The Benson Blog: The Cost of Patience

After watching the Cal-Clemson football game, I was thinking about my last trip to Berkeley again. In case you didn’t get to listen to the podcast I did about it, you should go back and check it out. Regardless, I’m gonna make some of the same points here but take them a little further. 

The night before the UCLA football game, I spoke with a few different people about the feeling leading up to it. There was optimism like I haven’t noticed in a long time, but there was also this underlying cautiousness in each word. It was some combination of hope and existential dread. The same feeling we’ve had for years, decades even. 

The feeling, for me at least, grew until I was convinced of one thing: we had to win. We had to beat UCLA. With all this effort and all this money and all these changes, we were now in an immediate show-and-prove situation that could easily break down if we lost that game. I said it to Richard. I said it to the three alumni I ran into at the BART station. I said it over and over. We had to win that game. 

Then the game happened. 

Afterwards I felt more nervous than ever. We didn’t just lose, we lost in what could only be described as wholly uninspiring – the exact way that reinforces the sense of dread we all feel every time it seems like we might break through. At this point, I’m unsure we even have a collective idea of what ‘breaking through’ even means. But we definitely all know the dread, and that’s what made that loss hit so hard. 

But my nervousness is bigger than that game or that feeling. It comes from the fact that I have been preaching some of these philosophy changes so long that I may have been more excited than anyone to see them begin to come to fruition. If the alumni are spending more money than ever, and the media hype is finally here, and the quarterback is talented, and everyone actually shows up for a night game, and we lose, then what keeps everyone engaged enough to spend that money again? Or to show up when it’s inconvenient? 

I’m not the football guy, but as the basketball guy, I feel like any repercussions from the football program fall onto us. Investing in 5-star football talent and losing has gotta be taxing, but we had a 5-star hoop recruit on campus when I was in town. I can’t even imagine how much money he would need or who steps up to pay that, but I can imagine that whoever foots that bill might think twice if they feel like the money might not produce the outcomes they’re looking for, especially if they’re already spending on football. 

It’s a tough thought, considering basketball is crossing a tipping point under Madsen. The wins keep going up. From 13 wins three years ago to 14 two years ago to 22 last season. Can we push further with an uninspired support class?

And that’s where it starts to get tricky. I know we didn’t make the tournament last year, but 22 wins is actually a lot of wins. 9th place in the ACC is an incredible finish for a team predicted to find themselves in last place or close. 

But this season won't look like last season. Our schedule is tougher this year, the hardest games are on the road, and other programs are gonna get better at scouting the Madsen system. All that said, there’s a legitimate chance that this year's program could be better than last year's team, yet finish with a worse record overall.

So I ask myself, what if the season happens exactly that way? And if it goes that way after a disappointing football season, who shows up? Who keeps pushing/paying for this machine to keep building? After how football has started, I’m both encouraged and discouraged at how things could play out. Encouraged because fans seem to remain hopeful, especially after some changes were made. But I’m discouraged because I can feel that old energy rising. The Cal negativity that we all keep in our back pocket. I can’t be the only one who gets texts after games that list all the reasons we lost and who needs to be fired immediately. It’s a vicious cycle, but also one that I can not blame any Cal fan for participating in because we truly haven’t had results in years. 

But at a certain point, the question has to be asked: is it us? Do we expect too much? Too little? Is our process and/or expectation at fault, or are we really just this unlucky? I’m unsure what the answers are, but I know that for something to change, a lot must change around it. We’ve made some changes. Can we hold on long enough to see them through? 

The good thing is that I started writing this two weeks ago, and since then the football program has recently won in a way that we enjoy (before last night), so times could get better. I think people are finding new ways to hold out hope and stay the course during rocky sailing. It’s encouraging. 

So what’s really at stake going forward? 

I think it’s our patience. It’s easy to be patient when the team has zero expectations, but it’s brutal when we expect something that doesn’t come. And with actual price tags attached to these programs, the price of patience is high. Time, energy, and dollars are not unlimited resources. I’m unsure when ours runs out… But what if our patience didn’t run out? 

I know that’s a crazy concept, but hear me out. I used to play basketball all over the world, but, by chance, most of the places I played were small markets. I made my name in North Dakota. I had my European tour in northeast France, where nobody has ever gone for vacation. I lived in the ‘Bakersfield’ of Korea for years, isolated in the countryside. What those experiences have in common is that the fans were always the best in the league. The best attendance. The most engagement. Etc. We won or were a top team in most of those situations, but the fans were there when those organizations were losing, setting the stage for someone like me to come in. And when I left, they stayed the course until the next guy came in. They kept their stamina up during years, sometimes decades of losses, so that when change came, the last thing they had to worry about was if people would show up and support. 

There are college teams like this right now. Mississippi State sells 100,000 tickets no matter if the team is 2-10 or 10-2. Although something can be said for their lack of other entertainment options, something can also be said about their love for the program. They LOVE their program. It’s an angry love. It’s a joyful love. It’s a patient love. But it’s love. I think we forget what love is. It’s patient and blind and blah blah. Whatever it is, it’s certainly not fair weather. 

I’ll end this with one more question: do we LOVE Berkeley, or do we love when it gives us something? Because love is unconditional, and tends to flourish with sustained support. There’s a reason I came back, stayed when the programs fell apart, and leaned in when I was given a chance to contribute to the conversation: love. I love who I became while I attended Cal, and for that reason I’ll always love Cal. I’ll always show up when I have the resources to do so. And I’ll always yearn for the days when people fight over the bench in section 23 of Haas. 

The price of patience is love. I know this is kind of a corny ending, but I hear love is a little embarrassing. Let’s find some patience and resolve and see this transformation through.