This is somewhat true. The Bay Area sports media is focused on the pros and the local writers that do write about Cal don't really engage in Journalism. The school and AD aren't really held accountable in the press.
Back in 1995 I won tickets to an Arizona home game against Cal. I lived in Tucson at the time. Cal had a great team and it was a fantastic game. It's sad that Cal athletics has suffered under the lack of support from the school, and now the fans. It makes it hard as a Washington fan to understand why we split media rights payouts with a school that doesn't care.
Which is why it really hurts that on balance, the Bay Area market has the worst collective performance. Both FB programs are down and have been, and aren't likely to recover any time soon. Both MBB programs are down as well, as is Cal WBB and baseball (not needle movers, but they are viewer entry points, and on tv). The biggest market with no reason for anyone in it to watch. Hard to market to media carriers or advertisers the line "We have x million tvs (or streaming devices) in the market that will never be tuned to the game."
It’s sad to hear about the state of the California basketball program. It’s sadder still to hear about the sharply accelerating financially driven direction of college sports. Can it be long before it all implodes? Hark, the zenith is nigh. :-). :-(
Another UC! As a Cal fan, I never gave any thought to jumping out of big-time college athletics ala U Chicago . But Knowlton is testing my pain threshold. The Athletic Department is such a huge embarrassment right now.
Yes, and what is the biggest football memory of Chicago? That Fermi split the atom under the football stands. When you sit at a Cal football game you can see the Rad Lab and the breakthroughs from our physics and chemistry departments will be long remembered in 100 years and not whether Cal gave up football and Basketball as maybe they should, but rather things like cyclotrons, CRISPR, and other breakthroughs.
Well @RickOlson above doesn’t even know Cal does “‘real’ science”, so maybe not. Academics and athletics don’t need to be an either/or. Too many other wonderful public universities have proved otherwise. It’s an antiquated elitist mentality that prevails in power at Berkeley, that frankly doesn’t benefit the University.
Cal basketball has had some good players -- Jason Kidd, Lamond Murray, Jaylen Brown, Sharif Abdur-Rahim, Leon Powe, who all made an impact in the NBA. Mike Montgomery was successful, but fans were certainly ready to kiss Ben Braun goodbye, even though he was incredibly successful compared to what's going on now. But overall it's been kind of dismal. Remember that Cal didn't beat UCLA even once from 1961 to 1986.
What’s wrong with learning about social issues and why does that come at the expense of “‘real’ science.” I can know how to fly a plane and also know how to cook.
You are conflating Berkeley the city and UC Berkeley. Most prestigious departments at Cal teach subjects have nothing to do with politics. The student body at Cal is 40% Asian...many being Koreans of Christian faith (not exactly a liberal group). Get your facts straight.
Also worth noting that many of the high profile protest have involved the community vs. UC Berkeley. The "tree sitters" and the People's park protests (now and in the 60s) involved activism against University plans for development.
Great article John! Cal athletics period are in real trouble in the new world of NIL and portal. It hasn’t caught up to Stanford yet… except in football. The academics, lack of funding, and portal seem to spell doom for these types of Universities. Do you see a future where they have to go to D1AA to compete or even as low as the Ivy League?
I'm not sure why UCLA is not considered as an academic school, in the same category with Cal and Stanford. It's arguably the #1 public university in the country, and admission standards are every bit as challenging as they are at Cal and Stanford. And those standards make recruiting difficult. But they make it work. Yes, they are able to use the portal (primarily for football), and Cal and Stanford's limited use of the portal is a choice but will likely have to change if they want to remain competitive. But you can be competitive and maintain high academic standards - Stanford football during Harbaugh's tenure and Shaw's early years are a good example of that.
UCLA is an "academic" school, but I suspect their far more advanced NIL presence, and a generally more attractive setting to recruit to than Berkeley, both help mitigate the issue for the Bruins.
John, one piece of the puzzle not addressed here that I think is an important one, is why hasn't Cal gotten their NIL program and presence off the ground? The answer to most problems is $s (see the price tag attached), and NIL is a modern day source of a solution for insufficient investment. Cal has a rather large alumni base and sits in a huge population center, and it seems they could & should be about as huge a player as anyone in the west beyond USC & UCLA in this area. Yet they seemed to have been lapped by Seattle, Phoenix, and even Eugene.
Feb 7, 2023·edited Feb 7, 2023Liked by John Canzano
Thanks for the deep dive here, JC. CAL has been bad at hoops for awhile - but it wasn't always so. They aren't setting things alight in football, either. If the PAC implodes I could see them - and maybe Stanford, too - joining the Ivy League.
Cal and Stanford are in a tough spot. I don't see how they remain competitive. If Wilcox was really Oregon's first choice then he made a horrendously poor choice. As for Basketball, at least they don't need to get 85 kids, just 12 to 15. But I still think both programs are doomed!
I think it requires a special, special approach and a highly motivated coach. The portal isn't going to be available to Cal unless the campus decides to create some academic exemptions, which it clearly did in prior years. The coach has to be experienced... know how to win amid challenges... be able to recruit the Bay Area... and understand what Cal is. A few candidates come to mind.
Of course, we look forward to hearing your suggestions in time. I think this is what has been so hard to stomach for those of us who had been advocating for Gates over two successive searches. Though he lacked head coaching experience at the time, he had established himself as a stellar recruiter and as former academic all-American at Cal understands Cal in a way that other candidates could not. And he would have had the immediate support of the alumni base, season ticket holders and former players who energize a program. Fox had experience, but limited success as a recruiter (to put it mildly), and no understanding of the peculiar dynamics of Cal. His hire showed that Knowlton didn't understand those quite yet either, and that he made that decision without the right support team around him. That Gates has now turned the fates of two programs in the time since has been the bitterest pill for many of us diehards to swallow.
Jason Kidd was at Cal when I was in grad school there and let's just say academics weren't an issue. The point that Cal can bend if it needs to is a good one. It's just an excuse.
A tough spot, but one significantly of their own making. Unfortunately, even with the imminent departure of the LA schools, the Pac-12 is a collective, and localized mis-management has a significantly negative impact on the entire conference, just a local success is beneficial to all.
I've been a Cal fan for over 30 years. The truth is that the campus administration and faculty have a hate/hate relationship with Cal athletics. They do enough to try and raise money from alums. I gave money to Cal for 20 years and bought football season tickets even though we live 500 miles away and only made it up to games a couple of times a year. About 10 years ago, it became clear that Cal didn't want to invest in big time sports anymore or do what is necessary to win. They gave up on investing in athletics and so I gave up on them. Still watch occasionally, but I won't give them a dime. If they get a winning record once in a while, the administration is satisfied. Otherwise, it is just excuses. Bad AD hires, bad decisions.
The investment in basketball -- $7.5 million last year -- puts them at the bottom of the standings. You're correct. I heard it over and over from other ADs in the reporting of the piece -- "you have to spend to win."
Cal has solved the academics equation before under Braun/MM/Cuonzo, and that's on the AD if they can't do it again. Land use issues are not fixable, but have workarounds. I'm not sure how many recruits are looking at the rankings for spending, but charter flights are an easy way to get up those rankings, if the goal is to appear to be "invested in winning."
Beyond that, Cal seems like a place where rather than blowing more opex that goes to vendors and staff, rather than players, stakeholders need to get together and capitalize on NIL reform to swing a few recruiting battles their way. They may not have the ability to do that in football, but with the boldface supporters named in the article it seems very realistic for hoops.
And you have to invest wisely. Not only have we not invested to a competitive level, we continue to squander what we have invested. Having to continually buy out coaches and turn away donors and ticket buyers only compounds the financial problem. I love giving to the athletic department and last year I decided not to. If you can turn me off, then I don’t know who they can continue to court. Cal basketball has been a fixture in mine and my family’s life since 79.
Again not accurate. This is mainly based on one vocal CS professor. Yes most faculty value academics over athletics at Cal, but that is not unfair (academics should be #1 at any school).
The MBB budget discussion (in Canzano's article) lacks important context about larger budgetary problems at Cal involving both the athletic department and entire campus.
Also. ~10 years ago Cal invested $350 million in a stadium renovation and raised $150 million to build a high performance athletic center...yet we are supposed to believe that UC Berkeley does not support athletics??? The situation at Cal is more of a result of poor coaching choices and coaching contracts...with some bad luck mixed in....not apathy.
For MBB, the big turd left by Cuonzo Martin, coupled with bad hires (in Jones and Fox), and COVID weirdness is how we arrived at this state...much more than a lack of institutional support, which is only a fraction of the problem.
Hire either Lou Ritchie (Bishop O'Dowd) or Frank Knight (Moreau Catholic) as head coaches or assistant coaches and let them recruit the hell out of California and the West Coast. They are both prior college basketball greats, both played in NCAA Tourney, clearly both know how to recruit, still young enough to get the new generation of players excited about playing in Berkeley.
Every year CAL has been good they had the best players from Northern California combined with top level or 2nd level Southern California guys.
If you are going to go on the cheap, at least have fans in the seats and names we know and have been watching for a while.
Cal's issues have nothing to with commercial flights or practice facilities. Cal has made a pair of confounding and thoroughly uninspired successive coaching hires in Wyking and Fox. Most people who followed Cal basketball didn't know who Wyking was -- and he was already on our bench! Fox was out of basketball and had a track record that was trending down for nearly a decade already and had nothing on his resume to signal he was program builder. Further he teaches a putrid style of basketball to watch that just doesn't resonate with players -- much less win basketball games. Knowlton saw Fox as a "safe" hire, but what fans and potential recruits saw was a lack of imagination, excitement and any sort of real interest in winning from Cal, so they have largely tuned out to wait until there's something worth coming back to. Meanwhile years roll by with no end in sight. It was just two years prior to Fox taking over that Cal had its highest tournament seed and had two 5 star players on it's roster. Any talk of the program being "a massive rebuild" at that point was Fox and Knowlton signaling not to expect much right at the jump. The brand was still strong for recruits and we weren't on probation, we just had a couple of bad years. Fixable. Cal has passed on coaches like Bill Musselman and Dennis Gates in successive searches --both of whom expressed interest in the Cal job at various points. Both candidates had strong local/Cal narratives and unquestionably offered higher ceilings to Wyking and Fox. Gates was an academic all-American at Cal and has resurrected two programs(!) already in the time it has take Knowlton and Fox to dismantle ours down to the studs. Knowlton has doubled down on excuse making -- even publishing excuses on the jumbotron! Even James Dolan would be proud! At no point during the Fox era has the coach or the AD signaled what the goals of the basketball program are or when we'd like to achieve them -- fans just get a litany of excuses. There should be some solace in knowing this era is almost over, but that feeling is quickly replaced with the uncomfortable knowledge that Jim Knowlton will be the one charged with replacing him. To get to the point, at some point during the Mike Williams era or beginning with Knowlton, Cal defaulted on mens basketball. There was a feeling that we could maintain a certain standard on the cheap, and that Cal's small fanbase would largely be fine with that. What they didn't count upon was that playing it safe, doesn't always yield safe results. Fans, recruits, etc. want the prospect of hope, not safety.
True. But shouldn't that be enough to beat the likes of UC Davis, Eastern Washington, UC San Diego, Southern, Texas State? The athletic department made a decision to de-prioritize basketball commensurate with previous regimes at Cal. That's frustrating. But that we're not even close to even just living up to the low bar we have set for ourselves is a failure that has to fall on the coach and the AD.
This is the most ink Cal athletics has gotten in the last 50 years...kudos.
This is somewhat true. The Bay Area sports media is focused on the pros and the local writers that do write about Cal don't really engage in Journalism. The school and AD aren't really held accountable in the press.
Sorry to say, more ink than they deserve.
Back in 1995 I won tickets to an Arizona home game against Cal. I lived in Tucson at the time. Cal had a great team and it was a fantastic game. It's sad that Cal athletics has suffered under the lack of support from the school, and now the fans. It makes it hard as a Washington fan to understand why we split media rights payouts with a school that doesn't care.
Bay Area TV market is a beast in the negotiation. Biggest Pac-12 market now.
Which is why it really hurts that on balance, the Bay Area market has the worst collective performance. Both FB programs are down and have been, and aren't likely to recover any time soon. Both MBB programs are down as well, as is Cal WBB and baseball (not needle movers, but they are viewer entry points, and on tv). The biggest market with no reason for anyone in it to watch. Hard to market to media carriers or advertisers the line "We have x million tvs (or streaming devices) in the market that will never be tuned to the game."
It’s sad to hear about the state of the California basketball program. It’s sadder still to hear about the sharply accelerating financially driven direction of college sports. Can it be long before it all implodes? Hark, the zenith is nigh. :-). :-(
🎶 those were the days my friends …🎶
OK, I’ll stop.
The standings are literally a reflection of spending.
…there’s a sad commentary
GO DAWGS
When you read this one tends to think fondly of the University of Chicago.
Another UC! As a Cal fan, I never gave any thought to jumping out of big-time college athletics ala U Chicago . But Knowlton is testing my pain threshold. The Athletic Department is such a huge embarrassment right now.
Yes, and what is the biggest football memory of Chicago? That Fermi split the atom under the football stands. When you sit at a Cal football game you can see the Rad Lab and the breakthroughs from our physics and chemistry departments will be long remembered in 100 years and not whether Cal gave up football and Basketball as maybe they should, but rather things like cyclotrons, CRISPR, and other breakthroughs.
Well @RickOlson above doesn’t even know Cal does “‘real’ science”, so maybe not. Academics and athletics don’t need to be an either/or. Too many other wonderful public universities have proved otherwise. It’s an antiquated elitist mentality that prevails in power at Berkeley, that frankly doesn’t benefit the University.
Cal basketball has had some good players -- Jason Kidd, Lamond Murray, Jaylen Brown, Sharif Abdur-Rahim, Leon Powe, who all made an impact in the NBA. Mike Montgomery was successful, but fans were certainly ready to kiss Ben Braun goodbye, even though he was incredibly successful compared to what's going on now. But overall it's been kind of dismal. Remember that Cal didn't beat UCLA even once from 1961 to 1986.
Braun beat UCLA nine straight times.
Let's face it, a college education is not what it once was. Now it's more important to
learn the latest social issues than real science. I'm sure this plays into why a lot of players
reject Cal... It maybe the most liberal university in the nation.
What’s wrong with learning about social issues and why does that come at the expense of “‘real’ science.” I can know how to fly a plane and also know how to cook.
Count the nobelists and get back to me. On second thought, don't -- it's clear what political axe you're grinding.
You are conflating Berkeley the city and UC Berkeley. Most prestigious departments at Cal teach subjects have nothing to do with politics. The student body at Cal is 40% Asian...many being Koreans of Christian faith (not exactly a liberal group). Get your facts straight.
Also worth noting that many of the high profile protest have involved the community vs. UC Berkeley. The "tree sitters" and the People's park protests (now and in the 60s) involved activism against University plans for development.
Great article John! Cal athletics period are in real trouble in the new world of NIL and portal. It hasn’t caught up to Stanford yet… except in football. The academics, lack of funding, and portal seem to spell doom for these types of Universities. Do you see a future where they have to go to D1AA to compete or even as low as the Ivy League?
Not sure they're ready to go there. Stanford has a ton of money and support... but doesn't seem interested in the academic piece.
Uh, you know that the Ivy League is FCS/I-AA, right?
Very aware sadly
I'm not sure why UCLA is not considered as an academic school, in the same category with Cal and Stanford. It's arguably the #1 public university in the country, and admission standards are every bit as challenging as they are at Cal and Stanford. And those standards make recruiting difficult. But they make it work. Yes, they are able to use the portal (primarily for football), and Cal and Stanford's limited use of the portal is a choice but will likely have to change if they want to remain competitive. But you can be competitive and maintain high academic standards - Stanford football during Harbaugh's tenure and Shaw's early years are a good example of that.
UCLA is an "academic" school, but I suspect their far more advanced NIL presence, and a generally more attractive setting to recruit to than Berkeley, both help mitigate the issue for the Bruins.
Boy what a cluster. At 7.5 million compared to the other schools it almost says why bother?
The investment isn't there. I'd like to see that boosted... they'd generate more income and help the entire conference.
John, one piece of the puzzle not addressed here that I think is an important one, is why hasn't Cal gotten their NIL program and presence off the ground? The answer to most problems is $s (see the price tag attached), and NIL is a modern day source of a solution for insufficient investment. Cal has a rather large alumni base and sits in a huge population center, and it seems they could & should be about as huge a player as anyone in the west beyond USC & UCLA in this area. Yet they seemed to have been lapped by Seattle, Phoenix, and even Eugene.
Thanks for the deep dive here, JC. CAL has been bad at hoops for awhile - but it wasn't always so. They aren't setting things alight in football, either. If the PAC implodes I could see them - and maybe Stanford, too - joining the Ivy League.
Insightful piece, John. So well researched!
Cal and Stanford are in a tough spot. I don't see how they remain competitive. If Wilcox was really Oregon's first choice then he made a horrendously poor choice. As for Basketball, at least they don't need to get 85 kids, just 12 to 15. But I still think both programs are doomed!
I think it requires a special, special approach and a highly motivated coach. The portal isn't going to be available to Cal unless the campus decides to create some academic exemptions, which it clearly did in prior years. The coach has to be experienced... know how to win amid challenges... be able to recruit the Bay Area... and understand what Cal is. A few candidates come to mind.
All true JC but man...there are easier ways to make a buck than to put up with all the issues at Cal.
Of course, we look forward to hearing your suggestions in time. I think this is what has been so hard to stomach for those of us who had been advocating for Gates over two successive searches. Though he lacked head coaching experience at the time, he had established himself as a stellar recruiter and as former academic all-American at Cal understands Cal in a way that other candidates could not. And he would have had the immediate support of the alumni base, season ticket holders and former players who energize a program. Fox had experience, but limited success as a recruiter (to put it mildly), and no understanding of the peculiar dynamics of Cal. His hire showed that Knowlton didn't understand those quite yet either, and that he made that decision without the right support team around him. That Gates has now turned the fates of two programs in the time since has been the bitterest pill for many of us diehards to swallow.
Jason Kidd was at Cal when I was in grad school there and let's just say academics weren't an issue. The point that Cal can bend if it needs to is a good one. It's just an excuse.
Not sure I agree. I was in class with a some of those guys on that team. No Rhodes scholars, but some contributed in class and they all showed up.
A tough spot, but one significantly of their own making. Unfortunately, even with the imminent departure of the LA schools, the Pac-12 is a collective, and localized mis-management has a significantly negative impact on the entire conference, just a local success is beneficial to all.
I've been a Cal fan for over 30 years. The truth is that the campus administration and faculty have a hate/hate relationship with Cal athletics. They do enough to try and raise money from alums. I gave money to Cal for 20 years and bought football season tickets even though we live 500 miles away and only made it up to games a couple of times a year. About 10 years ago, it became clear that Cal didn't want to invest in big time sports anymore or do what is necessary to win. They gave up on investing in athletics and so I gave up on them. Still watch occasionally, but I won't give them a dime. If they get a winning record once in a while, the administration is satisfied. Otherwise, it is just excuses. Bad AD hires, bad decisions.
The investment in basketball -- $7.5 million last year -- puts them at the bottom of the standings. You're correct. I heard it over and over from other ADs in the reporting of the piece -- "you have to spend to win."
Cal has solved the academics equation before under Braun/MM/Cuonzo, and that's on the AD if they can't do it again. Land use issues are not fixable, but have workarounds. I'm not sure how many recruits are looking at the rankings for spending, but charter flights are an easy way to get up those rankings, if the goal is to appear to be "invested in winning."
Beyond that, Cal seems like a place where rather than blowing more opex that goes to vendors and staff, rather than players, stakeholders need to get together and capitalize on NIL reform to swing a few recruiting battles their way. They may not have the ability to do that in football, but with the boldface supporters named in the article it seems very realistic for hoops.
That last statement should probably read "You have to INVEST to win."
And you have to invest wisely. Not only have we not invested to a competitive level, we continue to squander what we have invested. Having to continually buy out coaches and turn away donors and ticket buyers only compounds the financial problem. I love giving to the athletic department and last year I decided not to. If you can turn me off, then I don’t know who they can continue to court. Cal basketball has been a fixture in mine and my family’s life since 79.
Again not accurate. This is mainly based on one vocal CS professor. Yes most faculty value academics over athletics at Cal, but that is not unfair (academics should be #1 at any school).
The MBB budget discussion (in Canzano's article) lacks important context about larger budgetary problems at Cal involving both the athletic department and entire campus.
Also. ~10 years ago Cal invested $350 million in a stadium renovation and raised $150 million to build a high performance athletic center...yet we are supposed to believe that UC Berkeley does not support athletics??? The situation at Cal is more of a result of poor coaching choices and coaching contracts...with some bad luck mixed in....not apathy.
For MBB, the big turd left by Cuonzo Martin, coupled with bad hires (in Jones and Fox), and COVID weirdness is how we arrived at this state...much more than a lack of institutional support, which is only a fraction of the problem.
Hire either Lou Ritchie (Bishop O'Dowd) or Frank Knight (Moreau Catholic) as head coaches or assistant coaches and let them recruit the hell out of California and the West Coast. They are both prior college basketball greats, both played in NCAA Tourney, clearly both know how to recruit, still young enough to get the new generation of players excited about playing in Berkeley.
Every year CAL has been good they had the best players from Northern California combined with top level or 2nd level Southern California guys.
If you are going to go on the cheap, at least have fans in the seats and names we know and have been watching for a while.
Cal basketball is the best thing that ever happened to Cal football. 😅
Cal's issues have nothing to with commercial flights or practice facilities. Cal has made a pair of confounding and thoroughly uninspired successive coaching hires in Wyking and Fox. Most people who followed Cal basketball didn't know who Wyking was -- and he was already on our bench! Fox was out of basketball and had a track record that was trending down for nearly a decade already and had nothing on his resume to signal he was program builder. Further he teaches a putrid style of basketball to watch that just doesn't resonate with players -- much less win basketball games. Knowlton saw Fox as a "safe" hire, but what fans and potential recruits saw was a lack of imagination, excitement and any sort of real interest in winning from Cal, so they have largely tuned out to wait until there's something worth coming back to. Meanwhile years roll by with no end in sight. It was just two years prior to Fox taking over that Cal had its highest tournament seed and had two 5 star players on it's roster. Any talk of the program being "a massive rebuild" at that point was Fox and Knowlton signaling not to expect much right at the jump. The brand was still strong for recruits and we weren't on probation, we just had a couple of bad years. Fixable. Cal has passed on coaches like Bill Musselman and Dennis Gates in successive searches --both of whom expressed interest in the Cal job at various points. Both candidates had strong local/Cal narratives and unquestionably offered higher ceilings to Wyking and Fox. Gates was an academic all-American at Cal and has resurrected two programs(!) already in the time it has take Knowlton and Fox to dismantle ours down to the studs. Knowlton has doubled down on excuse making -- even publishing excuses on the jumbotron! Even James Dolan would be proud! At no point during the Fox era has the coach or the AD signaled what the goals of the basketball program are or when we'd like to achieve them -- fans just get a litany of excuses. There should be some solace in knowing this era is almost over, but that feeling is quickly replaced with the uncomfortable knowledge that Jim Knowlton will be the one charged with replacing him. To get to the point, at some point during the Mike Williams era or beginning with Knowlton, Cal defaulted on mens basketball. There was a feeling that we could maintain a certain standard on the cheap, and that Cal's small fanbase would largely be fine with that. What they didn't count upon was that playing it safe, doesn't always yield safe results. Fans, recruits, etc. want the prospect of hope, not safety.
The $7.5 million in expenditures is alarming. Hard to win vs. those spending $13M.
John, where do OSU & WSU fall in the spending standings?
True. But shouldn't that be enough to beat the likes of UC Davis, Eastern Washington, UC San Diego, Southern, Texas State? The athletic department made a decision to de-prioritize basketball commensurate with previous regimes at Cal. That's frustrating. But that we're not even close to even just living up to the low bar we have set for ourselves is a failure that has to fall on the coach and the AD.