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.
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. :-). :-(
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
This is the most ink Cal athletics has gotten in the last 50 years...kudos.
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.
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.
When you read this one tends to think fondly of the University of Chicago.
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.
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.
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.
Boy what a cluster. At 7.5 million compared to the other schools it almost says why bother?
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'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.
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.