Calgorithm or Hot Or Not

Given the NIL money situation, schools like Berkeley don’t really have much of a shot in college football playing by conventional rules. They should just go full moneyball and embrace the change with crazier ideas more adapted to the new rules. One idea might be this:

Position Cal (for now) as a school for potential breakout talent to come to and play one year. The explicit goal of the program is for players to use that year to showcase themselves and up their NIL value, and for them to transfer portal out. 

But bottom line is you come to Cal, you will play, and you’ll play alongside other decent players trying to do the same thing you are. Also there won’t be one starter in any position because everyone who joined for this reason needs showcase time. This also means even if you are the best, it doesn’t mean you play all the time because we care more about our position as a showcase platform than anything else.  It’s kind of like being McKinsey, almost nobody that joins there expects to stay, it’s more get in and get out on to bigger things, but this model at least attracts a talented pipeline we would otherwise not get. And every now and then we might have enough good players that gel that we actually have winning seasons. Another way to put this is that if we can’t play the mean, we might as well play the variance and hope to be good from time to time. 

At some point if the team is really good and alumni NIL money starts rolling in, you can consider trying to cement position using a more conventional strategy… but my point is the rules changed and the school is in a bad position to compete right now, and we can’t even keep Nando who said Go Bears Forever (no fault on him, he has to do whatever he thinks is best). This is just the reality. With not much to lose we might as well consider more unorthodox strategies that are more tuned to the realities of this new world.

PS I know… it’s Cal. They will never do anything like this, even if it is a good idea worth doing (and I’m not asserting this particular idea is great).  The default alternative doesn’t look pretty so we might as well throw some hail marys. Maybe Stanford will get Lucky and try something innovative like this, I can see them doing more interesting things taking chances.

#Calgorithm

	james hong ⁦‪@jhong‬⁩ Given the NIL money situation, schools like Berkeley don’t really have much of a shot in college football playing by conventional rules. They should just go full moneyball and embrace the change with crazier ideas more adapted to the new rules. One idea might be this: Position   12/11/24, 12:38 PM

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Given the NIL money situation, schools like Berkeley don’t really have much of a shot in college football playing by conventional rules. They should just go full moneyball and embrace the change with crazier ideas more adapted to the new rules. One idea might be this:

Position Cal (for now) as a school for potential breakout talent to come to and play one year. The explicit goal of the program is for players to use that year to showcase themselves and up their NIL value, and for them to transfer portal out.

But bottom line is you come to Cal, you will play, and you’ll play alongside other decent players trying to do the same thing you are. Also there won’t be one starter in any position because everyone who joined for this reason needs showcase time. This also means even if you are the best, it doesn’t mean you play all the time because we care more about our position as a showcase platform than anything else. It’s kind of like being McKinsey, almost nobody that joins there expects to stay, it’s more get in and get out on to bigger things, but this model at least attracts a talented pipeline we would otherwise not get. And every now and then we might have enough good players that gel that we actually have winning seasons. Another way to put this is that if we can’t play the mean, we might as well play the variance and hope to be good from time to time.

At some point if the team is really good and alumni NIL money starts rolling in, you can consider trying to cement position using a more conventional strategy… but my point is the rules changed and the school is in a bad position to compete right now, and we can’t even keep Nando who said Go Bears Forever (no fault on him, he has to do whatever he thinks is best). This is just the reality. With not much to lose we might as well consider more unorthodox strategies that are more tuned to the realities of this new world.

PS I know… it’s Cal. They will never do anything like this, even if it is a good idea worth doing (and I’m not asserting this particular idea is great). The default alternative doesn’t look pretty so we might as well throw some hail marys. Maybe Stanford will get Lucky and try something innovative like this, I can see them doing more interesting things taking chances.

#Calgorithm