Im devastated

SFCALBear72 said:

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On the flipside, would you say that this coaching duo has left the program in very good shape and is ready for another top coach to step in and continue the program's excellence?

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Depends on how much the AD is willing to invest to keep the team moving in the right direction. The bills are coming due for our ACC move and I have to wonder if this played a role in their departure.

Yup what worries me is:

1) who are our AD is
2) yes im sure money is going to be a factor in Cal Athletics overall
3) which gymnasts follow the Howells to Clemson: current or commits

What i feel good about:

1) For the overwhelming most part, these ladies love Cal and understand the importance of a Cal degree
2) their practice facility was recently renovated and upgraded
3) the ACC will probably pressure Cal Athletics to maintain the gymnastics quality. The ACC gymnastics is a recent addition to the ACC and Cal is marquee program being a consistent top 5-10 program.
4) Women's gymnastics overall is growing sport overall and the gymternet (believe me its a very vocal thing) love Cal gymnastics. Cal will be an attractive program for high quality coaches and assistant coaches

A couple of names that have been mentioned for HC:

Taylor Spears - Assistant Coach at Arizona, she was a Oklahoma gymnast. Beam is her speciality. Good recruiter.

Linas Gavieka - former Assistant Coach at University of Denver, long-time assistant there and helped build that program into a power. Looking for a HC opportunity. Good recruiter. Vault & Bars.

If you hear of other candidates, please post.

I think if Kyana George, former Cal great and current assitant coach at Texas Womans University, had a couple more seasons under her belt, she would be a great candidate. Whoever gets hired should hire her as assistant.

Have already posted extensively on the football board so not going to replay everything here but baseball is way down the list of sports to be cut if that is necessary. Baseball and softball are miles ahead of any other sports except football and basketball when it comes to media exposure. Since no sports after football and basketball offer any revenue opportunity the criteria to keep them becomes do they help with the branding and exposure for Cal athletics. Sports like soccer, swimming and diving, tennis, field hockey etc. all are fairly big teams with similar expenses to baseball but offer zero media coverage opportunities no matter how successful they are. It's a "maybe" vs a "no chance" so the maybe wins every time.

Baseball has had a 500 or better conference record 6 of the last 10 years, basketball 3 times in that span, and football 0 times in that span. Baseball has had a player win the "Baseball Heisman" as the best player in the nation in the last 10 years. This is a program that is pretty successful

During the last two months baseball and softball were dominant players on the conference networks, and beginning this week will become dominant players on ESPN for May and June. ESPN is still the leader by far in college sports coverage. It at least offers Cal a chance to increase its brand and awareness which indirectly helps the major sports. Swimming, soccer, tennis, water polo, etc. all get zero coverage. Cal is great at swimming, and it gets absolutely zero coverage, and absolutely zero benefit. So, with similar revenues and expenses, just the chance that baseball and softball can help with branding and awareness makes them a better value proposition than any other non revenue producing sports. It's just a fact.

I've also posted extensively on that board how women's gymnastics is the fastest growing college sport and it's media exposure if growing rapidly. This is a sport Cal should be investing in. In fact, I would divert money from basketball to women's gymnastics where Cal is currently a national player and national brand so an investment can have an impact and result in a large increase in revenue in 2-3 years. It's time to consider opportunity costs and invest in sports with high growth potential and no long history of dominant players that have already claimed all the branding potential. Women's gymnastics is that sport.