socaltownie said:
PtownBear1 said:
Whether it's negligence, incompetence, or malpractice, bottom line is it's bad and has been for half a decade. Any other school, fans would have revolted long ago. If Cal basketball was a public company, I would imagine the stock would be worthless and shareholders would have filed class action suits and senior management would be under investigation.
Feels like that has happened with significant fall off in attendence and interests (and I assume donations).
It feels like change will happen next year. We are going to finish at the bottom/near bottom and miss the tournament now for 6 straight years (I think that is right). Cal never has been AMAZING in the modern era but it is a program that sniffs the tournament and the NIT more frequently than that. Hopefully (and I know misplaced) we can hire someone who can turn the program around and actually recruit.
SCT triggering one of my pent up rants in 3 . .. 2 . . 1. . .
SCT & PtownBear1 are ABSOLUTELY spot on. And really turns the focus from FOX to Knowlton. As one of those donors who stopped last season - the discussions involving Knowltons staff ALWAYS focused around COVID as an excuse. I started complaining before the pandemic and held on for a year or two during, but not last year. The AD clearly felt that they could milk the COVID excuse for quite a while. The impression I got was that Knowlton simply didn't want to deal with the bball problem and needed as much time as he could get.
I asked candidly how chairback renewals were doing and how many other donors were buying the COVID line. The person I spoke to admitted that very few were and most were like me and stopping their donations. That person subsequently left Cal.
I was willing to give FOX and Knowlton a chance at first, but this behavior from Knowlton's staff (and him) is really what stopped my support (and probably many others). If it was handled better, I may have been able to deal with FOX's shortcomings (well, probably not). But when it became sooo obvious that Knowlton simply did not want to deal with Bball - then I gave up.
ps. There were many other details around my discussions about what COULD be done to deal with FOX's shortcomings. It was clear that Knowlton wanted none of it. I'm sure bigger donors may have been treated different (better?), but that's also part of the problem.