How are CAL Berkley and UCLA so bad at track

And as a cal alum, I am very happy with the program right now. Would much rather have local kids developing than plucking up random 25 year olds from overseas. It’s teams that are 100% international that should be embarrassed.

When you get a woke administration who encourages DEI you get underwhelming and unqualified administration and coaches. UCLA and Cal are two of the worst political motivated schools in the US. This will never lead to success in sports. No matter how to try to spin it. In sports you need the best qualified first the job to win.

Imagine that hiring the best candidate will get the best results. I’m shocked…..

Coach Johnson and Coach Hayes are the hired directors and can’t seem to hire a sufficient staff. They are responsible for the failing programs. They get free California talent and are simply doing a bad job. no excuses

Cal has some awesome throwers & not bad in the sprints.

UCLA has better looking women.

USC, Stanford, UCLA, and Cal are known as the Olympics Quad with the most Olympians and medal winners. USC offered Cal in 1932, 1984, and 2028 to host sports in the Olympic Games and Cal has always refused. Stanford and UCLA always accept the offer. USC offered Oklahoma City to host the Games and they accepted.

Alekna Paris Olympic Medalists

From the 1930s all the way up to the start of the 2000s, the USC - UCLA dual meet had the reputation of being the greatest rivalry in college track & field history, with Cal and Stanford being two of their toughest mutual opponents. Now, UCLA and Cal have nearly 50,000 student populations (some 33,000 undergraduate) each, while the challenges of becoming a traditional adult (i.e. buying a house, affording and starting a family, establishing job security, etc.) are as tough as they've been in decades in California. School leaders get this to an extent, and emphasize academics over sports much more than they used to.

For those who can't shake their obsession with DEI and 'wokeness', I can tell you (as a former teacher, career & college counselor, and researcher-author) that the vast majority of young people at Cal and UCLA don't really give a crap about politics, when push comes to shove. They care about finding good paying & meaningful work. And this business about Cal and UCLA going downhill as institutions because of their wokeness, well, according to the latest global university rankings by U.S. News, Cal ranked 5th and UCLA 11th (in the London Times global rankings, Cal was 9th and UCLA 18th). You won't ever find the likes of Oregon, Alabama, Ohio State, or UT-Texas on a list like this; they value football and sports the way schools like Cal and UCLA value academics.

UCLA hires for race and gender and is the leader in DEI

https://www.law.gwu.edu/refugee-mainstream-higher-education-ucla-professor-quits-over-woke-takeover

Regardless of these schools being extremely woke they just can’t seem to make the right hires to get the job done. Maybe they don’t really care about track. I was seeing some social media hype with Joanna Hayes’s hire at UCLA. I’ll admit I was skeptical from what I head about her being a bad leader. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but this has to be the worst UCLA has ever been across the board. Cal is par in the field department and that’s about it. Both these places need a complete overhaul. Hayes was handed talent and is not getting results. I think she’s a better assistant opposed to head coach. Watts at USC just proved again today he’s the real leader.

Yes! Would be great to have wonderful sports teams. Even better to be able to send your children to world class institutions.

We're all waiting for privatiztion of college sports so we can start our own teams.

Ant the end of the day we all know why these schools suck at Track & Field. The coaches suck and you can’t win with a bad coach unless you buy foreign talent that trains on their own.

Bad coaches = Bad results

SC recruits prep from the Armory

Results come from a combination of talent and coaching. UCLA is caught in a recruiting bind so they struggle to get top talent. In the sprints, hurdles, jumps they can't get the top tier talent. On the West Coast USC has those athletes to themselves. Credit their tradition & Quincy Watts's leadership. And in the middle distances/distances UCLA has always struggled to attract the top tier recruits. I don't see how that trend will change. The USC recruits usually develop. Only if they didn't & we start to see athletes going to the transfer portal would USC's recruiting dominance diminish. But the combination of a good coaching staff, good academics and post graduation opportunities ensure the retention of good talent.

I don’t think anyone disagrees that USC is a great place to be and run. Maybe not for distance but otherwise it’s good.
This thread is about how UCLA and Cal having talent and doing a bad job getting no positive results. Maybe their environment is bad, maybe the coaches are really bad. Something is off with these two places. It’s not like the schools a bad academically. Talent shows up, but you have to coach them.

Why is the coach a bad coach?

USC has the Yellow Jacket security guards to watch kids off campus. The campus is a walled fortress with guard posts for the privileged like in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya. The area around the school is being gentrified. Some rich parents buy a house in the Ghetto for their kis to live in, then sell it after their kid graduates.