Should Cal Sports Internet Fans Be More Positive?

i will continue to build this pedestal that you’ve started putting CGB on, and say that we are easily the most rational, when we are discussing serious business. the inanity here is a replacement and a good outlet for the fire they spit at the other venues.

Agree. Poor choice of words.

I’d agree with this. Being unfailingly positive is not something you can ask of the fans. And while you could tell people to stand by that old schoolyard caution, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” but I don’t think that’s any more realistic.

One thing that may stand a better chance of working is to follow the maxim of “Praise in public, criticize in private”. Keeping the needlessly negative criticism to within private message boards and/or emails to Sandy/the coaching staff may be a less harmful place to vent your rage at 20-year-old kids who ruined your Saturday by failing to throw and catch a football properly.

I neither agree nor disagree with your statement. But just curious. Why is unconditional support never acceptable?

I follow Cal athletics (primarily football and basketball) because I have an affection for my alma mater, because I like sports, and because Cal sports (even when they sucked) have given me very fond memories over the years, particularly from my own college days. And I tend to be more of the positive sort, mostly because I’d hate to be negative about this when there’s so much negative in life to begin with.

But to say that I give “unconditional support” wouldn’t be accurate. College athletics is a business, albeit one that is supposed to be in the framework of an academic mission. If the program is failing in the pursuit of its mission, whether by running its business poorly, not making reasonable efforts to attain success on the field, cheating rampantly, or failing to heed the “student” part of “student athlete,” I completely understand withholding support. The difference between Cal fans, as I see it, is the line to draw (if any) between reasoned criticism of the program and pointless negativity that can only hurt the program.

Unfortunately, my sense of the truly negative sorts is that many of them care more about being right than they do about Cal being successful. This mentality is especially puzzling in the recruiting context when, most of the time, I don’t see a lot of these diatribes being backed up with credibility. For example, in recruiting, how many of these insta recruiting pundits are qualified to evaluate talent? How many can say they have seen as many kids on tape or in person as our coaching staff has? How many know the process of building a recruiting class?

I’m not going to be unfailingly positive and I wouldn’t expect any Cal fan to be. Heck, many of us who were fans pre-Tedford are too scarred to be unfailingly positive. That said, we’ve come so far in a relatively short period of time that it shows me that Coach Tedford and his staff know what the hell they’re doing. I’m going to be positive and patient with this regime for a long time.

Tedford sure turned around the football culture in no time. It’s not about sustained success but success in general. This team has a chance to do something no Cal team has done in 50 years and, still, our fans either 1) fail to show up or, worse, 2) show up and sit on their hands the entire game.

would you rather have people not show up to games, or begrudgingly give unconditional support to the program?

I agree 100% with Spazzy. I unconditionally support Cal in that I have been going to games, rooting for our teams and hoping for the best for 40 years, even through Roger Theder, Keith Gilbertson, and Tom Holmoe (and Joe Kapp, bless his heart). And I will continue to root for our teams and hope for the best for the rest of my life. But I could hardly have gone through all that misery without having criticisms of our coaches, our program, our administration, etc.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with intelligent, thoughtful criticism. The problem is the mindless negativity and thoughtless diatribes some people deliver. This seems to be a special curse of the internet, where any article you look at on almost any subject is just about certain to have at least a few nasty comments from salivating neanderthals. Many people seem to view the internet as little more than an opportunity to spew out all the bile in their souls to the world in general.

Why people want to spend their time following Cal sports if it fills them with anger, hatred and venom, I do not know. What I like about CGB is that people here actually enjoy Cal sports. Apparently on other sites, that’s considered a bad thing.

Who’s-the-Doss-hatin

“Who the Doss”? Was that the show with Tony Danza and Alyssa Milano in it? I didn’t hate that!

Although the majority of angry Cal fans just want to fire Tedford, Gregory and hire someone aggressive like Ron Rivera. Right now I see two trains of thoughts among the negative Bears:

1) Tedford is too conservative (see playcalls like the one you mentioned above, the defensive strategies implemented by DC, etc.). It filters down to the players. Ergo we will never win a Pac-10 title. Lots of logical fallacies there.

2) Tedford hasn’t developed a good quarterback in two years. Offense not fun to watch anymore. Too complex. Too stubborn. Won’t change to the times. Ergo we will never win a Pac-10 title.

Although you could agree with those criticisms, why everyone seems to come up with the conclusion we should find another head coach is a little disappointing, and way too reactionary for what should be a reasonable fanbase.

I still wanna know what the “unnamed site” is… BI?

NO.

even though Miller has climbed into bed with the mods

Nobody tell my wife about this.

I think this a point that Tedford seems to be missing in his “unconditional support” statement. More specifically, critical thinking and questioning is the hallmark of the Cal educational culture. To expect that unconditional support and critical thinking will easily mix is unreasonable.

I could more easily accept “unconditional love” for Cal football than “unconditional support”. Not they are on the same level, but like with my own kids, I might question and criticize them, but I will always love them.

Well said. So true on many levels.

I like this viewpoint Cugel. Rec’d!

People tend to forget to realize what it takes to create a perennial contender when you start so far behind a lot of programs… i.e Dumpster Muffin et al delayed our facility advancements almost two years… We were an under performing, cellar dweller for almost a decade, we go tedford and we made a huge improvement… to take the next step we needed to advance our programs’ offering to potential student athletes, that was delayed, but we are on the right track (i.e. see the latest recruiting class)… For example take a look at FSU, it took Bowden almost a decade to create an annual contender… I’m happy with the steps forward we’ve taken and although every year I want it to be the year we get back to the Rose Bowl, I am in no way disappointed or angry with 8-9 win seasons… I mean I grew up knowing Cal football as a last chance shot to make a bowl game and now I appreciate what we can accomplish… with the right coaching staff and players we will get to that next level… it just make take some time…

then again on the Doss scale I am a complete homer…. damn you optimism!!!!!!!!

Brotip: We’re not talking about BI. It’s another site.

And I do believe one should criticize other sites for being negative without purpose, for overreacting without reason to overreact, for not moderating hostility and all that sort of biz. I don’t believe in the “don’t bother criticizing them because that’s the way it’ll always be” status quo rationale you propose.

You may disagree. Feel free to write your own fanpost on the matter.

We’d be interested to see how people feel; if there’s a huge majority of fans wanting us to stop, we’ll consider it, but we basically run with whatever idea comes through our heads. And today Tedford’s comment was the one that stuck through our heads.

And the point of this exercise was to criticize the overriding tone of negativity coming from Cal Internet fans, that they should exercise more reason in their criticisms before coming to illogical conclusions. Site X was just a prominent example of said negativity; there are plenty of others (SF Chronicle comments are headache-inducing).

I love a good fisking, and the CGB writers by and large are more intelligent than most other sportswriters.

In the course of this week, we will have, if I understand things correctly here, the following posts:

1. Solarise’s O analysis
2. Solarise’s D analysis
3. NorCalNick’s Women’s B-Ball Recap post
4. NorCalNick’s work with Swish Appeal regarding the UW-Cal women’s basketball game in specific
5. My photo essay of the OSU game with the Alumni Pre-Event
6. Q+A with Building The Dam (potentially 2, one for men’s and one for women’s)
7. Cal-OSU Preview
8. Cal-OSU Recap
9. Q+A with Addicted To Quack (potentially 2, one for men’s and one for women’s)
10. Cal-Ore Preview
11. Cal-Ore Recap
12. 6 Golden Nuggets.
13. Avanish’s post on whether fans should be more positive, which, oh be tee dubbles, happens to note that there was some negativity on other boards.
14. CBKWitness, maybe.

What is that, like almost 20 posts? And you are still upset over that one of them tangentially relates to some other board?

This is exactly what I’m saying. Well put carp

And to add another positive comment, you do an absolutely outstanding job covering the women’s basketball team, norcalnick.

Well, I think Thoroughbred might be the only person on this site more positive than me.

Disappointed that you didn’t think more highly of me. I thought I was a pretty positive mo fo.