Feel Sorry for UCLA? Don’t

When LaVar Ball climbed up to Mount Ball with his stone tablet to announce that LiAngelo Ball was leaving the UCLA program, there was a collective cheer from the masses. They were happy to see the most famous carnival barker get his comeuppance. That, I can understand. Like the Kardashians, the Ball reality show wasn’t for everyone.

But, what confuses me was the outpouring of sympathy for UCLA. Why would anyone feel sorry for the Bruins? It’s obvious that this was a package deal that involved Lonzo and LaMelo. LiAngelo was the equivalent of a “player to be named later”.

College recruiting is a very dirty process. Package deals are as common to college basketball as seven figure coaching salary. How do you think AAU coaches end up on college benches? How do you think a player’s girlfriend, best friend, AAU teammate, etc. end up at the same program? It’s like youth basketball. The Commissioner tells you if you draft Joey, you also get Timmy because they rideshare.

So when UCLA signed up for the Ball Experience, they agreed to everything that came with it. They knew what type of parent they were getting. And don’t get it twisted, that parent exists in bunches on every level of sports prior to going to college. Having coached for over 20 years, do you know how many LaVar Balls I’ve encountered? The only difference is, they don’t have the platform that Ball had. Meddling parents have made the pre-college coaching industry one of the most avoided industries out there.

Over the last few years, you’ve heard more and more college coaches talk about recruiting the parents along with the child so to avoid this.

“An increasingly larger part of the evaluation of the prospect, for us, is evaluating the parents.” – Pat Fitzgerald, the Head Football Coach at Northwestern University

Alford and his seven figure salary thought he could handle it and he found out otherwise. Such is life in the big city. He nor UCLA deserve my outpouring sympathy when they knowingly signed up for this so the program could get back to the forefront of the Pac 12. They were 15-17 the season before they climbed to the top of Mount Ball to ask him for his sons.

That’s what’s being forgotten in this. UCLA, particularly Alford, needed the Balls more than they needed him. As ESPN’s Myron Medcalf wrote in his 2016 article:

“If you give a public vote of confidence, people will say it’s the kiss of the death,” athletic director Dan Guerrero said. “If you don’t — it is a Catch-22. The bottom line is Steve, in many respects, is still establishing his program. I’m certainly not going to publicly proclaim anything. But I expect us to compete. And Steve expects us to compete.”

Not exactly of beacon of job security, is it?

So while people are throwing their hands in the air wondering why the Balls, particularly LaVar, had so much power, it’s because UCLA gave it to him. UCLA signed up for this. They knew they were getting a rather verbose Dad who had eyes on a bigger prize. But it’s amazing what you’ll convince yourself that you can live with when your job is in question. They were more than willing to live with last season’s resurgence that saw the Bruins go from 15-17 to 31-5.

What’s funny about all of yesterday’s celebration, it could be easily argued that Lonzo’s presence in the 2016 class saved Alford’s job. And, you can bet, if UCLA takes a step backwards, Alford will be right back in the hot seat, in part, because the overwhelming message was Ball’s departure will help them with top flight recruits who supposedly didn’t want to play with LaMelo.

But if you don’t think that other coaches won’t sign up for the Ball experience, think again. Oakland coach Greg Kampe, when asked about LiAngelo, tweeted “I’d take him in a minute”.