calumnus said:Cal8285 said:There may be correlation between affinity bias and race, but that doesn't mean skin color affects the decision.GMP said:BearGoggles said:So I suppose I should ask, did Williams hire Wyking because of affinity bias? This is all very reductive and reflective of a different type of bias.GMP said:KoreAmBear said:I'm wondering if you are referring to "subconscious bias" or mean it a little more harshly with subconscious racism. I totally buy the narrative though that Fox is someone that Knowlton is very comfortable with and therefore is being very lenient. I also agree that with Wyking, that was just clown ball and I think letting Don Coleman do his thing compounded it. Now with Fox it's not necessarily clown ball (although that 17-1 run was just that a total embarrassment) but just bad and boring. And to make it worse, he is a much worse recruiter than Wyking. However, he really knows how to spin for self preservation, and therefore a lot of his excuses are probably plausible to Knowlton.GMP said:movielover said:
How you jump from 'feeling comfortable with someone' to subconscious racism is interesting, and common for some today with the "woke" culture.
First, if W Jones was the next John Wooden, he wouldn't be the #2 assistant at UW. Is that racism? BTW, I don't have the time, but if he was a coaching legend he'd be an in demand off season speaker / instructor. He seems to like professional acting.
Fox has nine 20 win seasons on his resume, not bad, but inflated w longer seasons and the CBI. 15 years HC experience vs 2 losing years (16-47). Yes, Fox was fired after going 18-15, 7-11 in league.
I'm not defending Fox, but dealing with alumni, graduating student athletes, and not having scandals matters to many ADs.
Re the bold: Perhaps. But in my opinion it is the older generations (Boomers and older in particular) who find no objection to hiring based off of "affinity" aka comfort level which has continued institutional racism for decades after hiring based on race was explicitly outlawed. Interestingly, as well, is that my "woke" opinion will survive long after the older generations die off. Progress.
Re the rest, you miss my point. I am not arguing Jones was good or should have been retained. Both coaches suck and deserved to be fired. Jones was. Fox wasn't.
When is the investigation on the swim team going to be completed and will Knowlton be held accountable by being fired?
Thanks, KAB. Looks like the more accepted term is "affinity bias."
Knowlton hired Fox because he was cheap, had a decent track record that (wrongly) suggested a low floor, and because Knowlton was not wanting to take a chance on a guy without a track record after Wyking's flame out. It was perceived as the safe choice and, again, Fox's came cheap. It was a bad hire and then Knowlton compounded the mistake by allowing Fox to hire a terrible staff that did not compensate for Fox's known recruiting deficiencies.
The single biggest problem with Fox has been awful recruiting. I actually think he's a decent in game coach and even possibly good at developing players. But the talent he's started with has been well below Pac12 standards. Lars is a good example. He's actually improved a lot from his first year - but he's still terribly flawed. Too steep a hill to climb.
Given Cal's budget, the right thing to do would have been to swing for the fences with a guy like Gates. DeCuire would have been an ok choice as well, though I think there were bad feelings there and at the time his coaching record was arguably thinner than Foxes.
Fox is a symptom of the larger problem. Nothing will change until Christ and Knowlton decide winning is important. The next hire should be an up and coming lower division coach or high level assistant with recruiting chops. Hire a leader and support him with a staff that complements his skills.
With the right coach, Cal should be very attractive to hoops recruits, as it has been in the past. And with the NBA expected to eliminate the one and done requirement, Cal should be able to compete for the remaining talent that is picking a college with the expectation of staying for 2-4 years (i.e., looking for more than just a basketball factory). Throw in a little NIL $$ and announce a new practice facility, and Cal can be an attractive place to play.
As calumnus said, we don't know if there was affinity bias in the Jones hiring because there's no evidence (other than common skin color) to suggest it. Had Knowlton never said what he said, it wouldn't have even occurred to me that that's what happened. Because as I said previously, while I was initially not thrilled with the Fox hire, he was not wholly unqualified. But Knowlton told us what happened. He picked who he felt more comfortable with. That is affinity bias at work.
As I said, I haven't been watching so I won't speak to Fox's abilities as an in game coach or developer of talent. We all agree the results are beyond poor. It's a shame we still have to have these discussions because he should be fired.
One last thought. I'm curious why you think the NBA ending the requirement players wait one year before entering the NBA will benefit Cal. If the blue blood programs that currently recruit those players who will now instead go to the NBA, then they will have open spots and it seems to me there will essentially be a shift up. I'm not trying to argue, just curious what you mean and why you see it differently.
if Knowlton had said what he said when he hired Fox, but instead hired an African American who had run clean programs and proved pretty definitively that he can be a mediocre P5 coach (and likely no better), and passed over others with a higher ceiling but who weren't as good a cultural fit with Knowlton, it would still be affinity bias, and I'd still be pissed that we got a guy for how he relates to the white administrator in his late 50's as opposed to high school and college male basketball players.
I have zero doubt that affinity bias was at play in the Charmin Smith hire. When the AD with a civil engineering background hires the coach with bachelor's and master's degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford? Hmmmm. . . . difficult for me to believe affinity bias is not at work (and Knowlton's comments weren't as blatant as with Fox, but they still showed affinity bias). Hard to argue racism at work in that instance of affinity bias -- as I say, there may be some correlation to race, but that doesn't make it racism.
When he was hired, I actually felt that Fox at least had a higher floor than the other candidates in play, even if a much lower ceiling, and I think the majority of posters felt the same. It is turning out that Fox's floor is much lower than I thought it could be. I'll be surprised if we're better than 8-24 this year, and it certainly could be worse. Fox as a coach? Others have pointed out players who have not developed, and if you're not watching, then you can't appreciate that the offense is, um, not fun to watch (although the beauty is that I can record a game, use a 20 second skip whenever Cal gets the ball, and almost never miss anything of interest (except maybe a turnover).
For the first time in 44 years, I don't have season tickets, but I still watched Monday (going back and forth between the Warriors and Cal and using DVR recordings to shorten both). I won't go too far out of my way to watch Cal, but still, there is that ugly human tendency to be unable to turn away from a train wreck, and believe me, and the Jones/Fox years have been mostly like watching a train wreck.
Just to clarify, "affinity bias" is human nature and is one means by which past discrimination and segregation get perpetuated in current hiring, even if overt racism is eliminated. Your example of Knowlton having affinity with Smith because of a Masters in Engineering is a good example. His affinity with Fox over DeCuire can be for a variety of reasons.
However, the point is when most hiring managers are white, and they favor for hire and promotion people with similar "backgrounds and experiences" as themselves, ie people for whom they have "affinity," more likely than not that person will be also be a white person, especially if they grew up in segregated neighborhoods like western Massachusetts playing hockey.
In order to avoid affinity bias, a hiring manager needs to be aware of it, so they can be self-aware and hopefully make the best rational hire in spite of it. In Knowlton's explanation of his hiring of Fox, he pretty plainly showed that he is unaware that there is any problem with hiring on the basis of personal affinity, especially when you are a white man hiring a white man over a black man.
It is doubtful Knowlton had any background in this as he has not hired in his previous career as an Army officer or in his brief career as AD at military academies.
A similar example is Wilcox's clear preference to hire coaches from or with ties to the Pacific Northwest. Putting race aside, it may too severely limit the pool and prevent him from hiring the best coach for the job.
Exactly right! And didn't Cal hire someone into a DEI oversight role? Hopefully that person has a keen eye on this never happening again. We cannot have people getting jobs because of these types of biases. And especially in our case where our affinity is to people who suck at their jobs.
