Nick Kranz: Let's get some required preliminary thoughts out of the way: I'm not particularly interested in talking about the moral or legal consequences of Pierre Ingram's actions. I follow sports to avoid stuff like this. So while I recognize that there are more important issues at stake here, I'm going to be ignoring them and talking about blatantly unimportant topics like 'coaching staff continuity' and 'recruiting.'
With that said: People who follow recruiting much more closely, is this a big deal? I found Ingram's work as running back coach neither particularly impressive nor particularly concerning, and his move to WR coach kinda indicated to me that perhaps he didn't have a huge role in terms of talent development or Xs and Os. I don't recall him having a reputation as an ace recruiter, although I admit that I don't follow recruiting enough to say that with much confidence.
What I'm trying to ask is this: Is there any indication that Pierre Ingram was more than just an average-ish position coach that can be replaced with a decent hire?
Berkelium97: I have neither enough faces nor enough palms to convey how I feel about this.
What an idiot.
Boomtho: My impression was that he was a good, nearly great, recruiter. If you go to the Cal Rivals recruiting page and sort by stars, he was the lead recruiter for our #1, #2, #5, and #6 recruits. He was even the lead recruiter for DL Trevor Howard and OL Semisi Uluave.
Speaking to the incident itself, it's very disappointing that this would happen, especially given he's married with two young kids. Like fiatlux pointed out, there are more... discrete ways to go about your extramarital affairs, if that's your cup of tea, so my disappointment is really a combination of him trying to do this, and him doing this so stupidly.
From a continuity standpoint, I think this hurts the recruiting side much more than the coaching side. He was already moving to inside WR's coach, so a little disruption was inevitable (if underway already). I'm much more worried about the recruiting impact this will have on next year's class.
Ruey Yen: No doubt, I see this as a blow to our recruiting effort, and recruiting is apparently mostly about the relationships between the players and the coaches. Even if we are able to replace him with an equally efficient if not better recruiter, we have lost time on a class or two of kids.
This whole thing is just very unfortunate, especially at this day and age. Why can't we have good things?
Leland Wong: There are so many layers of doom to this story that I don't even know how to get to them all.
Of absolute least importance, we as a fan base may be hearing about this for years to come from rival teams' bloggers and fans. We're guilty of doing that to them and I expect them to return the favor.
Then we start to worry about his this affects the team and continuity. Best-case scenario, this is a minor distraction; since we're finally able to play veteran juniors and seniors, hopefully they can ignore this and focus on their own performance, technique, and development. If we need someone to work with our receivers, we may be able to find someone who's available or slide former inside receivers coach Mark Tommerdahl from pure special teams to include some outside receivers duties. For recruiting, it sounds like Jacob Peeler had been doing a helluva job, so let's hope he can handle the extra workload.
This starts to become a bigger problem when we consider how many times Dykes and the staff have prided themselves on doing things "the right way" and recruiting high-character guys. News like this detracts from and contradicts that objective.
I understand where Nick is coming from by choosing not to focus on the personal consequences here, but I think it's important to keep them in mind to keep this story in perspective. While this sucks for us as fans and alumni of a university, let's hope that this doesn't destroy his family and his young kids.
ragnarok: I'm always disappointed when someone's actions in their personal life (however dumb) have consequences in their professional life. As in, it shouldn't be any of my employer's business if I commit dumb misdemeanors in my personal time as long as it doesn't affect my ability to do my job. Of course, in this instance, because being an assistant football coach at an FBS university makes him (pretty much the lowest level of) a public figure, it does impact his ability to do his job.
I guess I'm just disappointed that this is something anyone cares to pay attention to (from a football perspective, obviously there are moral and law enforcement perspectives that need to be addressed, but not by me, because I don't know Pierre personally and am just a dumb guy on the internet writing about college football in my spare time). That he broke the law is unfortunate. That women are exploited to the level we need anti-prostitution laws is especially unfortunate. That a guy lost his job (and who knows about his family) because of it is unfortunate. No silver linings here. Bleh.
Sam Fielder: When news of this first broke a few hours ago my first though was for Ingram's wife and family. And now that I've had a few hours to digest things, I'm still heartbroken over what this means for a man and his wife and his children.
Others have brought up how this affects the team, the recruiting, Cal's image and rightly so, as those are all issues that are on the table here. But for me, the damage to, and possible destruction of, a young family is what really grieves me. I cannot imagine the shame and embarrassment that Ingram feels, and the same emotions plus a myriad of others that his wife must be experiencing. His career at Cal is over and it's likely he won't get another shot at coaching anytime soon, if at all. But I can hope and pray that he and his wife have a good support system around them that can help them through this, come along side them and support them, and ultimately help them come out better because of it.
This is such a multifaceted topic that raises so many other questions and issues that many of our writers and commenters have already hit on. And I think it's a good thing for us to discuss the causes and problems with prostitution and sex trafficking, if only for an increased awareness of some of the ugliness that goes on in our world. But at the end of it all, even though he screwed up royally, and I think he should pay whatever penalty the university and the law deem appropriate, I still feel bad for Ingram and I really do hope that he and his family can get some help and move beyond this.
Vlad Belo: My initial reaction to the Pierre Ingram news was disappointment because he seemed to me to be a good recruiter and a rising star as an assistant coach. My other immediate thought was that there was no way he could keep his job after this. At least in the near term, I think it would be very difficult for a guy to have credibility on the recruiting trail after a transgression like this. Will it have a long lasting impact on Ingram's coaching career? Only time will tell, but for the here and now, Cal has no choice but to part ways with him.
As for the impact on the football program going forward, we'll see. Of course, it's not ideal to have an assistant coach (especially one who is recruiting coordinator) leave unexpectedly, much less under these circumstances. But it is not a crippling blow to the program. There are other good recruiters on this staff and I am optimistic that one of them can take the reins as recruiting coordinator so that Cal won't miss a beat in that regard. I'm less concerned with the recruiting impact of this development than I am with the need to hire another receivers coach. Here's hoping that Coach Dykes can find someone who will hit the ground running with a very talented group of receivers.
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46203450/usa-today-8238776.0.jpg)