GivemTheAxe said:
Personally I trust the HC selection smarts of UO and UW much more than i trust the Cal's HC selection smarts or those of any other person on this board who have no financial incentive or resources to come up with the right choice.
First of all, there's been no indication that UW offered Wilcox.
Secondly, the Oregon offer thing reeks of 1. an internal Oregon issue (they allegedly had a vocal contingent of prominent football alumni who wanted an Oregon guy who would stay long term and that made Wilcox the only real option) and 2. an elitist attitude. UW, whose coaching selections you laud, did the same stuff a decade ago when they hired Gilbertson. He was a UW guy who could've only failed at Cal because Cal. How'd that work out?
Lastly, and most importantly, we have to think for ourselves. We have 5 years of seeing Wilcox up close. Who cares how well he interviews or what Oregon thinks of him? If you had an employee who was subpar and suddenly he got an offer for a lateral move to a more prestigious company, would you suddenly go from "we should probably replace that guy" to "we must keep him at all costs! Google wants him so he must be amazing!"? If you were dating a girl and it wasn't really working out and then you saw someone out of her league hit on her, would you suddenly propose to her? After all, that guy likes her so clearly she's a keeper. Or would you say "ok, go ahead" because you know the employee doesn't deliver or the girl isn't right for you because you can think independently of what one other person thought?
The argument over whether Oregon offered him the job or not is irrelevant. Cal should care about if Wilcox is the right guy for Cal. Whether Oregon's AD wants him is irrelevant to that decision.
Maybe I'm wrong. Think of all the time and other resources our football and basketball programs could save if they stopped looking for talented players who would succeed here to recruit and just blindly offered whoever it's reported that Oregon offered or UW offered. They've had better players than us the last several years so we should just offer whoever they want, clearly we should just trust their judgement instead of wasting time on film and talking to the players and etc.
I approach this as a two step process. 1. What do we want to accomplish and in what time frame (e.g. conference championship in the next 3-5 years) 2. Can the current guy accomplish it (e.g. lol). If the answer to 2 is probably not then find someone else who at least has a shot. The coach, given financial and other constraints, should be the person who maximizes the chance of #1 happening. What Oregon thinks is completely irrelevant.