BearlyCareAnymore said:

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socaltownie said:

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barsad said:

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I can't compete with BCA's bloviating, nor would I ever want to.
But for those of you here who want to test his hypothesis that Cal is just the Ducks minus a billionaire donor (I guess he's referring to Phil Knight), please again just CHECK the timeline. The Ducks turned from joke to ain't-no-joke in 2000, at least a decade and a half before any of us were talking about this NIL cluster-truck. Since 2000 the Ducks have notched 17 double-digit W seasons, we've had 2. Yes, it's money. but it's also a dozen things you can't buy with money, like reputation, fanbase that cares and shows up to pack the stadium, a sharp development and management staff in the AD, executive buy-in from the Chancellor/President on down, and so on. We can build these things (except maybe the student and alumni interest, that has to be organic), it's just not going to be solved by Madsen finding a rich guy with deep pockets, so I've stopped putting that on my "reach-goals" Christmas list.

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I think we are CLOSER in BB than we ever can be in FB.

Now I realize I am taking an extreme example. But I was JUST THERE 3 weeks ago on business

You know how many PRACTICE fields UT football has? THREE. Do you know that there are direction signs all over Austin directing people. Their Football dorm looks like a palace. They have about 100,000 square feet of floor space in their book store for FOOTBALL swag. It boggles the mind how quantumly different it is and I really think the powers that be don't really get the gap between "cal" and a "real" football school. That isn't saying we should become UT. But it is to say in a zero sum activity like sports it probably is important to benchmark ;-)

The good news is that in MBB we are closing. We finally solved the practice gym albatross. Made significant work on support that MM needs. Aligned the university. Working in an enviroment where most schools ALSO are emphasizing FB so we are not horrifically disadvantaged.

And I think the underappreciated secret sauce by the football crowd

The East bay is a FAR better place for youth BB than it it is FB. We have SEVERAL HOF and close to HOF kids that grew up playing hoop in the east bay. We have a dearth of the same in FB. A fair analysis of environmental advantage would place MBB higher than FB. But we are in a world of TV contracts and thus "all in".

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I don't disagree with anything you say here, but it misses the big point that at Cal winning in basketball just doesn't bring in the dollars that winning in football does. If you asked which program was more likely to win I'd say basketball. If you asked me which was more likely to increase revenue by $20m I'd laugh because basketball has absolutely zero chance of doing that and football actually could realistically accomplish it. That is the primary reason Cal is throwing in with football

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