Alkiadt said:
calumnus said:
HKBear97! said:
bluehenbear said:
Well, Mendoza is voting with his feet.
At least the staff will have experience coaching Boise State level talent.
LOL! Cal would need to upgrade the roster to have Boise State talent!
Toler replaced with another guy born and raised in Boise Idaho, so maybe that is the plan?
So we have two coaches raised in Idaho?
So what. Why don't you recognize actual results of those two coaches at previous jobs instead of looking for a theme to bolster your argument?
Was Spav raised there? Bloesch? Sirmon? What's your point?
My point all along has been about recruiting. We need good coaching, but we also need good talent. Wilcox has had the worst recruiting in his going on 9 year stretch compared with every other Cal coach in my lifetime. Low ranked recruiting classes and zero of his recruits drafted by the NFL so far. You just can't win at a P4 level without at least SOME future NFL talent.
Part of that, IMO, is that he has over his going on 9 years predominantly hired his friends, coaches with roots in the Pacific Northwest with a more recent foray into hiring coaches from Texas that has now been abandoned back to Ore-Ida. And other than Musgrave, also from Oregon, no one with NFL credentials.
Recruiting is basically sales. A salesman needs to develop rapport with the recruit and sell them on the product. Rapport is developed when recruits feel they have a lot in common with the recruiter, when they feel comfortable and trust them.
That is why coaches generally are best at recruiting the area they are from, where they know the local high schools, the coaches, the local food, are comfortable and are not a fish out of water. Can walk into a home and feel comfortable making the recruit and their family feel comfortable with him (or her) in return. The best coaches for recruiting Hawaii are from Hawaii. For LA are from LA. For Texas are from Texas. It isn't 100% but it is close. We are recruiting smart athletes so the best recruiters are smart too.
And yes, and I know a lot of people don't like this being said, but generally the best recruiters of young African American student athletes are young and African American. Again, it is about establishing rapport. And the majority of elite P4, future NFL (or NBA) talent is African American. It is just a fact. Or Polynesian coaches to recruit Polynesian kids. It is a matter of rapport.
Now back to the product being sold. It is 4 years being a football (or basketball) player and a student in Berkeley, California. Berkeley is probably the most urban location of any P4 school. You encounter homelessness, uncleanliness, public drug use. But it has great energy, great cafes, foods from all over the world. There used to be rap battles on Durant and Telegraph. A big, diverse student body. Majority Asian and Latino. A big LGTBQ+ population. And Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville is plurality African American. Are campus, more than any other has a long history of social Justice activism. Berkeley also is one of the most progressive places in the US. A big positive if you are progressive, but a big negative if you are not. Oh and the academics are elite, but not easy.
So the object is to find and convince the highest rated athletes who can handle the academics to come to Berkeley. First up is local elite athletes like Jason Kidd and Marshawn Lynch (or Najee Harris who almost transferred back from Alabama) that already love Berkeley. Next is elite athletes who are comfortable in Berkeley and view it as a positive instead of a negative. That will generally be players from urban areas that are majority minority and progressive. Plenty of exceptions, yes, but players from the Bay Area, LA, Hawaii, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, DC, New York are our natural recruiting grounds. Or just elite athletes anywhere, even overseas, who are smart and progressive. But recruiters with ties to those places are generally going to be the best recruiters of those places.
This is how we landed every 5 star who was not local, they came to Cal because of Berkeley, not in spite of Berkeley. Shareef, Jaylen Brown, Demitris Robertson, nearly LeBron. Not at the same level but Justice Sueing, Not too coincidentally most came when we had African American coaches who sold Cal's history of social Justice activism. But even Olympic Star Missy Franklin came to Cal for Berkeley: "to study in Berkeley cafes." The fact I mention so many basketball players versus football might be an indication of why our football team has been bad more often than not. Meanwhile Stanford went to multiple Rose Bowls with Tyrone Willingham and David Shaw (and rebounded from Walsh II with Denny Green). I know people will misunderstand this, but the idea is leaning into our brand, being progressive.
The concept in economics is "comparative advantage." Berkeley is our comparative advantage. It is clearly not for everyone, but for those who like it, or even love it there is nothing to compare. That is why the Calgorithm brands us the "woke mob."
The best salespeople for a product are people who know, understand and love a product. Alums like Burl Toler. But Ben Braun loved Berkeley. Tony Franklin loved Berkeley.
My point in the thread that Greg locked is that if a coach is from a rural area and is politically conservative, he is likely to best have rapport with recruits (and existing players) who are from rural areas and are conservative. However, if you are conservative and view Berkeley as a negative, you have nearly every other P4 school to choose from. You would probably only come to Cal if Cal was your only P4 offer. This goes for coaches and players. So we lower quality coaches and lower quality players than we would otherwise and get lower quality results and have to pay more for them,
Moreover, any coach that doesn't like Berkeley is going to have a hard time selling Berkeley and probably wouldn't. He would recruit around it or seem dishonest. The results would be lower talent levels than every other P4 school.
WifeIsAFurd posted a link indicating that a high percentage of our current players are conservative. That does not refute what I am saying, it actually confirms it. It shows why our recruiting classes under Wilcox are so poorly ranked (but with our best recruiting at WR, RB LB and DB).
Assuming Toler's replacement is another guy from Ore-Ida, maybe he is an exception. Maybe he falls in love with Berkeley and will be great at selling it. Maybe we will not have a talent exodus but instead we will have a talent infusion. Because we need better coaching, but we need talent too. Moreover we need elite talent if we want to compete at an elite level and the way to get elite talent to Berkeley (for less NIL than otherwise).
I guess all of this is moot. We will see how the new staff does,
