SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Montgomery was formally enshrined into the Bay Space Sports activities Corridor of Fame this week following a exceptional faculty teaching profession. However near 40 years in the past, he encountered a problem at the beginning of his tenure at Stanford.
In his first 12 months on The Farm in 1986, Montgomery took the information of about 50 potential college students — the perfect within the nation, he stated — to Stanford’s admissions workplace and walked out with 4 that the college stated they’d take into account.
“I said, ‘Well, that’s nice,’” Montgomery stated in regards to the faculty’s rigorous educational requirements. “We’ve got problems here.”
Montgomery’s challenges then — ones he clearly overcame — appear easy in comparison with those faculty basketball coaches face now, with fixed roster churn by means of the switch portal, the large impression of title, picture, and likeness (NIL), and the elevated journey calls for as a consequence of convention realignment.
The modifications have left faculty sports activities nearly unrecognizable to Montgomery, who left teaching after his 2013-14 season in Berkeley with 676 profession victories.
“College athletics right now has sort of got me in a funk, with what’s going on,” stated Montgomery, a part of a BASHOF class that included former 49ers defensive again Eric Wright, Oakland A’s outfielder Joe Rudi, former Cal soccer standout Alex Morgan, and famend sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards.
Faculty asketball coach Mike Montgomery is honored through the 2025 Bay Space Sports activities Corridor of Fame Induction Ceremony on the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Could 15, 2025. (Karl Mondon/Bay Space Information Group)
“With the transfer portal and NIL and everything, it’s not the same kids that you had the year before. You really don’t have time to teach the fundamentals and the things you’d like to do. The game’s changed so much. Unfortunately, you’ve got to have a pretty big war chest if you’re going to compete with the big boys.”
Montgomery pointed to this 12 months’s males’s NCAA Match during which all the prime seeds – Auburn, Florida, Duke, and Houston – superior to the Remaining 4.
“They had the biggest payrolls,” Montgomery stated.
Cal and Stanford simply completed their first seasons within the ACC and can possible face monumental challenges — monetary and in any other case — going ahead.
The Bears males’s basketball staff, now led by Montgomery protégé Mark Madsen, hasn’t had a successful document since 2016-17 or made the NCAA event since 2015-16. It’s additionally principally been a decade of darkness at Stanford, which simply had its first successful season (21-14) in 5 years beneath first-year coach Kyle Smith however nonetheless hasn’t made the event since 2014.
How can these groups begin to compete on a nationwide stage?
“They’re going to have to figure out what it takes,” Montgomery stated of every faculty’s administration. “Sports is serious in the southeast … and they do what they have to do. They always have. Now it’s just legal.”
2025 Bay Space Sports activities Corridor of Fame Inductees Alex Morgan, Eric Wright, Joe Rudi, Mike Montgomery and Dr. Harry Edwards are honored throughout a ceremony on the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Could 15, 2025. (Karl Mondon/Bay Space Information Group)
Cal’s main scorer from this previous season, 6-foot-7 guard Andrej Stojakovic, entered the switch portal and signed with Illinois. Over half a dozen different Cal gamers adopted swimsuit. Stanford’s second-leading scorer this previous season, 6-5 guard Oziyah Sellers, additionally entered the portal.
Each Smith and Madsen have taken steps ahead with their groups, nevertheless it looks as if it is going to be some time earlier than they compete for convention titles.
“Cal and Stanford are going to have to decide what it is they want,” Montgomery stated. “How are we going to do it? Right now, you’ve got to raise money. Unfortunately, that’s a big, big part of the game. (Madsen’s) talked about the lack of a practice facility (at Cal). They’re going to have to get a practice facility, they’re going to have to show they’re serious about men’s basketball and to get kids to want to stay.”
Over 18 seasons, Montgomery turned the Cardinal’s all-time winningest coach, going 392-168, with 4 regular-season Pac-10 championships, 12 NCAA Match berths, and one Remaining 4 look in 1998.
Montgomery didn’t get the BASHOF nod due to his time teaching Golden State, the place he went 68-96 from 2004 to 2006. However he stated his time at Cal, the place he went 130-73, helped him end his profession on a constructive notice.
“It’s incredible that I’m here,” Montgomery stated on stage inside a ballroom on the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero. “Unlike most of you here, I wish the hell I was a better player. I would have much rather been an athlete than a coach. But if you can’t play, you coach, so here I am. But this is quite an honor.”
Former San Francisco 49er Eric Wright is honored through the 2025 Bay Space Sports activities Corridor of Fame Induction Ceremony on the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Could 15, 2025. (Karl Mondon/Bay Space Information Group)
Wright, who spent his total nine-year profession with the 49ers from 1981 to 1990, was honored to be in the identical BASHOF class as Edwards, a fellow East St. Louis native whose social activism work has spanned six many years.
Wright, 66, knew Edwards, 82, however didn’t meet him till 1985, when Invoice Walsh and the 49ers employed him.
“Doc has always been a mentor,” Wright stated. “The one thing about Doc is he’s gonna get you the straight shot. He doesn’t sugarcoat anything. But he’s always been a mentor to guys in the locker room, and I’m very grateful for that.”
Edwards, who’s battling each bone most cancers and superior prostate most cancers, was a longtime professor at Cal and mentored and have become shut with a number of of the twentieth century’s extra notable athletes, together with Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Invoice Russell, Arthur Ashe, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Wilma Rudolph.
“Jackie Robinson said that the importance of a life is in its impact on other lives, and it could not have been put more elegantly or more precisely,” Edwards stated. “That’s what I look at. I look at impact. Did I have an impact? Was my contribution a worthy one? Can somebody look back and say that I’m glad that he passed my way?”
2025 Bay Space Sports activities Corridor of Fame Inductee Alex Morgan waves to her daughter Charlie whereas talking from the stage on the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Could 15, 2025. (Karl Mondon/Bay Space Information Group)
After starring at Cal from 2007 to 2010, Morgan, 35, turned one in every of U.S. Soccer’s most profitable and visual athletes throughout a 15-year skilled profession, together with successful an Olympic gold medal in 2012 and FIFA Girls’s World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019.
Nonetheless, Morgan’s work off the pitch was simply as impactful, as she helped lead the struggle for equal pay for girls’s soccer. The U.S. girls filed a lawsuit in 2019 that led to an settlement in 2022 that offered the staff with pay equitable to what U.S. males’s gamers acquired.
Rudi, 78, was a three-time all-star, a three-time Gold Glove winner, and integral to the A’s three consecutive World Collection titles from 1972 to 1974.
Rudi’s most memorable performs included his leaping catch in opposition to the wall to rob Denis Menke of a success in Recreation 2 of the 1972 World Collection in opposition to the Cincinnati Reds and his solo homer within the backside of the seventh, which gave the A’s a 3-2 lead over the Dodgers in Recreation 5 of the 1974 World Collection.
“I was amazed,” to be named to the Bay Space Sports activities Corridor of Fame, Rudi stated. “I followed it a little bit. The names of the people who went in before me .. The (Joe) Montanas, the (Jerry) Rices, and Reggie (Jackson) and Rollie (Fingers) and on and on and on. Very humbling, really, to be included in that group.”
Former Oakland Athletic Joe Rudi, proper, is honored by Rollie Fingers through the 2025 Bay Space Sports activities Corridor of Fame Induction Ceremony on the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, Calif., Thursday, Could 15, 2025. (Karl Mondon/Bay Space Information Group)
