I was very much on the fence about Wilcox just a couple of days ago, and today I feel the same as if we just landed some hotshot new hire. I do think the optics of him turning down OU and now some recommitment to him in the form of additional resources for his staff and more years on his deal has us poised to climb another rung in the next few years. Stoked.
I have been on the fence about Wilcox since the five straight three and outs in the Nevada game, and nothing has changed my mind. The man simply doesn't get offense, and that's what made me a Cal fan in the first place. I look back on the season and realize that I only had fun watching one game this year, and that was against Oregon State. My voice was hoarse for three days with all the joyous screaming I did during that game. But one game ain't enough. I am a microcosm of the apathetic fan base that stayed away from Memorial in droves this year. I don' t see anything changing next season, and in fact could get a lot worse if Garbers leaves.
I mean, Sonny Dykes teams scored more points than I can remember in my whole Cal fandom, but his teams couldn’t stop opponents from scoring either. I thought I would like it when he got hired, but losing 55-48 feels worse to me than losing 24-21 or something similar. I’ve been rewatching early Tedford era games, and the bottom line is, his O-lines were huge. Even his first year. I still don’t understand how he did it that quickly from the get go.
The bigger issue with Sonny Dykes is that he almost never beat anyone good. I think the win over Utah with the goal-line stand at the end was the one time he beat a team that finished in the upper half of the conference. (This hasn't really changed since he moved to SMU and the American Athletic, by the way. They still consistently lose to the best teams in that league.)
Wilcox's teams have been inconsistent, but he has been able to beat the best teams in the Pac-12 at least some of the time (WSU his first year, UW twice, Oregon last year). That shows more promise to me. Dykes felt like the treadmill of mediocrity.
Sonny plays Big 12 football. Recruit receivers and and QB and put all the best guys on offense. score 60+ points a game and who gives a shit about defense.
You haven't been paying attention to the discussion about the transition to the Musgrave offense. It takes a year. We didn't have a year of practices and games in that system coming into this season. We were still on a steep learning curve. Btw, Wilcox knows plenty about offense; it's why he told BB to find a new job and hired Musgrave.
Sorry....not buying it at all. Cal is likely going to be breaking in a new quarterback and a bunch of new players in the skill positions next season. What in that last USC game against the worst defense SC has fielded in decades made you believe that the team was turning a corner?
We'll see. When they 'broke in' Joe Roth his junior year (I was on that team) we played just fine. And its happened plenty of other times. Zach Johnson seems to have a decent grasp of our offense, but no game experience. Kai Milner will have had a year in our system and he's a stud athlete, with a better arm than Garbers. Will we have some growing pains? Sure. But I think Wilcox will have us on the same upward trajectory that we were on before Covid. It's never perfect and we will have some ups and downs along the way, but if we look at the curve and see overall improvement in the quality of our recruits and the players we field (after years of S&T work) we should be looking good. Then we end up in the virtuous cycle of winning more games, getting better Bowl invites, and thus attracting better recruits and so on. It all takes time and a steady guiding hand. Wilcox is the guiding hand.
I hope you are right. But please explain why Johnson or Milner could not break into to the number two spot all season. It might have changed the trajectory of the entire season had one of them played in the Arizona game. Was it because Wilcox felt some kind of loyalty to a graduate transfer who obviously didn't have the chops? This is one of the things that truly disturbs me about Musgrave and his system. If it is that hard to learn for some of the brightest kids in college football, it's probably not the right one to begin with.
I would love to hear a response to this as well. What on earth was going on behind Garbers? He's been QB for approximately 19 years. Yet no one is ready to fill in if he's not there, not even plausibly. And we're hitting the xfer portal hard for (wait for it) QBs? I'm flummoxed. If you can't recruit and train a second quarterback in all of that time, something would seem to be amiss.
I get that. The trouble is, given the difficulties Cal presents to any coach, as well as the substandard salaries for assistant/HC coaches, who do think could do better, now?
I think it's hard to make that prediction given we don't know who our QB is. The book on Musgrave's system seems to be that it takes some time to ramp up on, so my expectations are really low for any year 1 QB.
Unless they have been in the system. Although when it comes to game experience I would agree. But then look at a kid like Dart at USC. If either of our next QB's can play at his level in year one we'll be in good shape.
"Figure-it-out factor" - love this. The ability to take concepts, ideas, and new information and apply it in the real world under pressure. Any Cal graduate who successfully navigated the bureaucracy at Sproul Hall definitely has this.
As a grad who has succeeded in life far beyond my hopes, I can attest to this being true. I paid my own way through Cal working at REI, back when tuition was $700 a semester (1987) and learning how to take care of myself and succeed in school with a double major has prepared me for anything at all I've faced since. No intellectual challenge has been greater. No need to get along with diverse people greater. I owe UC Berkeley more than I can ever say. Fiat Lux.
CalBear: I graduated in 1988 and my final semester tuition was a whopping $755 (equivalent to about $1200 today), which my parents gladly paid. My students get mad at me when I tell them how cheap it was to go to Berkeley in the 1980s but I want them to know so they get good and pissed off and try to do something about it. Like you, Berkeley changed my life and helped make me who I am today (a college professor). That's why I don't mind donating money to the History and Athletic Departments. I don't care if we ever get to the Rose Bowl (ok, I care a little) because I will always root for the Golden Bears. GO BEARS!!!!!
My parents paid for two years and then said "you are on your own" so I worked nights unloading airplanes for UPS while taking four classes (5 once) per semester. Didn't sleep much but oh well. Navigating the experience built my resilience and ability to deal with challenges as well as the Cal bureaucracy. Tuition was cheap and so was my Northside apartment two blocks from campus. No more.
I read a good comment on TOS that, if Wilcox had left, the demands he's putting in this contract would still have been required by whatever new coach came in - more administrative support, lowered GPA requirements, and a larger assistant pool.
In effect, we're hiring a new coach - Wilcox 2.0. Unless he drastically falls on his face (a la Jimmy Lake), first-year coaches don't get fired. This is a commitment to Wilcox in the same manner that he committed to us.
Wilcox ≠ Lake. Lake didn't get fired only because of their poor record, he has some character issues that helped them decide to move him out. Wilcox's character strengths include the areas where Lake had weaknesses. I don't see Wilcox doing anything a la Jimmy Lake.
Cal football, after the rot of late Tedford, had the worst APR is the country. So the university implemented a special GPA requirement: something like 80% of football admits had to have a 3.0 GPA (I don’t remember the exact numbers.) I believe this is a requirement unique to Cal; other schools are not limited in special admits.
Now that our APR is among the best in the country, it’s time to drop that rule and allow a larger percentage of people with lower GPA’s. As long as they are expected to succeed academically, and given the resources necessary to do so, we shouldn’t see the academic failures like we saw late Tedford. And we’d be on par with our rivals, even the academically strong ones lime furd and UCLA.
Agreed, tho it's probably a good place to start, considering higher admission standards are yet another example of Cal shooting itself in the foot by setting the bar higher than that required by the body that governs it...sounds eerily similar to the COVID requirements....
I think there is a way of phrasing lowered GPA requirements that plays into university speak and gets it done. It’s about equity. GPA tends to be highly inequitable, in that it is going to heavily slant you to recruiting middle class white guys from Newport. It creates bad optics in a time of heightened focus on these issues. (I myself would add that the football program is its own curricular regime and GPA is largely irrelevant to one’s success in it, but while correct I think you’d be swimming upstream with that argument, as administrators are hopelessly tied to the idea of a student athlete getting A’s in sociology by day and making tackles at night.)
Are you saying lowering GPA requirements will slant towards white guys in Newport? When I played they had Prop 48 admissions (if I recall correctly). It was not beneficial for white guys from Newport. And football is not a sport about equity.
No I think the raised requirements slant you to white guys in Newport. That is based on an assumption that general inequities in GPA hold up as to football recruits. I don’t know that to be true but it seems a fair assumption. So the point is that removing the heightened GPA requirements may increase equity.
In fact I think this is a point on which citizen science / journalism could win the day. If someone were to dig into the data and do an analysis showing that these requirements were inequitable in this way, then that analysis was published as an expose in a local paper, these heightened GPA requirements would be dropped overnight by the nervous white folks in their 50s/60s that make these decisions.
Most importantly, we picked a direction instead of dithering pathetically. He now comes with the Oregon seal of approval. So now we have to give him the tools he needs to succeed.
Football-wise, he's one of the brightest minds in the game. Time will tell whether he can learn *all* the aspects of being a head coach, mainly the stuff that happens outside the sixty minutes.
Assistant coaches generally leave for a better title, not a pay raise. The "top" programs lose them left and right (see Alabama, Georgia, etc.).
And what is left to fix in terms of facilities? I thought Teddy and Aaron took care of that. Do we need fancier backlighting, waterfalls, and new PS5s in the game room?
Hopefully, the needed resources revolve around our recruiting operation. Maybe a Learjet wrapped in a grizzly bear suit? A call center so that we can win the hearts of momma, daddy, and nana?
The biggest Catch-22 right now is getting butts in the seats of Memorial Stadium. Gotta win to get butts, but need butts to help win and secure recruits. They should be giving tickets to every kid in the Bay Area to stoke attendance. They should also sell student tickets at a super discounted rate and maybe have free bear beer before and after. Whatever it takes.
It still seems pretty low in most college stadiums across the nation, if the various national broadcasts are any indication. The very top games still draw fans, but the mid-level teams are playing each other in front of plenty of empty seats.
I want what you are smoking. Assistant frequently leave for bigger paychecks, just like head coaches (look at Norvell going from UNR to Colorado State in the same conference. It was all about a raise in pay).
Except for Utah & Oregon, every pac-12 stadium looked to be 3/4 empty this season whenever I tuned in. You're right, winning will fix that. We are sheep.
As we all know, I'm a staunch Wilcox supporter. I don't feel he has earned a pay raise other than an annual "cost of living" increase. Add a few years to the contract, sure I'm all for that. Make some internal changes to benefit the program, great!! Provide a better pay rate for staff and coaches, great!! I am very curious to see what Knowlton brings to the table and what he, Knowlton, can accomplish. At present, I have no faith in Knowlton making any measurable/material changes that benefit the program. I would rather set myself up for disappointment and then be utterly surprised. Till then I won't be holding my breath.
The easy parts are more $$$ for staffing & whatever building a modern football infrastructure (continually improving facilities maybe?) is, but what magic wand can they wave to get "increasing administrative support"?
I'm not so sure that money sufficient for top notch assist coaches and improving facilities etc. is the “easy part.” It's all difficult, which is why we struggle to win consistently.
I think for assistants the housing costs are a detractor, so I think we do something like Harbaugh made Stanford do and buy some random houses in the area, fix them up, and make them available to assistants at low/no cost.
Stanford has that Stanford town, Professorville as it is known, and its own zip code. They are far more accommodating to the needs of junior profs and the coaching staff in procuring housing, as the peninsula market is way more crazy than the east bay.
Super good idea. Rather than offering a one time raise where the assistant leaves eventually no matter what, reduce the living cost for them and everyone that comes after.
Still don't know if Wilcox is a great coach, but as far as I can tell his reasons for staying look like the right ones: trying to improve institutional support, more money for assistants, etc. That all makes sense and is what the program really needs for the long term, beyond just a sudden influx of talent.
I was very much on the fence about Wilcox just a couple of days ago, and today I feel the same as if we just landed some hotshot new hire. I do think the optics of him turning down OU and now some recommitment to him in the form of additional resources for his staff and more years on his deal has us poised to climb another rung in the next few years. Stoked.
I have been on the fence about Wilcox since the five straight three and outs in the Nevada game, and nothing has changed my mind. The man simply doesn't get offense, and that's what made me a Cal fan in the first place. I look back on the season and realize that I only had fun watching one game this year, and that was against Oregon State. My voice was hoarse for three days with all the joyous screaming I did during that game. But one game ain't enough. I am a microcosm of the apathetic fan base that stayed away from Memorial in droves this year. I don' t see anything changing next season, and in fact could get a lot worse if Garbers leaves.
I mean, Sonny Dykes teams scored more points than I can remember in my whole Cal fandom, but his teams couldn’t stop opponents from scoring either. I thought I would like it when he got hired, but losing 55-48 feels worse to me than losing 24-21 or something similar. I’ve been rewatching early Tedford era games, and the bottom line is, his O-lines were huge. Even his first year. I still don’t understand how he did it that quickly from the get go.
The bigger issue with Sonny Dykes is that he almost never beat anyone good. I think the win over Utah with the goal-line stand at the end was the one time he beat a team that finished in the upper half of the conference. (This hasn't really changed since he moved to SMU and the American Athletic, by the way. They still consistently lose to the best teams in that league.)
Wilcox's teams have been inconsistent, but he has been able to beat the best teams in the Pac-12 at least some of the time (WSU his first year, UW twice, Oregon last year). That shows more promise to me. Dykes felt like the treadmill of mediocrity.
Sonny plays Big 12 football. Recruit receivers and and QB and put all the best guys on offense. score 60+ points a game and who gives a shit about defense.
You haven't been paying attention to the discussion about the transition to the Musgrave offense. It takes a year. We didn't have a year of practices and games in that system coming into this season. We were still on a steep learning curve. Btw, Wilcox knows plenty about offense; it's why he told BB to find a new job and hired Musgrave.
Sorry....not buying it at all. Cal is likely going to be breaking in a new quarterback and a bunch of new players in the skill positions next season. What in that last USC game against the worst defense SC has fielded in decades made you believe that the team was turning a corner?
We'll see. When they 'broke in' Joe Roth his junior year (I was on that team) we played just fine. And its happened plenty of other times. Zach Johnson seems to have a decent grasp of our offense, but no game experience. Kai Milner will have had a year in our system and he's a stud athlete, with a better arm than Garbers. Will we have some growing pains? Sure. But I think Wilcox will have us on the same upward trajectory that we were on before Covid. It's never perfect and we will have some ups and downs along the way, but if we look at the curve and see overall improvement in the quality of our recruits and the players we field (after years of S&T work) we should be looking good. Then we end up in the virtuous cycle of winning more games, getting better Bowl invites, and thus attracting better recruits and so on. It all takes time and a steady guiding hand. Wilcox is the guiding hand.
I hope you are right. But please explain why Johnson or Milner could not break into to the number two spot all season. It might have changed the trajectory of the entire season had one of them played in the Arizona game. Was it because Wilcox felt some kind of loyalty to a graduate transfer who obviously didn't have the chops? This is one of the things that truly disturbs me about Musgrave and his system. If it is that hard to learn for some of the brightest kids in college football, it's probably not the right one to begin with.
I would love to hear a response to this as well. What on earth was going on behind Garbers? He's been QB for approximately 19 years. Yet no one is ready to fill in if he's not there, not even plausibly. And we're hitting the xfer portal hard for (wait for it) QBs? I'm flummoxed. If you can't recruit and train a second quarterback in all of that time, something would seem to be amiss.
Shoulda watched the Big Game then
I'm surprised you were on the fence about Wilcox. What is it that troubles you about him?
Quarterbacks NOT named Chase Garbers
Wins and losses.
I get that. The trouble is, given the difficulties Cal presents to any coach, as well as the substandard salaries for assistant/HC coaches, who do think could do better, now?
Paw, we should be better this year after a full year in Musgrave's system. We do need to get our O-line sorted out though.
I have little confidence in Musgrave's system or his ability to adapt it to his personnel and opponent.
Why?
Because he hasn't shown he's good at it for the last year and a half?
I'd like to see a new OC at this point.
I think it's hard to make that prediction given we don't know who our QB is. The book on Musgrave's system seems to be that it takes some time to ramp up on, so my expectations are really low for any year 1 QB.
Unless they have been in the system. Although when it comes to game experience I would agree. But then look at a kid like Dart at USC. If either of our next QB's can play at his level in year one we'll be in good shape.
Color me skeptical given the AZ disaster. I'm bullish on our Bears, just not so much our chances for more wins next year.
"Figure-it-out factor" - love this. The ability to take concepts, ideas, and new information and apply it in the real world under pressure. Any Cal graduate who successfully navigated the bureaucracy at Sproul Hall definitely has this.
As a grad who has succeeded in life far beyond my hopes, I can attest to this being true. I paid my own way through Cal working at REI, back when tuition was $700 a semester (1987) and learning how to take care of myself and succeed in school with a double major has prepared me for anything at all I've faced since. No intellectual challenge has been greater. No need to get along with diverse people greater. I owe UC Berkeley more than I can ever say. Fiat Lux.
CalBear: I graduated in 1988 and my final semester tuition was a whopping $755 (equivalent to about $1200 today), which my parents gladly paid. My students get mad at me when I tell them how cheap it was to go to Berkeley in the 1980s but I want them to know so they get good and pissed off and try to do something about it. Like you, Berkeley changed my life and helped make me who I am today (a college professor). That's why I don't mind donating money to the History and Athletic Departments. I don't care if we ever get to the Rose Bowl (ok, I care a little) because I will always root for the Golden Bears. GO BEARS!!!!!
I think I (my parents) paid around $1200 for a summer session one year... I thought that was crazy high because the regular tuition was so much lower.
My parents paid for two years and then said "you are on your own" so I worked nights unloading airplanes for UPS while taking four classes (5 once) per semester. Didn't sleep much but oh well. Navigating the experience built my resilience and ability to deal with challenges as well as the Cal bureaucracy. Tuition was cheap and so was my Northside apartment two blocks from campus. No more.
While incredibly inspiring, I can't get over that price tag! Your semester is my monthly student loan payment once they start back up lol.
I read a good comment on TOS that, if Wilcox had left, the demands he's putting in this contract would still have been required by whatever new coach came in - more administrative support, lowered GPA requirements, and a larger assistant pool.
In effect, we're hiring a new coach - Wilcox 2.0. Unless he drastically falls on his face (a la Jimmy Lake), first-year coaches don't get fired. This is a commitment to Wilcox in the same manner that he committed to us.
Wilcox ≠ Lake. Lake didn't get fired only because of their poor record, he has some character issues that helped them decide to move him out. Wilcox's character strengths include the areas where Lake had weaknesses. I don't see Wilcox doing anything a la Jimmy Lake.
"lowered GPA requirements"?? Knowlton, alone, can not deliver that. Why do you feel this is one of the "demands" and how will it be achieved?
Cal football, after the rot of late Tedford, had the worst APR is the country. So the university implemented a special GPA requirement: something like 80% of football admits had to have a 3.0 GPA (I don’t remember the exact numbers.) I believe this is a requirement unique to Cal; other schools are not limited in special admits.
Now that our APR is among the best in the country, it’s time to drop that rule and allow a larger percentage of people with lower GPA’s. As long as they are expected to succeed academically, and given the resources necessary to do so, we shouldn’t see the academic failures like we saw late Tedford. And we’d be on par with our rivals, even the academically strong ones lime furd and UCLA.
Agreed, tho it's probably a good place to start, considering higher admission standards are yet another example of Cal shooting itself in the foot by setting the bar higher than that required by the body that governs it...sounds eerily similar to the COVID requirements....
I think there is a way of phrasing lowered GPA requirements that plays into university speak and gets it done. It’s about equity. GPA tends to be highly inequitable, in that it is going to heavily slant you to recruiting middle class white guys from Newport. It creates bad optics in a time of heightened focus on these issues. (I myself would add that the football program is its own curricular regime and GPA is largely irrelevant to one’s success in it, but while correct I think you’d be swimming upstream with that argument, as administrators are hopelessly tied to the idea of a student athlete getting A’s in sociology by day and making tackles at night.)
Are you saying lowering GPA requirements will slant towards white guys in Newport? When I played they had Prop 48 admissions (if I recall correctly). It was not beneficial for white guys from Newport. And football is not a sport about equity.
No I think the raised requirements slant you to white guys in Newport. That is based on an assumption that general inequities in GPA hold up as to football recruits. I don’t know that to be true but it seems a fair assumption. So the point is that removing the heightened GPA requirements may increase equity.
In fact I think this is a point on which citizen science / journalism could win the day. If someone were to dig into the data and do an analysis showing that these requirements were inequitable in this way, then that analysis was published as an expose in a local paper, these heightened GPA requirements would be dropped overnight by the nervous white folks in their 50s/60s that make these decisions.
Most importantly, we picked a direction instead of dithering pathetically. He now comes with the Oregon seal of approval. So now we have to give him the tools he needs to succeed.
Shiny new Wilcox > Old Wilcox
Give Wilcox more resources to succeed, and he will do well.
Football-wise, he's one of the brightest minds in the game. Time will tell whether he can learn *all* the aspects of being a head coach, mainly the stuff that happens outside the sixty minutes.
Assistant coaches generally leave for a better title, not a pay raise. The "top" programs lose them left and right (see Alabama, Georgia, etc.).
And what is left to fix in terms of facilities? I thought Teddy and Aaron took care of that. Do we need fancier backlighting, waterfalls, and new PS5s in the game room?
Hopefully, the needed resources revolve around our recruiting operation. Maybe a Learjet wrapped in a grizzly bear suit? A call center so that we can win the hearts of momma, daddy, and nana?
The biggest Catch-22 right now is getting butts in the seats of Memorial Stadium. Gotta win to get butts, but need butts to help win and secure recruits. They should be giving tickets to every kid in the Bay Area to stoke attendance. They should also sell student tickets at a super discounted rate and maybe have free bear beer before and after. Whatever it takes.
To be fair on attendance, we have been living through a once in a century pandemic, I wouldn’t crap my pants about 20/21 attendance.
It still seems pretty low in most college stadiums across the nation, if the various national broadcasts are any indication. The very top games still draw fans, but the mid-level teams are playing each other in front of plenty of empty seats.
I want what you are smoking. Assistant frequently leave for bigger paychecks, just like head coaches (look at Norvell going from UNR to Colorado State in the same conference. It was all about a raise in pay).
No, but a pay raise makes it easier to replace your assistant coaches without losing quality.
Except for Utah & Oregon, every pac-12 stadium looked to be 3/4 empty this season whenever I tuned in. You're right, winning will fix that. We are sheep.
As we all know, I'm a staunch Wilcox supporter. I don't feel he has earned a pay raise other than an annual "cost of living" increase. Add a few years to the contract, sure I'm all for that. Make some internal changes to benefit the program, great!! Provide a better pay rate for staff and coaches, great!! I am very curious to see what Knowlton brings to the table and what he, Knowlton, can accomplish. At present, I have no faith in Knowlton making any measurable/material changes that benefit the program. I would rather set myself up for disappointment and then be utterly surprised. Till then I won't be holding my breath.
Bob R. in an other post you asked for Knowlton's email addy, here it is: jim.knowlton@berkeley.edu
Wilcox years:
2017: 5-7
2018: 7-6
2019: 8-5
2020: covid
2021: covid
2022: covid
2023: 11-2
2024: takes HC job at Cal Poly citing overwhelming pressure to win at Cal
I don't see a Sun Bowl Bid in there, OoT.... ;-)
That's because we finally won the Cheez-it bowl, which became the new national championship game.
Well played, I damn near fell off of the couch I was laughing so hard.
I’ll take it if the 11-2 includes a Rose Bowl victory
I'd be happy with an appearance....a win? Now you're just being ridiculous.... ;-)
Oh no, if we are going to the Rose Bowl we better win. The last time we went, in 59, we lost.
I agree with all of this GEAT.
Good post, Taco
Remember Mike Williams? Man he was a trip
This is a name that should never be spoken by any Bear.
Mike Williams? The guy that gave us Wyking Jones and set the Men's Basketball Program back a decade....that guy?
Go Cal Bears and Go Coach Wilcox! Also, while we are doing all the Go stuff, Go get us some OL guys so we can make the offense Go consistently.
The easy parts are more $$$ for staffing & whatever building a modern football infrastructure (continually improving facilities maybe?) is, but what magic wand can they wave to get "increasing administrative support"?
I'm not so sure that money sufficient for top notch assist coaches and improving facilities etc. is the “easy part.” It's all difficult, which is why we struggle to win consistently.
He must be licking his chops now
Well played Mr Wilcox, well played. Now let’s see some of that master class strategery on the field.
I think for assistants the housing costs are a detractor, so I think we do something like Harbaugh made Stanford do and buy some random houses in the area, fix them up, and make them available to assistants at low/no cost.
Stanford has that Stanford town, Professorville as it is known, and its own zip code. They are far more accommodating to the needs of junior profs and the coaching staff in procuring housing, as the peninsula market is way more crazy than the east bay.
And make it a nice house that the coaches and their wives would want to live there. It can be a big factor to affect decisions.
Super good idea. Rather than offering a one time raise where the assistant leaves eventually no matter what, reduce the living cost for them and everyone that comes after.
Big fan of Justin Wilcox. Steady, talented and ambitious. Can’t wait until next year!
Still don't know if Wilcox is a great coach, but as far as I can tell his reasons for staying look like the right ones: trying to improve institutional support, more money for assistants, etc. That all makes sense and is what the program really needs for the long term, beyond just a sudden influx of talent.
So call me cautiously optimistic.
https://media.giphy.com/media/pReb5Koy6JmihUYBLx/giphy.gif