Not sure if I can really take this comment seriously if you are saying everybody else dealt with covid when the actual responses of the schools , conferences, and city/ county public health departments were vastly different. Other conferences had more complete seasons and no other school was dealing with rules as strict as existed in the…
Not sure if I can really take this comment seriously if you are saying everybody else dealt with covid when the actual responses of the schools , conferences, and city/ county public health departments were vastly different. Other conferences had more complete seasons and no other school was dealing with rules as strict as existed in the city of Berkeley.
And there has regularly been reporting about Wilcox being unhappy with the administration because of their lack of money for assistant coaches. Do you think that doesn't matter at all?
The administration has been incredibly patient with a coach who hasn’t produced a winning conference record. This is his 3rd reboot of the offense. Baldwin and Musgrave were his preferred hires, same with Spav. The admin didn’t pick his OC, Wilcox did. Not many schools would allow a coach to go 6 years without a winning conference record and only 2 overall winning records and 3 offensive reboots and give them a large and unearned extension.
Actually I’m pretty sure I read he wanted Spav to stay in 2017 when he first got hired but he wanted to go and try being a head coach. Baldwin was not his preferred choice.
I believe that to be true as well but when it was clear that Spav didn’t want to stay, it seemed that Baldwin was his next choice. I actually thought the Baldwin hire was a very good one as he was a successful OC and HC at the FCS level with EWU
"The administration has been incredibly patient with a coach who hasn’t produced a winning conference record."
Herein lies the problem, from admin perspective, winning is not the important thing, rather the admin prizes a politically correct, obedient, and mindful head coach that does not argue or quibble with admin.
Wilcox is a good guy, but that may be part of the problem.
Exactly this. It is a catch 22. Just as much as the “administration” supposedly hinders Wilcox, Wilcox also benefits from it by getting more time to try to win and the benefit of the doubt because he “gets Cal” and says all the right things.
I think he's diplomatically expressed his frustration with the administration a couple of times (at least if you listen to the tone, and not just read the quote), and things have leaked through the media… But yeah it's not like he's badmouthing the idea of high academic standards and instead spins it toward the "OKG" type lines.
Spav was his preferred first hire and he asked him to stay on from 2016 to 2017, but Spav had other ideas. As for the other guys being his "preferred hires," they certainly weren't his #1 picks. He should have ditched Musgrave earlier, though.
I’ll admit, I liked the Baldwin hire. I thought he was going to be great. While Spav might have been 1A, I believe Baldwin was 1B.
I don’t recall any reports of Wilcox really wanting anyone besides Musgrave. Regardless he stuck with Musgrave and Angus far too long.
Furthermore, we have 3 OCs and all them seem to have the same issue, with the only constant being Wilcox. If Dykes doesn’t care about defense, Wilcox certainly doesn’t seem to care about offense.
What exactly is the "same issue" we have here that we had in the past? Did we have this issue last week against UNT or are you catastrophizing one game early in the season?
Tedford had the same complaints about admin… yeah they suck. But for the most part, he was able to do more with less. The city was a PITA with Covid, but our own writers here had pretty strong opinions on the program being too loosey goosey with the protocol when they knew what the consequences could be. So for a second, I’ll entertain the perspective of Wilcox being a victim of extenuating circumstances and outside forces… my question is, for how many more years do we make those excuses? Cuz frankly, I wasn’t overly impressed with auburn. Idaho absolutely dusted Nevada on road yesterday. So I’m playing the ‘where do the wins come from’ game and it’s looking bleak. Maybe there’s a massive turnaround, auburn turns out to be an sec power this year, and everything looks rosey, but I am just not seeing it.
Make which excuses? What's the benchmark for when we can't "make excuses" anymore? If the refs hose us in a game that we otherwise would have won, I think it's fair to call out those refs whether that game is part of a 1 win or a 12 win season. I think administrative incompetence at different schools, lack of support for the revenue sports (with advertising to bring in fans, good PR/social media, salaries for assistant coaches), academic standards for recruits, and so on can explain a lot about differences in win totals between teams… That's why we've seen so many coaches have vastly different levels of success at different schools, and why we saw Oregon offer Wilcox the job despite his performance at Cal.
I have plenty of criticisms of Wilcox. I think it's fine to have plenty of criticisms of Wilcox. But too many fans place too much at his feet, and catastrophize close losses to good teams with calls for his head, when what makes a football team is more than just one dude (and when that one dude can only do so much to affect the outcome of an individual game).
There are no more excuses. You can't blame the admin for losses that squarely on the coaches. The kids are fine. Plenty of talent. They lacked some discipline and were coached poorly - playcalling last nite lost the game along with field goals. That's it. It wasn't admin covid or anything else.
Listening to wilcox for 7yrs in pressers after these ridiculous losses, it's so clear to me he does not know what to do and how to fix these problems. It's always the same bshit answers..."we gotta do better, it's on the players and coaches blah blah. No brass tacks on tactics to improve. No ownership to say we fucked up the play calling. We didn't use our receivers or other backs enuf. Etc..no real plan on what to do to improve...just the same we didn't get it done speech.
The refs made a disastrously bad call, but there were somewhere around 55 minutes of football after that. If any one of like five different things went right, we win that game. But none of them did. The head coach is ultimately responsible, and I’m to the point of just being done with what amount to moral victories in year seven. Again, maybe he turns this all around and I look like a dumbass, and frankly, nothing would make me happier. But I just don’t see it happening. So how much longer do we allow it to go on? How many years in a row of losing conference records do we tolerate?
On the topic of oregon, that offer seemed like an offer that wasn’t really an offer. You make an offer to a head coach but effectively don’t give him full control over how his program runs? Yeah I don’t know about that. The Wilcox offer seemed to be made to appease the vocal players, but they ended up getting the right guy. But what do I know…
The bad refereeing was not just one disastrously bad call. Two of them alone led to an 11 point swing. The pick six call took four points off the board and the fumble-that-wasn't by Ifanse led to an early Auburn touchdown. And there were plenty of other questionable calls and no-calls throughout the game.
I'm not going to tell you how much longer you "allow it to go on" because you won't even say what "it" is or what the context is. You don't know what the new administration is going to be like, and how that will influence what resources the football team has. You don't know what fundraising is going to be like to make up for the gap between us and other ACC teams. You don't know if there's going to be another random global crisis that Berkeley handles differently than other cities. So go ahead and lay out your criteria if you want.
Let me set the bar pitifully low and say “it” is a .500 or better conference record once in seven years. Everything you said after that was a continuation of the excuses, so I tuned out.
TBD. I dug deep into my bag of delusion this off-season, convinced myself this year would be different with spav, and renewed my tickets. If we regress from a record standpoint and nothing changes, I’m probably done. My emotional investment in this is hanging on by a thread.
I, for one, am out on Wilcox after last night. Nice stand-up guy that understands the Cal machine and all that, but it’s always the same shit and I am just tired of the endless excuses. Sure, the refs missed the TD and some other calls, which totally sucks…but it happens, and we still had plenty of chances…like clockwork under JW and his 3 different OC’s, Cal continuously fails to make the plays necessary to win football games. It’s really that simple. We had no business losing last night…none.
Given Wilcox’s preferred style/pace of play, PK should have been an absolute priority from day 1…unfortunately for the poor kid, Luckhurst’s performance these past 2 weeks has been unacceptable… it’s just that there’s always some reason why we cough up games that we should, and honestly have to, win.
I’m still going to Seattle with the crew and I’ll root for the kids, but my days of investing in this football program, emotionally and financially, are done. I’ll focus my support for Madsen and the crew…BTW, I literally ran into Fardaws at the game, and the dude is an absolute monster. Just huge…I’m so pumped for Cal hoops.
I'm sure there's a "Fire Saban" movement percolating in Tuscaloosa. It's the nature of the beast and, honestly, I do not think Prime could make a lasting difference in our results.
The sec is known for its looney fans. Go follow the message board geniuses account on Twitter/X - it’s a gold mine. And I’m sure the finebaum show will be a total shitshow tomorrow afternoon after bamas loss to Texas. But we’re in year seven. Things might not change with a new guy. A new guy might be Wilcox all over again. But at some point we have to accept that we might have a known commodity. You cannot stop trying. If we get to a point where we continually accept - I’m not even gonna say mediocrity because never pulling a winning conference record is not achieving mediocrity - but if we continually accept this because well, he’s got x, y, and z to overcome, then why even field a team at that point. We’re staring down the barrel of a year where our record could regress because of how much better our conference has become while we’ve stagnated. Not a fun place to be. Again, I hope more than anything I’m proven wrong and look like a dumbass in three months.
I agree. I think Wilcox has many positives, but the results, well, maybe, until we have a pivot in campus culture, we're trending more towards being like University of Chicago than Michigan.
Finebaum, himself, is a hoot.
I believe many SEC schools have what they call "dirt road alumni." LOL. And facts are second to wishes.
And what happens when you take a good coach and put him in the same situation with the same institutional shortcomings – maybe even the caliber of coach that could land in the national championship at TCU – and they don't succeed here?
Even with all of Wilcox’s shortcomings, I will freely admit that he has us “close.” Like I said previously, if any one of like five different things go right last night, we win a game against a relatively recent sec power and national championship caliber program. The problem is all of those little things never seem to go our way and we’re consistently having the same conversation. And none of those little things have jackshit to do with the administration, Covid, or anything else. And for the record, I do not blame you for anything you’re saying, because I was saying the exact same stuff like two seasons ago in defense of Wilcox. But sometimes you just need a new voice in the room to get over the hump, turn the corner, etc.
And on the topic of dykes, good for him. He inherited a great roster and one of the best up and coming coordinators, and he got on a heater before he got waxed in the national championship game. Now personally, I think last year was an anomaly and he’ll come massively back down to earth, but good for him. Our former coach having instant success at his second stop after cal doesn’t have any bearing on our current situation though. Yeah it’s harder to find a guy who’s the right “fit” at cal and can navigate the institutional challenges, but it doesn’t mean you accept the current results because the next guy might not do any better. Again, if you’re just gonna stop trying to be something better, why even bother fielding a team?
FYI- Dykes' wunderkind OC is, now, at 'Bama and in the hot seat already, I do not doubt. LOL
TCU was Dykes' third stop. Cal-SMU-TCU.
You're right, we should not take it, but rather than crucifying every coach when the law of averages kicks in, we should be lobbying for a change of administrative culture.
Not sure if I can really take this comment seriously if you are saying everybody else dealt with covid when the actual responses of the schools , conferences, and city/ county public health departments were vastly different. Other conferences had more complete seasons and no other school was dealing with rules as strict as existed in the city of Berkeley.
And there has regularly been reporting about Wilcox being unhappy with the administration because of their lack of money for assistant coaches. Do you think that doesn't matter at all?
The administration has been incredibly patient with a coach who hasn’t produced a winning conference record. This is his 3rd reboot of the offense. Baldwin and Musgrave were his preferred hires, same with Spav. The admin didn’t pick his OC, Wilcox did. Not many schools would allow a coach to go 6 years without a winning conference record and only 2 overall winning records and 3 offensive reboots and give them a large and unearned extension.
The level of “patience” the administration has had with Wilcox, a coach with a losing record is pretty much unprecedented in the modern era.
"Patience" or apathy or is it calculated neglect?
Actually I’m pretty sure I read he wanted Spav to stay in 2017 when he first got hired but he wanted to go and try being a head coach. Baldwin was not his preferred choice.
I believe that to be true as well but when it was clear that Spav didn’t want to stay, it seemed that Baldwin was his next choice. I actually thought the Baldwin hire was a very good one as he was a successful OC and HC at the FCS level with EWU
"The administration has been incredibly patient with a coach who hasn’t produced a winning conference record."
Herein lies the problem, from admin perspective, winning is not the important thing, rather the admin prizes a politically correct, obedient, and mindful head coach that does not argue or quibble with admin.
Wilcox is a good guy, but that may be part of the problem.
Exactly this. It is a catch 22. Just as much as the “administration” supposedly hinders Wilcox, Wilcox also benefits from it by getting more time to try to win and the benefit of the doubt because he “gets Cal” and says all the right things.
I think he's diplomatically expressed his frustration with the administration a couple of times (at least if you listen to the tone, and not just read the quote), and things have leaked through the media… But yeah it's not like he's badmouthing the idea of high academic standards and instead spins it toward the "OKG" type lines.
Spav was his preferred first hire and he asked him to stay on from 2016 to 2017, but Spav had other ideas. As for the other guys being his "preferred hires," they certainly weren't his #1 picks. He should have ditched Musgrave earlier, though.
I’ll admit, I liked the Baldwin hire. I thought he was going to be great. While Spav might have been 1A, I believe Baldwin was 1B.
I don’t recall any reports of Wilcox really wanting anyone besides Musgrave. Regardless he stuck with Musgrave and Angus far too long.
Furthermore, we have 3 OCs and all them seem to have the same issue, with the only constant being Wilcox. If Dykes doesn’t care about defense, Wilcox certainly doesn’t seem to care about offense.
What exactly is the "same issue" we have here that we had in the past? Did we have this issue last week against UNT or are you catastrophizing one game early in the season?
True enough.
What little I saw of Hayes, he was not getting much openings to run.
Tedford had the same complaints about admin… yeah they suck. But for the most part, he was able to do more with less. The city was a PITA with Covid, but our own writers here had pretty strong opinions on the program being too loosey goosey with the protocol when they knew what the consequences could be. So for a second, I’ll entertain the perspective of Wilcox being a victim of extenuating circumstances and outside forces… my question is, for how many more years do we make those excuses? Cuz frankly, I wasn’t overly impressed with auburn. Idaho absolutely dusted Nevada on road yesterday. So I’m playing the ‘where do the wins come from’ game and it’s looking bleak. Maybe there’s a massive turnaround, auburn turns out to be an sec power this year, and everything looks rosey, but I am just not seeing it.
Make which excuses? What's the benchmark for when we can't "make excuses" anymore? If the refs hose us in a game that we otherwise would have won, I think it's fair to call out those refs whether that game is part of a 1 win or a 12 win season. I think administrative incompetence at different schools, lack of support for the revenue sports (with advertising to bring in fans, good PR/social media, salaries for assistant coaches), academic standards for recruits, and so on can explain a lot about differences in win totals between teams… That's why we've seen so many coaches have vastly different levels of success at different schools, and why we saw Oregon offer Wilcox the job despite his performance at Cal.
I have plenty of criticisms of Wilcox. I think it's fine to have plenty of criticisms of Wilcox. But too many fans place too much at his feet, and catastrophize close losses to good teams with calls for his head, when what makes a football team is more than just one dude (and when that one dude can only do so much to affect the outcome of an individual game).
There are no more excuses. You can't blame the admin for losses that squarely on the coaches. The kids are fine. Plenty of talent. They lacked some discipline and were coached poorly - playcalling last nite lost the game along with field goals. That's it. It wasn't admin covid or anything else.
Listening to wilcox for 7yrs in pressers after these ridiculous losses, it's so clear to me he does not know what to do and how to fix these problems. It's always the same bshit answers..."we gotta do better, it's on the players and coaches blah blah. No brass tacks on tactics to improve. No ownership to say we fucked up the play calling. We didn't use our receivers or other backs enuf. Etc..no real plan on what to do to improve...just the same we didn't get it done speech.
The refs made a disastrously bad call, but there were somewhere around 55 minutes of football after that. If any one of like five different things went right, we win that game. But none of them did. The head coach is ultimately responsible, and I’m to the point of just being done with what amount to moral victories in year seven. Again, maybe he turns this all around and I look like a dumbass, and frankly, nothing would make me happier. But I just don’t see it happening. So how much longer do we allow it to go on? How many years in a row of losing conference records do we tolerate?
On the topic of oregon, that offer seemed like an offer that wasn’t really an offer. You make an offer to a head coach but effectively don’t give him full control over how his program runs? Yeah I don’t know about that. The Wilcox offer seemed to be made to appease the vocal players, but they ended up getting the right guy. But what do I know…
The bad refereeing was not just one disastrously bad call. Two of them alone led to an 11 point swing. The pick six call took four points off the board and the fumble-that-wasn't by Ifanse led to an early Auburn touchdown. And there were plenty of other questionable calls and no-calls throughout the game.
I'm not going to tell you how much longer you "allow it to go on" because you won't even say what "it" is or what the context is. You don't know what the new administration is going to be like, and how that will influence what resources the football team has. You don't know what fundraising is going to be like to make up for the gap between us and other ACC teams. You don't know if there's going to be another random global crisis that Berkeley handles differently than other cities. So go ahead and lay out your criteria if you want.
Let me set the bar pitifully low and say “it” is a .500 or better conference record once in seven years. Everything you said after that was a continuation of the excuses, so I tuned out.
So what's your plan when he doesn't reach that this year and isn't terminated?
TBD. I dug deep into my bag of delusion this off-season, convinced myself this year would be different with spav, and renewed my tickets. If we regress from a record standpoint and nothing changes, I’m probably done. My emotional investment in this is hanging on by a thread.
I, for one, am out on Wilcox after last night. Nice stand-up guy that understands the Cal machine and all that, but it’s always the same shit and I am just tired of the endless excuses. Sure, the refs missed the TD and some other calls, which totally sucks…but it happens, and we still had plenty of chances…like clockwork under JW and his 3 different OC’s, Cal continuously fails to make the plays necessary to win football games. It’s really that simple. We had no business losing last night…none.
Given Wilcox’s preferred style/pace of play, PK should have been an absolute priority from day 1…unfortunately for the poor kid, Luckhurst’s performance these past 2 weeks has been unacceptable… it’s just that there’s always some reason why we cough up games that we should, and honestly have to, win.
I’m still going to Seattle with the crew and I’ll root for the kids, but my days of investing in this football program, emotionally and financially, are done. I’ll focus my support for Madsen and the crew…BTW, I literally ran into Fardaws at the game, and the dude is an absolute monster. Just huge…I’m so pumped for Cal hoops.
I'm sure there's a "Fire Saban" movement percolating in Tuscaloosa. It's the nature of the beast and, honestly, I do not think Prime could make a lasting difference in our results.
The sec is known for its looney fans. Go follow the message board geniuses account on Twitter/X - it’s a gold mine. And I’m sure the finebaum show will be a total shitshow tomorrow afternoon after bamas loss to Texas. But we’re in year seven. Things might not change with a new guy. A new guy might be Wilcox all over again. But at some point we have to accept that we might have a known commodity. You cannot stop trying. If we get to a point where we continually accept - I’m not even gonna say mediocrity because never pulling a winning conference record is not achieving mediocrity - but if we continually accept this because well, he’s got x, y, and z to overcome, then why even field a team at that point. We’re staring down the barrel of a year where our record could regress because of how much better our conference has become while we’ve stagnated. Not a fun place to be. Again, I hope more than anything I’m proven wrong and look like a dumbass in three months.
I agree. I think Wilcox has many positives, but the results, well, maybe, until we have a pivot in campus culture, we're trending more towards being like University of Chicago than Michigan.
Finebaum, himself, is a hoot.
I believe many SEC schools have what they call "dirt road alumni." LOL. And facts are second to wishes.
And what happens when you take a good coach and put him in the same situation with the same institutional shortcomings – maybe even the caliber of coach that could land in the national championship at TCU – and they don't succeed here?
Even with all of Wilcox’s shortcomings, I will freely admit that he has us “close.” Like I said previously, if any one of like five different things go right last night, we win a game against a relatively recent sec power and national championship caliber program. The problem is all of those little things never seem to go our way and we’re consistently having the same conversation. And none of those little things have jackshit to do with the administration, Covid, or anything else. And for the record, I do not blame you for anything you’re saying, because I was saying the exact same stuff like two seasons ago in defense of Wilcox. But sometimes you just need a new voice in the room to get over the hump, turn the corner, etc.
And on the topic of dykes, good for him. He inherited a great roster and one of the best up and coming coordinators, and he got on a heater before he got waxed in the national championship game. Now personally, I think last year was an anomaly and he’ll come massively back down to earth, but good for him. Our former coach having instant success at his second stop after cal doesn’t have any bearing on our current situation though. Yeah it’s harder to find a guy who’s the right “fit” at cal and can navigate the institutional challenges, but it doesn’t mean you accept the current results because the next guy might not do any better. Again, if you’re just gonna stop trying to be something better, why even bother fielding a team?
FYI- Dykes' wunderkind OC is, now, at 'Bama and in the hot seat already, I do not doubt. LOL
TCU was Dykes' third stop. Cal-SMU-TCU.
You're right, we should not take it, but rather than crucifying every coach when the law of averages kicks in, we should be lobbying for a change of administrative culture.
Garrett Riley is now at Clemson. And tcu was dykes ‘ 4th stop (Louisiana Tech, Cal, SMU, TCU), but his 2nd stop after Cal.
You're right. Damn me for wingin' it.
I knew I saw Garrett. Riley at some superpower that got upset. LOL
Yep, good example, but his defense is still an afterthought. LOL.
Agreed but it took a while (and a lot of nudging the Athletics Dept) to get here