calumnus said:
I can no longer find that photo in the Cal Athletic Department's archives, so yeah that could be faulty memory/exaggeration. I do remember it as a very large group photo however.
Sandoval, who I remember well from when I was a student in the 80s, was definitely not in the photo. It appears he had retired and his replacement had not yet been hired.
I covered the Cal T&F team as a contributing reporter for
Bearinsider under Chris Avery.
More importantly, I was a volunteer for the program from 2003 - 2010.
Tony Sandoval wasnt in that photo.
I traveled with the team, hung out with the coaching staff after meets, and got to know the Cal administrators who oversaw and managed Cal track and field ( Foti Mellis and Teresa Kuehn Gould ). Havent been associated at all with the program since I worked the Pac-10's that Cal hosted in 2010. That was my last meet. Sadly, the Cal bureaucracy has had a well-documented track record of being as tone-deaf and incompetent in T&F as it appears that they are with the revenue sports like Football and Basketball.
Sandoval was initially hired as an interim coach after Cal forced out Olympian Chris Huffins. Associate AD Teresa Kuhn Gould spent an entire summer interviewing several national championship coaches (distance guru Jerry Schumacher of Wisco who now heads University of Oregon AND the Bowerman Track Club, Greg Kraft of ASU, etc) who would never come to Cal in the first place for the money being offered. As a result, Gould came up empty handed. Cal assistant coach Tony Sandoval was their default hire from within. Even though the program consistently finished near the bottom of the Conference, Sandoval was given an extension by Mike Williams. Sound familiar?
Unfortunately, we have an athletic administration that doesnt care about winning.
Moreover, they lack the ability to have any kind of "vision" or long-term strategic plan for winning.
They are typical government workers who lack creativity, brains, and accountability.
I suspect that they wouldnt last more than 3 months at a job in Silicon Valley.
As long as you run a "clean" program, dont go over budget, and dont nag the AD for a fully-funded program, better pay for your assistants, and money towards new equipment, you can be left alone as a coach to literally run a program "forever" that never wins.
"Cults don't end well. They really don't."