Home Athletics Oregonian Piles on Bob DeCarolis

Oregonian Piles on Bob DeCarolis

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You can read the article here. I post as “blogbeav” over there. If you comment on O-live, leave a link to AB, as I don’t read or comment much over there anymore.

Moving on…

They don’t mention Bob D by name, but the headline + photo says it all. It would be nice if they had the guts to actually say what they’re implying, though.

They also don’t understand opportunity cost, which you economic types might know is the cost of the option not taken (or next best option). While we’ll never know what that option was, we know it was better than the ones chosen, so there was more damage than is being recognized or acknowledged.

Maybe O-live can write a piece about OSU’s finances, because from what I see, the AD is overstating them. And for obvious reasons. If OSU admits to having money, then the excuses and implications that this is the best we can do would vanish, and those at the top would have to admit and then be held accountable for their incompetence. As long as fans believe OSU is broke, they will excuse the mediocrity and use the perceived destitution as a self-imposed crutch. The AD has every motivation to keep jawboning that message.

38 COMMENTS

  1. Jeez, that empty stadium for a season opener (I blame BDC for an empty opener) is even harder to swallow knowing we paid them 90k to come to an empty stadium. And then we lost.

    • I’m still amazed at how loud that place can get with even a pitiful attendance and only cheers of reserved hope. One day we’ll get back to stuffing it and being able to hear the pre-game from the quad.

      The loudest cheers of the evening were when the end line towel boys were out playing two on two. They were making shots, and the crowd started to get excited for some good hoops.

      • I am really disappointed by the Basketball team thus far. I thought they would be average but Jack’s expressed optimism about this team earlier this month lifted my spirits a tad. Jack, is this team really bad or is this simply an isolated poor performance?

        • I’ll only call it isolated if they come out anew tomorrow and continue to play well as the season wears on. I thought their defense was good except when that stupid 1-3-1 was deployed. Coppin was just making some silly shots. It could have been the difference between a team who already had a game under their belt and one who didn’t. Coach Rob talked about how the scheme was not played, and you could see those adjustments after the half.

          It also didn’t help having my favorite Kevin out there reffing. I can’t stand a ref who calls everything including phantom fouls until five minutes left in the game… then he just calls nothing the same the rest of the way out. And calls were inconsistent inside and out. Angus was just getting mugged on both ends of the floor. And I’m talking about him getting grabbed and pulled and pushed, not just getting hipped off the blocks.

          But the thing that pissed me off most was that we were without two bigs and looked like it. We played almost the whole game with only one big inside the arc. They were almost always in zone, and we did nothing to space them into the lane. You can’t iso a big against a zone and expect your perimeter guys to get good looks for a pass. We swapped Gomis for Angus, and Olaf rarely flashed down. When you have problems with their bigs pushing your one big around inside, you put two bigs in the game and push them around. We had Cheikh sitting on the bench the whole time. I guarantee he would not have left the blocks, willingly or otherwise.

          That problem will likely go away with Collier back. But not seeing it while it was occurring and making strange rotations to deal with what you don’t see is concerning to me. Coppin deserved to be beaten down with a sledgehammer, and Coach Rob kept trying to play tiddlywinks.

          N’diaye needs to get on the floor to back Angus. His presence will be felt one way or another. Gomis needs to spell Collier at the 4. Robbins, Reid and Olaf all flex the 3 in different ways. And all five guards are capable. In fact, I think Duvivier is more than capable. The kid is just good. The only bad things I can say about the guards is that they don’t fake anything before swinging the ball back out… no rocker, no ball fake, rarely a shot fake except for Berto, who always fakes… sometimes when he should shoot. It’s pretty easy to defend only one option. And Berto should never be defending the point. The other four are really good perimeter defenders.

          Even with all that went wrong everywhere else, if we make some shots we win this one going away. I guess you can call rust/nerves/over-excitement on that, as I thought it was early in the first. But it’s a coach’s job to settle them down if he doesn’t first have them prepared. I would have stuck N’diaye in there with Angus and called Angus’ number 10 straight times. Just tell Cheikh if he wants points to go get some glass. Nothing settles down perimeter shots better than four zone defenders crashing down on two bigs.

  2. The focus needs to be on Ed Ray. I don’t know how seriously the Ohio State University is considering him for their presidency – perhaps not at all – I think his age would be a negative factor. The internet indicates that the deliberations are top secret. However, if he is, or thinks he is, on hold for that job, is he going to do anything at this moment like firing BDC?

    The ideal setup would be for some major donors to convince Ed Ray to convince BDC to retire for health and family reasons.

  3. So I guess we aren’t going to the NCAA tournament this year?

    As an alum in New York City responsible for organizing alumni events, including game watches, this is a rather large problem. I am seeing a severe lack of interest this year in Football and it will be yet another year of missed game watch opportunities for basketball.

    When the team plays well, a lot of alums come out and meet at the bar to watch the game and get to know each other. It is one of the best networking opportunities you can have in NYC. You connect new beavers to potential employers and you simply just build a strong network. Oregon is a perfect example of this – they typically have at least a couple hundred people that regularly show up for football game watches. Even WSU is getting a dozen people. For the USC game we had about 7. In years past, the Civil War game for the Rose Bowl as an example, we had nearly 100 people show up and I got phone calls from very wealthy alums with ideas on how to increase our exposure (we set up outside Good Morning America).

    The fact is that Athletics bring alums together in major cities. Alums in major cities generally make more money than others and are in a better position to donate. When Ed Ray comes out here to help further build the potential donor list, he is going to find it much more of a challenge when our alums are so apathetic to Ahtletics and thefore the university as a whole.

    We had a lot of momentum building out here from 2006 through about 2011. This is definitely not the case anymore and it just got a lot more difficult given that the basketball team is already out of contention after 1 game.

    • Never fear, there will be a handful of non-con wins and then you’ll hear plenty of ‘see, there was nothing to worry about’ comments…

      then the beavs will get smoked in conference play.

      Rinse, repeat.

      • Back in 2005 we got a small group together and added to our list through word of mouth. We tried to do it through email for a long time, which was difficult to manage. Then we just started a facebook group and invited people to join.

        Set up the game watches through the University. They have a much better list of emails for alums in your area. I work with Blair Belloni. blair.belloni@oregonstate.edu. Shoot her an email and tell her you’re interested in organizing game watches and other events in your area.

  4. OSU social media update.

    Lindsay posted a tweet this morning, asking for new story ideas: “I’m kicking around a few story possibilities for today, but what do you all want to hear about? Tweet me your ideas. Maybe I’ll write one.”

    I posted the following responsive tweets a few minutes ago (spread across 3 tweets, due to 140 character limit per tweet):

    @LindsayRae19 Story idea: finding a young, whip-smart, aggressive AD to replace BDC and confront OSU’s problems (eg CRob; chainsaw video)

    @LindsayRae19 Subtext of story idea: BDC retiring in near future due to health problems, so BDC himself should NOT make any new hires etc.

    @LindsayRae19 Subtext 2 of story idea: OSU needs new blood at AD level, for fresh big picture look at marketing, bball, football problems

    Lindsay will probably ignore my tweets. But by including Lindsay’s twitter address, these tweets will probably be seen by a fair number of people anyway. Might as well try….can’t hurt, could help.

  5. Thanks silverstream,

    I think those are all very well worded subject matters and subtexts. If Lindsay cares at all about the rapidly growing groundswell of support to remove BDC based off his poor decisions that have OSU Athletics in tbe dumps, she will write on her and the rest of our beliefs that the CR extensions were largely unwarranted and now hurting Oregon State. Also how his leadership is severely lacking and apathy is widespread. It is time for him to go!

    • As Lindsay points out from time-to-time, she is a beat writer, not a columnist. She can, however, talk to some people and report what they say good (?) and bad about the AD and the way it is presently functioning. It’s easy enough to get away with anonymous blog rants, but she would need a few souls who will go on record.

  6. Thanks silverstream,

    I think those are all very well worded subject matters and subtexts. If Lindsay cares at all about the rapidly growing groundswell of support to remove BDC based off his poor decisions that have OSU Athletics in the dumps, she will write on her and the rest of our beliefs that the CR extensions were largely unwarranted and now hurting Oregon State. Also how his leadership is severely lacking and apathy is widespread. It is time for him to go!

  7. I’m afraid as Hemsley started to point out earlier, we are in a perfect storm to our demise. Top down is trouble. The interim Chancelor of the Oregon University System is not about to fire a university President as she is just interim. Ed Ray is trying to avoid rocking the boat as he hopes to get on at Ohio State. Then we have our talked about problems with BDC, and head coaching problems, and assistants who don’t complement head coaches, beat writers that live in fear, etc.

    I still think that the best course out of this storm is a very strong public outcry against BDC

  8. I know Wilner had an incorrect list of Pac hoops coaches and their pay back in April. I think he was listing recently reported contracts and/or pay-outs for FY 2010. He incorrectly listed Tad Boyle at $600K, and that can’t be further from the truth for 2013 when he wrote his article. He received a big bump in March of 2012.
    http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_20175714/run-big-dance-pays-off-cu-buffs-coach
    And those numbers all doubled again this last summer. I do really like the incentive based mandate imposed by the CU regents, And I would like OSU to do the same… right now.

    Coach Rob has similar incentives built into his contract with a similar low base salary (as of March 2010). But a lot of his incentives are also tied to paid attendance. So years like 2010 and 2012 will be outliers where he’s pushing close to $1m after all incentives are paid out. If all incentives are met he can earn about $1.3m plus a certain % of gate revenues above a certain amount. And I’m not sure what the buy-out is for Coach Rob, but I’m sure it’s tied to base salary as a percentage.

    See if you can put a name to the top 8 salaries at OSU. Good luck!
    https://data.oregon.gov/Revenue-Expense/Salary-OUS-Oregon-State-University-Fiscal-Year-201/i8tj-ziur

    Coach Rob’s extensions and the 2010 contract restructure came at times when they actually made sense. This kind of article wasn’t helpful.
    http://blog.oregonlive.com/pac10/2010/01/pac-10_insider_when_it_comes_t.html
    That’s the kind of fear angry speaks of. Sure, moderate on court successes were apparent. But it was not on court success per se which made Coach Rob important at that time. It was his ability to bring revenues into the program. Those revenues got the facility out of dreamland and into reality. Remember we were still a year away from the new TV contract and all it’s revenue. We were only beginning to talk about maybe extending the Pac 10 at that time, and the number wasn’t going to be 12. Fundraising was still a part of a cash strapped OSU way of life. The 2012 extension came on the heels of a 20+ win season and hope for the future. That hope was not realized last season, and this was a good article in response.
    http://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/index.ssf/2013/03/goe_craig_robinson_says_its_ti.html

    So those are the expectations for this season. If it plays out like Sunday did, then even reports of Coach Rob’s job security for at least one year beyond next April would likely be incorrect. I don’t think anyone wants to go through this season watching that only to wait until next season for more of the same.

    Coach Rob is the lowest paid coach in the Pac when his teams don’t perform. Assuming paid attendance jumps when the team has success, then he could be one of the higher earning coaches in the Pac. So we get what we pay for. I like the way the contract is written because of this. But I also want someone who will earn that high end wage. Unless it gets uglier than Sunday (and it can), then I give Coach Rob this year with an expectation of .500 ball in conference, 20+ wins and an N tourney appearance. I think that’s a stretch given Sunday, but I’ve also seen stranger things happen.

    • The next coach will need to be paid about 2 mil. Otherwise, they go cheap on an up and comer that has about a 20% chance of being better than the current situation.

      • Since nobody seems interested, I’ll give you six through eight.
        6. Casey – He has incentives which bump him up more than 40%, and he earns them. He has also been extended and given a 5% raise going forward.
        7. Bruce Read – That’s right… Bruce Read. If you are in the camp of, “We just can’t afford ____ at OSU,” then you are probably with me in saying, “Why the fuck are we paying a ST coach who doesn’t bother recruiting this much money… never mind the fact we’re paying a ST coach this much money in the first place?” Add to that the fact that ST were the sole reason we didn’t at least have a chance in last year’s CW and that ST hasn’t been much more than players making plays… forever… and I’m just fuming over this one.
        8. Coach Rob – Again, his contract is highly incentivized. It’s more so than Casey’s is, but his is weighted toward revenue gained by the program since it’s a revenue sport. He’s been better than a good steward for the program. He’s actually highly savvy at making relationships with donors and others who matter in order to get done what has been needed to get done just to bring OSU hoops out of the dark ages. Whether or not he’s a good coach (for me) depends on how well his team does this year. What his team does this year is going to be all I will ever expect of him as a coach, and I expect Tourney participation most years here at OSU.

        Here’s an interesting brain fart I think I’ve seen here before. Robinson is an excellent ambassador/manager/fundraiser. If he was one tenth the coach he is those qualities, we wouldn’t be complaining about him one whit. If BDC is on his last legs and forced out, then Coach Rob would be an excellent hire as AD.

        And it would kill two birds with one stone.

  9. When do Collier and Moreland come back? We desperately need them. I’d rant more about losing our opener, but missing two of your top 3 players is a solid excuse, even to a bad team.

    Because without those two, we’re also a bad team. Be realistic.

    • Collier will play against U of Portland Wednesday night (if you care to even bother to watch). Moreland not until January against Stanford.

  10. Good letter to the Oregonian editor from some boosters in 2010 which is highly critical of BDC. Still relevant as we see BDC continue to make costly mistakes that hinder OSU and have apathy spreading. We shouldn’t ask the person who created the problems to fix them. Besides he typically ignores them and doesn’t acknowledge the serious issues. Instead he masks it all in ongoing low expectations.

    http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindbeaversbeat/2010/07/letter_to_the_editor_players_d.html

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