If you want to be depressed about Cal athletics and Cal in general, write an email to Jim Knowlton. You'll get a stock response that'll confirm your worst suspicious about what the university thinks about revenue sports.
Actually it's not depressing. It's liberating. You'll stop banging your head against the wall and accept the reality that Cal sucks and is committed to sucking forever.
Bottom line, Cal will NEVER be good at football or MBB again. Those magical seasons when Cal finished in the top 10 in football or made it to the Sweet Sixteen are gone for good.
Forget about a Rose Bowl. Final Four - LOL, NEVER.
The school wants 7 wins in football and and NIT MBB team *at best* and the *DO NOT* want excellence. If they have to, they will cut the teams down to avoid excellence. I'm not exaggerating. If FB gets more than 8 wins, they'll push Wilcox out the door before the team gets good.
Wyking won't be fired, because he's EXACTLY what the university wants - a lousy coach. But if by some accident Cal found a good coach and started winning, the school would sabotage him too.
Don't waste money on this athletic program. If you care about quality athletics, don't donate one dime to the university, and tell them explicitly why you're not donating. It won't make much of a difference, but at least it'll bring you some clarity.
Cal won't change - they'll never support even above-average revenue sports anymore. I won't change, either - I believe an elite school like Cal should insist on elite revenue sports. So I'm walking away. I'm not going to let a university that insists on taking people's money only so it can keep its collective head up its arse forever get the best of me. If you care about quality athletics, you should let it go. It won't happen at Cal. Ever.
If you genuinely like 7-win football seasons and mediocre-or-worse basketball, you can be a Cal fan or buy a lifetime supply of Clippers season tickets, it's the same thing.