Shocky1 said:
socal, joshua martin is black & got a 3.67 gpa and wuz not cleared off the wait list by berkeley admissions
quinn tedford is white & got a significantly lower gpa & got accepted by berkeley admissions (to his credit quinn earned his degree)
if you gotta head coach that can successfully recruit the best athletes on planet earth (i.e. mcdonalds all americans) & potentially compete for a final four during march madness than you make an exception for his son, the incremental value of the tens of millions of dollars in additional donations to the university is for the greater good in the trade off for one admission spot
you disagree & that's fine, life is not linear
I think you two should just agree to disagree on this point. Quinn Tedford is not relevant, IMHO, because that was a different time, and the level of demand for admission to Cal is undoubtedly greater now than it was then. The argument about Martin's son being AA is a decent one, but that ship sailed with Prop. 209. Also, I must admit that my view on this is that socioeconomic status should be given more consideration, and race less, in deciding when to special admit applicants. I'm not sure bringing in upper-middle-class kids of other races really adds that much to diversity. What you need is diversity of experiences, but that's just my opinion.
This also goes back to SCT's point, which I agree with, that Cal doesn't need athletics to attract applicants. The research on whether athletics also leads to non-athletic donations to a university is also mixed, as I understand it.
Basically, the issue is really whether Knowlton believes basketball can be successful enough to generate more money that it's generating now to support non-revenue sports, or whether he's sufficiently fearful of donors pulling general support for the athletic department to do something about the basketball disaster, even when he'd rather not.
We'll know once the hire is announced. IMHO, if it's Miles or another retreat, or really anyone probably other than Pasternack or Abdur-Rahim, we'll no he doesn't care, and I can spend my Thursday nights and weekend afternoons working on my two-plane swing at the driving range or the course, rather than wasting time at Haas Pavilion.