Shocky1 said:

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Alkiadt said:

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calfanz said:

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Yes, the end is finally getting near.

We have an entire week before we head down to Stanford to Play the Cardinal.

We can put in an interim coach, and give him a few days to prop the guys up for their stretch run. Every game, every quarter is important. No reason to waste any more time with Coach Mark Fox.

Mr. Knowlton if you actually care about the Fans or the Student-Athletes, you will bring in new blood NOW!

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Nothing will happen without donors buying out Fox.
Knowlton does not have the funds to do it. And he won't get it from the chancellor. Not a knock on her, but it's the economics that count.

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knowlton doesn't need the chancellor to fire fox, he doesn't want to take any action so he's putting the ball back Iii the donors court.despite the fact it was his gross mismanagement that extended fox's contract thru 2025..the athletic dept has the funds to buy out fox but that would mean streaming expenses for his 30+ empire of sports almost nobody cares about & he's not gonna do that

plus chancellor christ is probably gonna retire in the next couple of months

knowton grew up in maassachusetts playing hockey & never really had much interest in football & basketball, his knowledge of both is minimal (he told me directly that musgrave was a "genius")

this is all about his protecting his the cashflow that is necessary to pay his annual $1,300,000+ salary & the bureaucrats he's surrounded himself with in his ineptitude

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Alkiadt said:

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Shocky1 said:

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agreed, the chancellor who may be gone in a couple of months will not pay the buyout from her discretionary fund

but knowlton got the ability to make the buyout with athletic department funds if he chooses to do so but it will require him to start making the tough decisions that will eventually need to be made such as cutting sports which will require reclassifying rugby as a club sport & cutting baseball even to tho he's signed an agreement of support thru 2035...and it would require managing expenses for his entire department including markeisha everrett's bloated 11 person communications department which could be rightsized to 2-3 people, that's the buyout money right there

why should donors pay for the buyout when he's the dumb azz who extended the head coach thru 2025 without consulting with anybody?

the other major issue is the con artist's $125,000,000+ basketball/olympic sports practice facility which is never gonna be built, there's a better chance of getting hit by an asteroid from uranus than the 1st shovel ever going into the ground on this

alky, we want the same thing, the magic of cal basketball at haas pavilion

we both probably laugh when casual fans say we nobody will want to take the job when there's literally every up & coming assistant coach & mid major head coach including joe pasternak that would jump at the opportunity to make $1,900,000+ in the san francisco bay area building a legit program

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When Birgeneau and Barbour tried to cut baseball and reclassify Rugby to a Club sport, the net was a large financial negative to the campus, (not athletics). There are some campus donating whales that donate to rugby, baseball and water sports....those donors threatened to pull campus donations too. That's why that decision was reversed.

It sounds simple to cut some sports...but it will likely cost the campus some big donors. Many here are overlooking that part of the puzzle when they focus on how the AD can turn things around. There's a much bigger picture.

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socaltownie said:

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Alkiadt said:

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Shocky1 said:

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agreed, the chancellor who may be gone in a couple of months will not pay the buyout from her discretionary fund

but knowlton got the ability to make the buyout with athletic department funds if he chooses to do so but it will require him to start making the tough decisions that will eventually need to be made such as cutting sports which will require reclassifying rugby as a club sport & cutting baseball even to tho he's signed an agreement of support thru 2035...and it would require managing expenses for his entire department including markeisha everrett's bloated 11 person communications department which could be rightsized to 2-3 people, that's the buyout money right there

why should donors pay for the buyout when he's the dumb azz who extended the head coach thru 2025 without consulting with anybody?

the other major issue is the con artist's $125,000,000+ basketball/olympic sports practice facility which is never gonna be built, there's a better chance of getting hit by an asteroid from uranus than the 1st shovel ever going into the ground on this

alky, we want the same thing, the magic of cal basketball at haas pavilion

we both probably laugh when casual fans say we nobody will want to take the job when there's literally every up & coming assistant coach & mid major head coach including joe pasternak that would jump at the opportunity to make $1,900,000+ in the san francisco bay area building a legit program

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When Birgeneau and Barbour tried to cut baseball and reclassify Rugby to a Club sport, the net was a large financial negative to the campus, (not athletics). There are some campus donating whales that donate to rugby, baseball and water sports....those donors threatened to pull campus donations too. That's why that decision was reversed.

It sounds simple to cut some sports...but it will likely cost the campus some big donors. Many here are overlooking that part of the puzzle when they focus on how the AD can turn things around. There's a much bigger picture.

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The issue has to be though then the "tax" that is imposed upon those donations.

Lets say that Baseball is important to donor X and they make their general donation contingent to baseball remaining. Now that is GREAT for Baseball (and the general endownment) but who gets hurt on this is the other sports who have to subsidize baseball directly (and the GE indirectly).

I am all fine and dandy with targetted donations. Happens ALL the time. But a good university will really think about how this hurts the overall strategic mission and the main issue right now is that we have sports that require subsidies (because of the nature of TV viewership) and who is paying those subsidies are the 2 revenue sports. To add fuel to the fire its is middle class afrtican american kids who largely are paying it - to the benfit of upper middle class white kids whose entry to cal is facilitated by playing non -revenue sports.

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BeachedBear said:

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Everyone is overthinking this.

Just terminate Fox for cause. Or fraud. Or many other reasons he has violated his contract in four years pretending to be a coach.

If that doesn't work, just hand him a shovel - and tell him to start work on the dedicated practice facility. I bet he'll stop digging and quit in a week.

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SFCityBear said:

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BeachedBear said:

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Everyone is overthinking this.

Just terminate Fox for cause. Or fraud. Or many other reasons he has violated his contract in four years pretending to be a coach.

If that doesn't work, just hand him a shovel - and tell him to start work on the dedicated practice facility. I bet he'll stop digging and quit in a week.

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I understand the firing for cause, which I assume is losing too many games, but where is the fraud for which he should be fired? And where has he violated his contract? Just asking.

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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Alkiadt said:

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Shocky1 said:

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agreed, the chancellor who may be gone in a couple of months will not pay the buyout from her discretionary fund

but knowlton got the ability to make the buyout with athletic department funds if he chooses to do so but it will require him to start making the tough decisions that will eventually need to be made such as cutting sports which will require reclassifying rugby as a club sport & cutting baseball even to tho he's signed an agreement of support thru 2035...and it would require managing expenses for his entire department including markeisha everrett's bloated 11 person communications department which could be rightsized to 2-3 people, that's the buyout money right there

why should donors pay for the buyout when he's the dumb azz who extended the head coach thru 2025 without consulting with anybody?

the other major issue is the con artist's $125,000,000+ basketball/olympic sports practice facility which is never gonna be built, there's a better chance of getting hit by an asteroid from uranus than the 1st shovel ever going into the ground on this

alky, we want the same thing, the magic of cal basketball at haas pavilion

we both probably laugh when casual fans say we nobody will want to take the job when there's literally every up & coming assistant coach & mid major head coach including joe pasternak that would jump at the opportunity to make $1,900,000+ in the san francisco bay area building a legit program

---

When Birgeneau and Barbour tried to cut baseball and reclassify Rugby to a Club sport, the net was a large financial negative to the campus, (not athletics). There are some campus donating whales that donate to rugby, baseball and water sports....those donors threatened to pull campus donations too. That's why that decision was reversed.

It sounds simple to cut some sports...but it will likely cost the campus some big donors. Many here are overlooking that part of the puzzle when they focus on how the AD can turn things around. There's a much bigger picture.

---

The issue has to be though then the "tax" that is imposed upon those donations.

Lets say that Baseball is important to donor X and they make their general donation contingent to baseball remaining. Now that is GREAT for Baseball (and the general endownment) but who gets hurt on this is the other sports who have to subsidize baseball directly (and the GE indirectly).

I am all fine and dandy with targetted donations. Happens ALL the time. But a good university will really think about how this hurts the overall strategic mission and the main issue right now is that we have sports that require subsidies (because of the nature of TV viewership) and who is paying those subsidies are the 2 revenue sports. To add fuel to the fire its is middle class afrtican american kids who largely are paying it - to the benfit of upper middle class white kids whose entry to cal is facilitated by playing non -revenue sports.

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I'm assuming you meant basketball as one of the revenue sports, but how can we consider it such, with only a handful of fans buying tickets? TV revenues can't be enough to subsidize much, can they?

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oskidunker said:

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SFCityBear said:

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BeachedBear said:

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Everyone is overthinking this.

Just terminate Fox for cause. Or fraud. Or many other reasons he has violated his contract in four years pretending to be a coach.

If that doesn't work, just hand him a shovel - and tell him to start work on the dedicated practice facility. I bet he'll stop digging and quit in a week.

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I understand the firing for cause, which I assume is losing too many games, but where is the fraud for which he should be fired? And where has he violated his contract? Just asking.

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He has not.

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Big C said:

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Hi SF City! Beached Bear is venting his frustrations. Losing does not constitute "for cause". There are specific stipulations in the contract (doing post-game pressers during the season was identified here as one of those, recently). There is also a "conduct" clause, which is what's often violated in the case of "for cause" terminations.

Coaches whose problem is that they are not succeeding vis-a-vis W/L need to be terminated "without cause". You could edit a "low light" video of plays this season that would be enough to make a Furdie laugh, but it wouldn't be sufficient to warrant a for-cause termination.

One of the things that irks me about Fox (probably 3rd or 4th priority though) is that he does pretty much the bare minimum to promote the program... but makes sure to do those post-game pressers! Okay I guess higher on the list would be having a program more worthy of promoting.

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calumnus said:

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SFCityBear said:

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socaltownie said:

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Alkiadt said:

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Shocky1 said:

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agreed, the chancellor who may be gone in a couple of months will not pay the buyout from her discretionary fund

but knowlton got the ability to make the buyout with athletic department funds if he chooses to do so but it will require him to start making the tough decisions that will eventually need to be made such as cutting sports which will require reclassifying rugby as a club sport & cutting baseball even to tho he's signed an agreement of support thru 2035...and it would require managing expenses for his entire department including markeisha everrett's bloated 11 person communications department which could be rightsized to 2-3 people, that's the buyout money right there

why should donors pay for the buyout when he's the dumb azz who extended the head coach thru 2025 without consulting with anybody?

the other major issue is the con artist's $125,000,000+ basketball/olympic sports practice facility which is never gonna be built, there's a better chance of getting hit by an asteroid from uranus than the 1st shovel ever going into the ground on this

alky, we want the same thing, the magic of cal basketball at haas pavilion

we both probably laugh when casual fans say we nobody will want to take the job when there's literally every up & coming assistant coach & mid major head coach including joe pasternak that would jump at the opportunity to make $1,900,000+ in the san francisco bay area building a legit program

---

When Birgeneau and Barbour tried to cut baseball and reclassify Rugby to a Club sport, the net was a large financial negative to the campus, (not athletics). There are some campus donating whales that donate to rugby, baseball and water sports....those donors threatened to pull campus donations too. That's why that decision was reversed.

It sounds simple to cut some sports...but it will likely cost the campus some big donors. Many here are overlooking that part of the puzzle when they focus on how the AD can turn things around. There's a much bigger picture.

---

The issue has to be though then the "tax" that is imposed upon those donations.

Lets say that Baseball is important to donor X and they make their general donation contingent to baseball remaining. Now that is GREAT for Baseball (and the general endownment) but who gets hurt on this is the other sports who have to subsidize baseball directly (and the GE indirectly).

I am all fine and dandy with targetted donations. Happens ALL the time. But a good university will really think about how this hurts the overall strategic mission and the main issue right now is that we have sports that require subsidies (because of the nature of TV viewership) and who is paying those subsidies are the 2 revenue sports. To add fuel to the fire its is middle class afrtican american kids who largely are paying it - to the benfit of upper middle class white kids whose entry to cal is facilitated by playing non -revenue sports.

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I'm assuming you meant basketball as one of the revenue sports, but how can we consider it such, with only a handful of fans buying tickets? TV revenues can't be enough to subsidize much, can they?

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Definitely a revenue sport.

The PAC-12 shares TV revenues equally so we draft off of UCLA and Arizona.

The question of whether basketball is "profitable" and generates a lot of excess revenue depends a lot on accounting.

Here is a pretty good analysis:
https://writeforcalifornia.com/p/does-cal-still-view-mbb-as-a-revenue

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Cal8285 said:

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KoreAmBear said:

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Remember we had Buh still on salary but doing some desk job for a while? Well we can do something like that with Fox although I would just tell him go take a vacation on admin leave on us, until we get our act together to figure out a buyout (it would be discounted for present value). I would rather not see him shaking his head with a scowl on the bench and his pathetic pressers anymore.

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I don't know why people blame Fox or Knowlton when we can just blame Buh.

I don't understand, however, why anyone would want to play for Fox.

I went to my one (and likely only) game of the season on Sunday, bought seats at a good price on the secondary market way down low, west side between center court and the end of the Cal bench. I had a nice view of Fox for the game, and with that small crowd, from that distance you could hear a lot.

What is truly remarkable is that the shaking his head with a scowl is constant, whether he is on the bench or standing closer to center court to call out a play, whether things are going well for the Bears (which wasn't much in that game) or poorly. Harriman at least knows how to be encouraging players at times and not being constantly disgusted and contemptuous. The muttering of f bombs from Fox is quite frequent, so much that my wife called the f bomb "the official swear word of the Golden Bears basketball team." To be fair, however, he drops his god damns in there, too.

My wife was amazed that Fox could spend two whole hours constantly looking angry, annoyed, irritated, and/or contemptuous. In my opinion, the contemptuous is the worst part. Express an attitude of contempt towards your players and it is hard to get 40 minutes of max effort out of them. And why would anyone sign up to play for this guy who shows such contempt for his players, and it is there on his face for everyone to see? Even if they're playing poorly, be a coach, not a contemptuous jerk.

I realize that Sunday's game was overall pretty horrific, but we played pretty good D for 15 minutes. And for the whole game, some (not all) of the 3's we gave up were tough shots that you have to live with if they go in.

With 5 minutes left in the half, we were up 12-11. 11 points surrendered in 15 minutes! Is that a D problem? OSU had the ball near the end of a well defended possession, and Akanno, shooting 24% from 3 coming into the game, hits a desperation 3 as the shot clock expires with 4:54 left in the half. Okay, maybe Newell could have gotten a little closer because Akanno didn't have any time to drive past him, but otherwise you don't really want to be to tight on the 24% 3 point shooter who can drive past you. Lars then got 3 of his 5 points (fouled by Akanno on his layup, hits the and-one), Cal back up 15-14. We play another 28 seconds of good D and Akanno scores in the paint as the shot clock expires, maybe Roberson should have gotten more help because the shot clock was expiring and there probably wasn't time for a pass and score. Looking at video of the telecast, Monty and Robinson were (justifiably) praising the D on that possession, but it was the possession that gave OSU the lead for good at 16-15, and arguably there was a lapse at the end. Akanno gets a deflection on the next Cal possession, OSU gets the ball, and with around 10 seconds left on the shot clock, Akanno gets a decent look and hits a 3, getting some space again perhaps because he was shooting 24% coming into the game.

Fox calls timeout with 3:13 left in the half, there is no form of encouragement for what has been right on D, just total Fox negativity. OK, maybe he needed to make some adjustments, Akanno has now hit his third 3 of the game, so point out that the game plan wasn't to guard him close but he's hot from 3, and change it up a little. Maybe Fox did that, I don't know, but Fox was clearly not being at all encouraging, just displaying that attitude of anger, annoyance, irritation, and contempt.

I'm thinking, I hope Fox's attitude doesn't cause the team to go into the tank. My wife agreed. Guess what? The team goes into the tank for the rest of the half, the Bears don't score again, have a really stupid end of the half possession with a desperation Askew 3 pointer with enough time on the clock for OSU to get a transition 2 pointer at the horn and we're now down 27-15.

And the loss was because of poor D? If there was poor D for much of the last 23 minutes, I think it was largely because Fox's attitude made for worse D. And when the team scores 15 points in the first half and 30 total in the first 34 minutes (before OSU up 28 quits playing hard and yields 18 points in the last six minutes), I don't know how you have a postgame presser and blame the D. I seriously think Buh deserves about as much blame as the D.

Then there was a second half Fox interaction with the officials that drove me crazy. With around 7 minutes left in the game, Okafor blocks a shot down low but the ball goes right to OSU for a put back, OSU now up 56-30. The ball is inbounded quickly and Brown goes pretty quickly. Fox is standing right in front of me on the sidelines so I see him signaling calmly for Cal's final timeout, not sure when he started. The refs don't grant a timeout, Brown is pushing the ball, he sees an opening and drives to the bucket but slips and can't get rid of the ball before he is out of bounds.

Fox is pissed at the refs for not granting a timeout. Since it isn't the last two minutes of the second half or an overtime period, either Fox has to have called it before the ball was inbounded or a player has to call it with a live ball. I'm not sure if Fox thinks he called it before the ball was inbounded (if he did, he didn't yell for it and Cal inbounded quickly), or if he thinks a Cal player saw his signal and called for a timeout while Brown was pushing ahead (fast action where it would be hard to see a player off the ball calling a TO).

In any event, one of the refs responds to Fox from across the court, "My bad." I'm not sure why it was his bad, maybe it was, maybe he's just trying to placate Fox. Fox, however, is having none of that. The ref repeats his "My bad." Fox is disgusted, and goes ahead and calls his last timeout. Towards the end of the timeout, the ref is by the Cal bench talking with Fox again, and Fox is still pissed at the ref. The ref is calmly trying to explain something to Fox, but Fox just wants to be disgusted with the ref, even though the ref took the blame. The expression I read on the ref's face was an exasperated, eye-rolling, "What a jerk" expression. What a great way to have a good relationship with the officials, you can't simply accept a "my bad" and move on when you're down 26 late in the game, instead acting contemptuously toward the ref and making him think you're a jerk for the next time for the next time he calls your game.

I wish Knowlton could say, "My bad," fire Fox, and move on. If the Bears were winning, I still wouldn't want Fox as coach. If the price of winning is having a guy like that as coach, I'd rather lose. But having a guy like that in order to have the worst team in Cal history? Good grief.

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SFCityBear said:

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BeachedBear said:

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Everyone is overthinking this.

Just terminate Fox for cause. Or fraud. Or many other reasons he has violated his contract in four years pretending to be a coach.

If that doesn't work, just hand him a shovel - and tell him to start work on the dedicated practice facility. I bet he'll stop digging and quit in a week.

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I understand the firing for cause, which I assume is losing too many games, but where is the fraud for which he should be fired? And where has he violated his contract? Just asking.

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