Huffins out at Cal

Here's a great video up already on YouTube with some NCAA highlights, and the entire Women's 800m + post race interview.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEyM_WRDZL4

Pac-10 Fan wrote:

The Cal Women just placed 8th overall in the NATION!

The Cal Men--coached by virtually the same coaches--finished 68th in the nation?!

Not a good average... Not good overall results to disregard when assessing the coaching abilities at Cal.

any candidates for the job identified at the NC's..

Pac-10 Fan wrote:

The Cal Women just placed 8th overall in the NATION!

Vanamee wrote:

The Cal Men--coached by virtually the same coaches--finished 68th in the nation?!

Not a good average... Not good overall results to disregard when assessing the coaching abilities at Cal.

Duh, that's why Huffins got fired you idiot.

How long does it take for that fact to set into your brain?

You appear to be terribly dense.

For your information:

Coach Miller coached Inika McPherson AND Ed Wright to All-American.

sj quik wrote:

good for them! i'm not sure what that has to do with me going to watch meets, though. or my argument that coaching changes need to be made. but since you're such a track scholar, maybe you can make me a cheat sheet that i can use to impress my friends at parties.

You have shown yourself to have no idea what you are talking about. the head coach got fired. get a clue.

Professor Bob wrote:

sj quik wrote:

good for them! i'm not sure what that has to do with me going to watch meets, though. or my argument that coaching changes need to be made. but since you're such a track scholar, maybe you can make me a cheat sheet that i can use to impress my friends at parties.

You have shown yourself to have no idea what you are talking about. the head coach got fired. get a clue.

professor bob, did you and huffins get your degrees together? one, the head coach was not fired, he resigned. two, if you'd kept up with this thread you'd realize that i am not talking about the head coach, who will soon be replaced, but some of the assistants. dumb shit.

Congratulations to athletes, coaches, teammates and all concerned. Now let's focus on building for the future on the momentum of that success. The weight is squarely on the Athletic Director's shoulders to attract and hire an experienced head coach who can move the program forward by not only coaching, but surrounding himself with competent colleagues, administering a budget and above all being a leader.

Go Bears

Your assumption doesn't fly in the face of historical data. Why would Huffin's get "fired" over team results? Hunt was never fired and had similar results. Sandoval was never fired and had similar results. There is nothing that you have put forth that convinces us that any Cal Track and Field coach would be fired for poor performances--certainly not Huffins.

If you still believe that Huffins was fired over poor performances, please answer the following:

Why now (this year? Why before the post-season was finished? Why would he be allowed to resign?

I'm stubborn but not dense. I see yet another situation where the rumors that surrounded a coach bubbled up to higher levels (the alumni and/or AD). They held yet another "back-room" meeting where Huffins would be allowed to resign--INSTEAD OF CAL FIRING HIM--so that he could get another job and Cal/the track program would not have to deal with a scandal.

Some of the rumors about sexual exploits that have surrounded the program during the last couple of years have thus far sadly proven correct.

Other rumors that have yet to prove correct:

1. "Wait'll Erv Hunt retires. Cal will be back!"

2. "Give Sandoval some more time. Cal will be back!"

3. "Now that Huffins is the coach, Cal will be back!"

4. "With this #1 recruiting class, in a couple years Cal will be back!"

5. "Now that Hunt has retired and the alumni are giving money to the program, Cal will be back!"

Some of the tools we have to help us form opinions in this world are historical data, intuition, deduction, and circumstantial evidence.

People who are dense don't employ these aids. Here's to the hope that you come around... maybe then Cal will be back.

any word on who they looking to bring in? was the AD at the NCAAs talking to possible candidates?

...a lot of very good jobs up for grabs. There could still be quite a domino effect.

Amid all the sniping on this post about who knows what and how many meets they’ve been to this year, there was briefly some interesting discussion about what exactly you need a coach for and shouldn’t runners be self-motivated anyway.

I don’t know how any of the posters here can tell you why/how any individual runner panned out or didn’t, and whether it was due to coaching, individual motivation, lack of real talent, or that they had already reached their potential in high school. I know that of the 8-10 really talented distance guys I came in with at Cal in the mid-early 80’s (guys,like me, who had say one of the top 40-50 best times in their event in the country), the only one who ever really did anything in college was Jason Flamm, who made the 1988 Olympic trials in the steeple, and whom, if I remember right, made All-American. After a while, if there is a pattern of guys not panning out, you have to look at the coaching. The point here is that there has been a long pattern of guys at Cal not panning out.

I’m sure I received much better training and coaching in high school than most runners get, and I was certainly very motivated in high school, but particularly since I had only started to run as a high school sophomore, I felt I still had plenty of room to improve at Cal. My h.s. 800 times (1:52, to go with a 4:15 1600 as a junior and 4:14 as a senior) demonstrated good speed that would help as I moved to longer distances. Yet I improved only a bit over high school, and never felt like I reached my potential.

Is that the coach’s fault/ my fault? The best answer is both. I know I was given some opportunity, and never really took full advantage. I accept that ultimately my success or struggle is my own responsibility, so I don’t blame anyone. I also feel strongly that I, along with lots of other guys I ran with at Cal, would have benefited from stronger leadership and coaching. Running at that level is so much a mental test; you need to feel like/ to really know you are completely prepared to meet the challenges you face. When I ask the coach what the day’s workout will be, and he’s there taking off his shoes, scratching his feet and pulling the workout out of his ass, it’s tough for me to feel like each individual workout is designed as part of a larger plan to get me to a certain place by the end of the season.

Ah, the days of Brad Duffy (Tony Sandoval wasn't coaching the men then for all the bashers). I was there as a walk-on and he wasted a lot of talent. Or did Jack Marden coach you in the later '80s? The scratching his ass comment sounds a lot like Duffy. Remember: "Nobody's great until they're great!" ? Cal had some good guys, Blockhus, McAboy, D. Henderson, Skinner, Flamm, Jay Marden, even Schwartz, Salazar, Walsh...that distance team should have been a beast.

I believe what Cal alums/fans are asking for is new leadership because we view the aggregate as the responsibility of the coach. For each individual athlete who controls herself/himself for the 4-5 years in the program I understand how they would each feel like they should shoulder most of the responsibility in their career. If many athletes improved on a team and a small handful didn't, I wouldn't have much trouble concluding that it was most likely the athletes that were responsible and that overall the coach was doing worthy work.

However, when most of the athletes from one year are not improving, if the team has placed last or near last in their conference, I place less blame on the individual athletes. Can one male athlete negatively affect the performances of the entire men's team and women's team during the year? Doesn't seem likely.

Now, rewind or fast-forward 5 years to where that individual wasn't/is no longer in the program. If the team was/is still finishing last or near last, if the bulk of the athletes are not improving, and if the most obvious constant has been that the coach has been there throughout, at this point I would maintain that the coach should be shouldering the blame.

This is what many fans on this post are trying to stress. Not that the coaches should be held responsible for one athlete's performance in one race, but that they should be held responsible for the overall team's performances over time.

If Cal can secure good coaches with proven winning records, I'll take my chances that a few athletes might cause their own demise, all for the possibility that the entire team might crawl out from the cellar of the conference.

Nice info on all the CAL coaches. But lets get to the point! Who will take over as the top guy(Dirctor and head track coach)?

I highly doubt anyone will know the answer to that question for months. Chlll.