The End of an Era

I do not come to eulogize Ben Braun...for he is not yet dead.

But I was a bit sad sitting in the stands the other day watching our seniors put on a good show in an otherwise terrible game against a mediocre team, the Washington Huskies.

First, although Anderson was clearly in his last home game as a Bear, no one took the time to announce his contributions to the team. Thanks, Ryan, for your contributions.

Second, no one announced that Ben Braun, who built the House of Haas, was experiencing his final home game. True, he made a herculean effort after the game in his post game talk with Roxy Bernstein to explain why they lost, why it is so hard this year, why , in fact, coaching out his contract would be the right thing. But here is the deal. For the second year in a row, the Bears men's hoop team, which he has built, has failed all expectations, falling to the cellar of the Pac-10. If someone were to give out an award for the worst coach in the Pac 10 this year, Ben Braun would get it (since John Jay has already been fired).

But maybe I am wrong. Most of the publications pre-season had the Bears 7th or 8th in the Pac 10, with only Arizona State, Oregon State and maybe Washington below us. So maybe we are too close to it. But I get the sense that if this group of players was playing for UCLA, they would still be on top of the Pac 10, and we would still be where we are, if we had their players. So maybe those pre-season polls and publications are only projecting what everyone else seems to know, and what we are just finding out - that Coach Braun just can not coach well enough to win in the Pac 10.

He is a good guy. He runs a clean program. But, it seems like it is a passionless program. And I think that is the problem. Good enough to be a consistent winner in the league, but not good enough to be any good. He has used the resources of the university in a generally positive manner - he had a decent product when the Arena was opened, he kept it filled for a few years, and he kept the house clean, which was critical after the Bozeman episode. But Cal, as an institution, should be better than that. We are vicious with our professors - if they are not top performing, they get the boot. We focus on being the best. Because Sports was, at least, since the 60's, sort of seen as anti-academic, no one really cared about it from an University level. It was left to the athletic department, which was woefully mismanaged for many years. So, at the time, cleaning up the mess was all that was cared about. And, hey, if you could get the Arena built, so much the better.

But now, I think, people understand that Athletics and Academics are not mutually exclusive. What I mean by that is that you can have quality athletic teams at top institutions of higher learning, and that enhances the overall experience. And in a world of state budget cuts, having an overall experience better than the general community college experience would most likely help you in raising money from alumni, from other who have a sense of the place. UC has to raise over the next 40 or 50 years something like 50 billion dollars to maintain it's place as the pre-eminent public university, with the assumed reduction in state spending. That is huge.

Here I will say that Ben Braun is exactly the worst kind of coach that Cal can have at a time like this. We either need to care about athletics, and demand excellence, as we have from Rugby, Crew, Water Polo, Softball, Aquatics, and now from Football and Women's basketball, or we have to give up the charade, like we did in the late 70's, when everyone knew that no one cared about Cal athletics anymore, after the shame of football recruiting issues - and become like an ivy league team. We can not be mediorce. It is not in the DNA of a Cal grad to have a team that gets to 500 each year. If that is the team you have, it will be relegated to Baseball Status - and no one goes to those games (but that is a different post).

The women against Stanfurd sold more tickets than all but one mens game this season. Wow. That is amazing. I don't know this but I bet that is the first time ever that has happened. And I can not for the life of me see the end of this with Ben at the helm. There is no positive future - just more of the same. And we have all seen that movie. It is boring and it is old, and it is time to move on.

I hope the Bears beat the LA schools, and shock the world in the Pac 10 tournament, and go on to the final four. I think they probably could, if they actually all played out of their minds. I am the first to say that I would change my mind.

GO BEARS