. I'll add one bit of info that you may not be aware of. In 1980, Berkeley implemented rent control which prohibited more than 5% increase even when a unit changed tenants. While this was overridden and loosened by the statewide Costa-Hawkins act in 1995, a lot of damage was already done as many rental units had been converted to condominiums (purchased by hip, prosperous professionals who thought Berkeley was a cool place to live), effectively eliminating them as options for students. Cal enrollment was pretty consistent at ~30,000 from 1973-2001 then started to ramp up, which exacerbated the housing shortage.

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Yeah I was renting (and scrambling) in Berkeley in the early 80s. It was brutal.

And thanks to Eastcoastcal for the perspective- it echoes my experiences with Christ as well. All of your observations about the City, University and Bureaucracy are NOT new. Been like this at least 40 years - maybe more. Can't recall how many Chancellors I've been through. All of them tell boosters & fans they support athletics - very few follow through - many of them actively undermine the programs. Tien may have been the most hypocritical culprit in my tenure. Dierks may have been the most obvious.

I will toss in one antichrist anecdote. I ran into Carol on the Grinell pathway (from LSB to BART) one fall afternoon. She was wearing a RED overcoat. I smiled and chanted "Take of that RED coat". She didn't get it. Dropped her a couple of notches IMHO.

AunBear89 said:

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GoldenOnenote has never grown tired of demonstrating he knows nothing about which he opines. Just a continuous flow of anti Cal negativity.

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The debt "reworking" is just accounting. It effectively increases the subsidy for athletics, it does not turn athletics into a money maker. If anything, it takes pressure off of Knowlton to get the revenue sports earning revenue. He can act like he is still at Air Force where the bottom line, winning and attracting fans doesn't really matter.

The problem is when Christ and Knowlton move on, they will likely leave behind a bloated, money losing department with a decade of losing in the revenue sports and Cal's traditions and success long forgotten, unable to compete in the NIL world and vulnerable to inevitable future budget cuts ,

Chapman_is_Gone said:

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AunBear89 said:

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GoldenOnenote has never grown tired of demonstrating he knows nothing about which he opines. Just a continuous flow of anti Cal negativity.

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If you don't like him, put him on mute. Otherwise, STFU with your constant negativity about other posters, jackass.

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Said, I'm sure, with an utter lack of self awareness and irony. I called out GoldenOnenote for his constant negativity about everything related to the university and city. Your response is name calling. Chapman gonna Chapman. . .

helltopay1 said:

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our only decent basketball head coach in the last 30 years has been a Stanford elder statesman who almost phoned it in during his tenure here..Trying to get Cal to turn around their priorities is like the Titanic Captain trying to avoid the iceberg...Cal either needs a better Captain or a smaller iceberg....( much smaller).

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Don't want to start a side debate here but if we are noting "decent" head coach you have to put Braun in there too. Sweet Sixteen plus an NIT championship is something I treasure more than a weak pac-12 championship that Monty got us ... He couldn't take us past the second round of the tourney. Braun ended on a sour note but he didn't leave the cupboard bare and he provided me with some great memories. Ed Gray, Lampley, McGruder, Ryan Anderson - he brought in some great guys.

Big C said:

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Agree. Ben Braun was a pretty good coach for us, in all respects. What, eleven years? Says a lot about where we were: We got rid of him in hopes that we would be better (and it worked for a time) and now look where we're at.

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Braun and Tedford kind of paralleled each other. They inherited programs with sanctions and initially overachieved with transfers and found talent, then underachieved with much better talent. Both hard workers, but a bit too stubborn. They had numerous times when we almost broke through to the next level. Both good guys who just kind of lost it at the end and had to go.

Golden One said:

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mbBear said:

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Golden One said:

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Big C said:

---

fat_slice said:

---

Dgoldnbaer said:

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That's why he was hired - to say what he does, behave as he does. Can't stand the idiot. Perhaps it's time we go after the person who hired him!!!

---

Been saying that for a while. We need the anti-Christ. Our swimming program has always been great - he gets no credit for that. He's tanking our revenue programs so our swimming program will drown along with them in due time...Christ being supportive of football is the biggest scam in Cal athletics history ..bigger than Bozeman's bucks!

---

If you compare Chancellor Christ with her predecessors going back 50 years or so, she is probably the most athletics-friendly, athletics-advocating Chancellor we have had... and I doubt it's close. Granted, she needs some help hiring ADs (forget if she hired the previous guy). Not to say she is great, but look at the other guys, who bordered on downright hostile to football and basketball (although Albert Bowker did attend most every home basketball game).

---

That's damning Christ with very faint praise. She talks a good game, but she has done absolutely nothing during her tenure to get results. Words and smiles mean nothing. Cal has continued its slide into football and basketball oblivion under her watch.

---

So the posts below are wrong? She didn't lead the debt re-working? Also, it's your belief that she had nothing to do in terms of supporting the grad programs to help hold on to athletes?
Okay, good to know...thanks.

---

The debt re-working has done absolutely nothing, as best I can tell, to improve the results on the field or on the court. And the grad programs are surely a positive, but they have had minimal impact on wins for our football and basketball teams. So, at best she has given us some frosting for the cake, but she has done virtually nothing to improve the size or quality of the cake.

---

They increased the assistants compensation pool...anything that possibly helped with that is a good thing.
IF you are saying you will only be happy with her if she pushes to fire Wilcox and Fox, then fine, that's at least honest, and is pre-emptive of any other discussion. But, and others can correct me if I am wrong, I don't see any one else in Cal history who has exceeded her support of the last few years. IF the results aren't quick enough for you, okay, then, hey, what else is there to discuss really....

Knowlton has a more mixed legacy. He is a better fundraiser that his predecessors, a low standard, but is a good fundraiser, which is a lot of what a modern AD does.

He also did a lot of cost cutting, which in particular hit male sport roster sizes, and got Cal compliant with Title 9. That is a bigger deal than most people think. Cal I/A is in a much better position than most college athletic programs coming out of C-19 - most have huge deficits. If players start getting paid directly there is a huge day of reckoning coming for many schools.

In many ways Knowlton has been the opposite of Sandy Barbour. He has a more sound department financially, but he also, so far, been a failure on the sports side. His men's basketball pick, which was the result of a terrible hiring process, is not the answer, something even a 12 year old would understand. He lost a very good men's soccer coach to Arizona, and replaced him with the head coach from Grand Canyon college. The women's basketball coach, who had a great resume, so far has managed to finish last in the conference every year. School is out on Kwinta, but his team ranking is at number 42, and Wright did better. His volleyball hire went 0-20 in conference. Spencer and Johnson may be decent hires, but it is too early know. Point is he Knowlton had no proven good hires at a school that traditionally attracts top talent in non-revenue sports, and seems to have picked some real losers as well.

And then there is that the teams with existing coaches that are not exactly doing well. Cal is sinking in the Director's Cup standings, and a lot of teams that were competitive for conference and national title are on the wane. Most importantly, football is mired in mediocrity. Thankfully, aquatics keeps chugging along as long as Knowlton keeps his distance.

mbBear said:

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Golden One said:

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mbBear said:

---

Golden One said:

---

Big C said:

---

fat_slice said:

---

Dgoldnbaer said:

---

That's why he was hired - to say what he does, behave as he does. Can't stand the idiot. Perhaps it's time we go after the person who hired him!!!

---

Been saying that for a while. We need the anti-Christ. Our swimming program has always been great - he gets no credit for that. He's tanking our revenue programs so our swimming program will drown along with them in due time...Christ being supportive of football is the biggest scam in Cal athletics history ..bigger than Bozeman's bucks!

---

If you compare Chancellor Christ with her predecessors going back 50 years or so, she is probably the most athletics-friendly, athletics-advocating Chancellor we have had... and I doubt it's close. Granted, she needs some help hiring ADs (forget if she hired the previous guy). Not to say she is great, but look at the other guys, who bordered on downright hostile to football and basketball (although Albert Bowker did attend most every home basketball game).

---

That's damning Christ with very faint praise. She talks a good game, but she has done absolutely nothing during her tenure to get results. Words and smiles mean nothing. Cal has continued its slide into football and basketball oblivion under her watch.

---

So the posts below are wrong? She didn't lead the debt re-working? Also, it's your belief that she had nothing to do in terms of supporting the grad programs to help hold on to athletes?
Okay, good to know...thanks.

---

The debt re-working has done absolutely nothing, as best I can tell, to improve the results on the field or on the court. And the grad programs are surely a positive, but they have had minimal impact on wins for our football and basketball teams. So, at best she has given us some frosting for the cake, but she has done virtually nothing to improve the size or quality of the cake.

---

They increased the assistants compensation pool...anything that possibly helped with that is a good thing.
IF you are saying you will only be happy with her if she pushes to fire Wilcox and Fox, then fine, that's at least honest, and is pre-emptive of any other discussion. But, and others can correct me if I am wrong, I don't see any one else in Cal history who has exceeded her support of the last few years. IF the results aren't quick enough for you, okay, then, hey, what else is there to discuss really....

---

She hired Knowlton, a bad fit with little relevant experience, gave him a big raise and then, even after horrible results, a 7 year extension. The result of that will be her legacy with regards to athletics.

While some say she is "the best" chancellor ever for athletics (seems like that is often said of whomever is there at the time), right now she looks like the worst to me.

A poster said she walks around campus in a red overcoat?