Golden Nuggets: Wilner Gives His Thoughts on the Hiring of Sonny Dykes

Between the dismissal of Gould and the men's basketball team's recent woes, we could all use a laugh. Cue Jon Wilner. He finally gives us his thoughts on the hiring of Sonny Dykes and it's a doozy. Here are the highlights:

Watching the Dykes press conference, it struck me that Barbour failed to heed the advice of her search committee, which urged Barbour to hire a coach with confidence but no attitude.

Yet she failed totally and completely to heed that advice during her introductory remarks, which were full of unnecessary attitude.

Barbour’s description of the search … "we did it the right way" … "receiving great compliments nationally" … translates as: "I did a great job." It was, after all, her search.

I’ve never seen an athletic director in that situation indulge in the level of self-aggrandizing that we saw from Barbour, who seemed more interested in shouting down real or imagined critics than she was in performing the most important task: Introducing Dykes.

This was the one criticism of the hiring situation I hadn't heard. Barbour too full of herself?

Here again, we can use Colorado as a comparison: Buffs athletic director Mike Bohn spent all of two minutes Monday with his remarks, then gave way to MacIntyre. That’s how it should be.

The ENTIRE process from firing Embree to hiring MacIntyre was the exact opposite of how a coaching replacement should be handled.

Then he goes on about how everyone knew Dykes would be a top candidate.

But Cal retained an executive placement firm, DHR International, to assist in a process that ended with the Bears hiring a coach everyone figured they would target all along.

As soon as Jeff Tedford was dismissed … before Jeff Tedford was dismissed, in some cases … every list of potential replacements included Dykes. Often, his name was at the top.

I would have passed his name along for much less than DHR charges. Wish Barbour had asked.

And I'm sure Wilner would have been as tight lipped about this as DHR was...

Next Wilner says Dykes' offense (which he completely misunderstands) is not destined for success.

Dykes will tweak his playbook to suit existing personnel, but I’m going to assume his version will be fairly similar to what he ran at Louisiana Tech and what Leach uses in Pullman.

Can that version be successful in the Pac-12? I’m not convinced.

The winningest programs in the conference the past five years are, by a good margin, Oregon, Stanford, USC and Oregon State.

All four are based not on an "Air Raid" approach but on power football — they pound the ball between the tackles to set up the pass.

(The Ducks do it out of the gun-read while the Cardinal, Beavers and Trojans take a pro-style, play-action approach.)

What worked for Dykes at LaTech might not work in the Pac-12. If that’s the case, he’ll have to adjust. Quickly.

Similar to what Leach runs in Wazzu and similar to the LA Tech offense? Similar? Did he even watch LA Tech this season? Leach and Dykes run completely different spreads.

That was comical even for Wilner's standards. This is some Grade-A trolling. This put a smile on my face and a song in my heart. I hope it did the same for you.

Football

• Dykes has decided not to retain any of the Cal assistant coaches. After some confusion, this does include Michalczik.
• Phil Steele released his All-Pac-12 team. Keenan Allen is a first-team punt returner and third-team receiver. Brian Schwenke and Vince D'Amato earned sports on the second team and Steve Williams made the third team.
• Cal had a 48% increase in average attendance this season. Stanford had the worst year-over-year change with a decrease of 13%. Despite the raging dumpster fire that was Cal football this year, we had a higher average attendance (in total numbers and capacity) than the conference title-winning Lobsterbacks.
• Sonny Dykes brought aboard two assistants from Louisiana Tech: wide receivers coach and assistant head coach Rob Likens and, most importantly, offensive coordinator Tony Franklin.

Basketball

• Monty says he has no timetable for Ricky Kreklow's return. It is likely a muscle or tendon issue instead of something structural.

Baseball

• Cal baseball announced the 2013 schedule which features five televised games.

Swimming

• Soon-to-be Bears Kristen Vredeveld and Taylor Young turned in solid performances at the 2012 Speedo Winter Junior National Championships.

Softball

• Diane Ninemire and her staff were honored at the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Convention.