Shocky1;842821439 said:
...i get coach martin's 3 year accumulated frustration with the inability of cal administration (mike williams, ashwin puri & jeremey wang, referred to as the "amateur hour") to build the dedicated practice facility that he requested on almost day 1 which resulted in the team practicing 3 times this season in a local high school gym (he was told after returning from a road trip that the only available time on campus was at 5:30 am) but he did not act honorably during his final days in berkeley, not even close...
Well, that's certainly part of the problem. No incoming coach should be demanding facility upgrades. Promising anything of the sort to the next coach would be a tremendous mistake. Work with what you are given, that's what you signed up for. There are a lot of good things to embrace about the Cal basketball program and university. Being frustrated by the challenges is just an excuse.
Since the start of my Cal fandom (2005), Cal Athletics has made some significant progress on facilities. The most obvious is football. For the period between 2004-08, Cal Football was the second-best program in the Pac-10 by most metrics. It was argued that facilities (stadium + gym) were the last hurdle holding us back from joining the elite ranks. After $450+ million in upgrades, what have we found? Our recruiting is worse than before, there seems to be more player injuries, and on-field success has been elusive. Did I expect the program + recruiting improve after renovations? Truthfully, yes.
At the very least, I expected both higher floor, higher ceiling for the program. As it turns out, we found an even lower floor in both performance and recruiting after the renovation.
Baseball has been pining for upgrades for as long as I could remember. Adding lights would allow for night-time play, which would bring more fans who can't come to afternoon games and also allow for hosting post-season games. A new video board would improve the fan experience. These were installed in 2012. Along with that magical World Series run, attendance did improve over the short-term, but has settled to pre-improvement figures. Even with that flash of success, donor sympathy from the recent cut, and some minor upgrades to Evans Field, the program has failed to capitalize. Baseball is just as bad as before, continues to bleed money, and still hasn't figured out a sustainable solution for paying its own way. And, if you listen closely enough, there are baseball fans who still complain about the west-facing diamond, and the on-shore flow making it difficult to hit home runs.
In 2012, a temporary press box and new bleachers were added to allow Cal Softball to host a post-season game at Levine-Fricke Field. From 2002 (National Championship) to 2012 (Pac 12 Championship), Cal finished worse than fifth only once. It seemed like a great investment for a quality program. Since the improvements, Cal Softball has not had a winning conference record in any season, and has actually finished fifth
or worse every year in conference.
The new aquatics facility just opened this past year, and we'll see how that shapes the fortunes of the swimming and water polo teams. I can't really comment on water polo recruiting, but at least for swimming, women's recruiting has been off (even through progress of construction) and even with a diving platform for the first time, neither teams have found an impact diver who can score points at NCAA's.
Hellman has had significant improvements, as well. Both tennis teams were pretty good before, they're still pretty good now. As far as I can tell, domestic recruiting has improved, and better facilities has meant less dependency on international recruits.
At least in the recent past,
upgrades to facilities have had neutral-negative impact on teams' actual performance. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Coaches should advocate for their teams, that's to be expected. However, given the state of on-campus affairs, we (as alums, donors, school administrators) need to do a better job of discerning wants vs. needs, and ROI. The examples above reflect any combination of programs leveraging recent success into facilities upgrades (which does not necessarily correlate into better teams), coaches blaming facilities as excuse for lack of on-field/court success, and in some cases, there was an actual need.