Who can blame the guy? It's clear that the program has, once again, proved to be in decline. I flew up from Las Vegas to take my son, his wife, and two boys to the game Sat. It's the last such trips I take for this team. For 60 years it's either no hope, or hope dashed to the ground. The only other team from the Pac 10 that has failed to make it to the Rose Bowl in those 60 years is AZ. Maybe my Grandchildren will see Cal return to that hallowed game but it's clear that I won't. I'm done having my heart broken year, after year, after year.
Since I was born and raised in the town the Raiders put on the map and cocaine seems to keep it there, I'm already on that train. I note two years of improvement in effort! Not sure the Cal Bears will ever learn the "Just Win Baby" secret. What is most incredible about that beautiful stadium is that we residents are paying not one dime for it. The $750 million city share is paid for by a 0.8% increase in the hotel tax! When's the last time the Raiders had over 63,000 fans in the stadium?
There's an awful lot of haterade for Musgrave. Cal is currently top half of the conference in passing yds per game, rushing yards per game, and points per game. And that's including the poor showing in week 1.
Conversely, Cal is 11th in passing yards allowed, 7th in rushing yards allowed, and 11th in points allowed.
I'm not suggesting that Musgrave is the right guy for the job, but the defense gives me more cause for concern at this point in the season.
I think that one reason people were okay-ish with Sirmon getting the solo-DC spot was the belief that Wilcox would have a hand in the weekly game plan - one has to wonder if he's going to take a more active role.
Cal fans: This is probably the disappointment talking (no alum wants to think that ANYONE couldn't like Berkeley) but the de-commitments of Ott and Martin probably aren't the end of the world. Getting players from the transfer portal is the new reality in college football so there is no reason to believe that we can't find a good QB or RB to take the place of Ott and Martin. In addition, we all know that "the grass is greener somewhere else" doesn't always turn out to be true. Look at Demetrius Robertson. He was on track to be a real stud at Cal and in the Pac-12 but he left for "personal reasons" and spent most of his time at Georgia riding the bench behind a bunch of other talented four and five star studs. Now he is at Auburn trying to get noticed one more time before his eligibility runs out and dealing with the same thing. I know that both Ott and Martin were being intensively recruited by Oregon, UCLA and U$C. But what makes them think that they have a better chance of getting on the field at those places? They may end up experiencing exactly what happened to Robertson when he left. Finally. lets admit the obvious: Cal isn't for everyone. It is a very intense place and you have to be a student AND an athlete. For anyone thinking more about the NFL as opposed to life after football, it can be rough in Berkeley.
Cal needs a QB in this cycle and most of the good ones that would consider Cal are already off of the board. However, perhaps Noah Fifita will reconsider his commit to AZ now that Martin is gone. Fifita is a small QB 5' 10" but is a serious baller and winner. We don't need a future NFL QB, we need a good college QB ~ he fits the bill. Either way, atm Cal is completely screwed with no QB in the cycle. Transfer portal??? has it now come to that??
On the roster, IMO, once CG leaves we only have one Pac12 caliber QB, Millner. So we need more depth and competition in that room, immediately.
Anyone who watched the Utah/San Diego State game Saturday night will know that Utah started Baylor transfer Charlie Brewer at quarterback. Brewer was named the starter out of fall camp and started Utah's first two games as well. Brewer was not playing particularly well against San Diego State and was replaced in the third quarter by Texas transfer Cameron Rising, who led the team back to an exciting overtime finish that Utah lost.
To make a long story short, Brewer entered the transfer portal today. The transfer carousel - particularly at quarterback - sounds like a fool's errand.
I don't understand these kids. What they saw in the first three games is not much different than what they saw in the four games from last season. So much for the beautiful campus, the cool Berkeley vibe, and that education you get from one of the top public universities in the world.
I think it has to do with the fact that when he committed, Cal was being spoken of as a potential Pac-12 North contender and it was an exciting division between Cal, Oregon, UW, and Furd with Oregon State improving. Now, the entire conference landscape looks different and the Pac-12 North will likely mostly be on Pac-12 Network.
We were also early on Martin, and he committed quickly. He's now garnered attention from more popular football schools, which he thinks is better for him.
From what I can tell, a similar thing happened with Adrian Martinez, who committed to Cal early before getting attention from other schools, ultimately selecting Nebraska. While results are debatable, he's gotten his name into the national football conversation by going to a traditional football school.
Not to say I'm happy as a Cal fan – seeing this headline got me cursing out loud. But in the end, these kids are doing what any of us do: make the best choices for themselves at the time, and update their decisions when more choices are available.
Right, but committing to play QB in a historically successful Air Raid that just had the #1 overall pick is a lot different than whatever the hell Baldwin was doing.
So again, I'm sure a coaching change affected Martinez' decision, but ultimately it came down to being subsequently offered by Alabama, Nebraska, Oregon, Ole Miss, and other top college football schools.
Yep. I remember being bummed about TDR and pumped on Beau. How wrong was I….
But Baldwin brought a very different offensive philosophy than Dykes. I’m sure bigger programs courting Adrian factored but if Sonny wasn’t fired I imagine we keep Adrian in Berkeley.
I can’t recall the last time a season began with so much hope and enthusiasm and it all evaporated so quickly. Even in 2007 we had a great a start before cratering.
It seems like fan support for Wilcox is diminishing quickly.
There was quite a bit of hype preceding the 2001 season. Our secondary proclaimed itself the best in the nation - right before getting completely humiliated week in and week out.
If I saw Saturday's attendance, I would de-commit also. There is 0 excitement among the fan base, the program has hit a point of stagnation (and probably a quick decline), and our recruiting is reflecting that sad reality. Time for a leadership change, I'm afraid. Our conference record is 11-20 under Wilcox; you're not going to be pulling many 4 stars with those kind of results. But it's not all doom and gloom. Maybe now we can go find one of those diamond in the rough local kids we always seem to ignore, who then come back and torch us.
If I thought a leadership change would do anything, I'd be all for it, but the Cal admin will never spend for an Urban Meyer or equivalent ($10M/yr). Short of that, we're better off having continuity with a well-regarded head coach than starting over (again). We'll be a perrenial middle-of-the-road team with the occasional overachieving season. For anything to really change, you'd have to swap out the Berkeley City Council, the Chancellorship on down, and 1/3 of the faculty.
No no no no no. I refuse to accept this “you need a big name coach to win” ideology. We just got punched in the mouth by a coach at Nevada (Jay Norvell) who makes less than our offensive coordinator. Look what Kalen Deboer is doing at Fresno state right now. Matt Campbell at Iowa State. The list goes on. Is it harder to win at Cal? Absolutely. Is it only possible with an Urban Meyer? No.
Cal is special. We are #1 in lack of institutional support in the power 5. It's regarded as the toughest place to win therein. So, you not only need a great young coach, but a great young coach who is willing to pass up potential better future offers to sprint with a ball & chain around his ankle. I agree, an up & comer could inject some life, but it's delusional to think that any of the names you mention will start a cavalcade of 4 & 5 stars rolling into Berkeley. And if he miraculously happened to do that, he'd get snatched away for a 100% pay increase.
So we stick what we've got until the stadium is completely empty and the last Cal fan has stabbed their eyeballs out watching the slide into rock bottom? Of course none of the names I mentioned will start a cavalcade of 4 and 5 stars into Berkeley, but Nevada didn't need that come in and punk us. Fresno State didn't need that to into the Rose Bowl and beat UCLA. Iowa State didn't need it to make a New Years 6 bowl. And if the miraculous scenario happened and we started pulling massive recruiting wins and put together a 9 or 10 win season and the coach got snatched away, GOOD!!! Because at least a precedent of success would have been set unlike what we have now, which is an 11-20 conference record. That's not even freaking mediocre. Mediocre is somewhere around .500. What we have now is garbage.
I wonder how many Cal professors snuck into a totally packed Memorial to catch the excitement of the Tedford era circa 2004-2007. Maybe it was at that 2006 game where the Bears took a good Oregon team to the woodshed. Or that 2007 game against Tennessee where DeSean Jackson returned a punt for a touchdown and busted a thousand eardrums when the fans went delirious. All it took was a young head coach who was willing to sleep in a cot in the bowels of the stadium for a few years. Oh yeah, that will happen again.
A bit of hyperbole, but probably not far from the truth if such a subjective ranking could be quantified. Over the decades, having read many books and hundreds of articles relating to college athletics, as a Cal alum, I was struck that whenever the notion of a Cal football or basketball head coaching opening was discussed, the terms "10 foot pole" & "poison" came up an unsettling number of times. Lack of administrative support was mentioned in more than half of the objections to coaching here. I'm tired of comparisons to Alabama, but take any football-crazy school with lax admission standards, tons of donor money, and a rabid fanbase. If football is all about winning, and the more support you receive, the better chance of winning, what would draw a promising coach to Cal? Conquering an insurmountable challenge?
Simple: not every school can be a sports club like the Bamas and Ohio States of the world, and there's still a whole lot of money to be made at a school like Cal. Wilcox makes over $3 million a year and doesn't deal with the expectations of a coach at a program where it's national championship or bust, and a 9-10 win season is considered failure. I think the lack of admin. support argument is perhaps somewhat dated. Is our faculty/staff ever going to care a great deal about football? Of course not. But the university has shown willingness to invest in the program. Our stadium financing plan kind of necessitates that the football program find success. Michigan, Furd, and others like them have proven you can have success as an elite academic institution (although it pains me to say that about the furd). Again, it's harder, sure, but Tedford had it going even with crumbling facilities. It can be done, and I don't believe it's insurmountable.
We all were fooled. We thought Wilcox was a 7 win coach capable of 9 win seasons. He’s a 5 win coach capable of 7 win seasons. His success appears to be dependent on his coordinators, which is fine if
you have good assistants. Part of a head coaches job is to recruit good assistants. It’s not fine if you aren’t doing that.
His early success was build on sheer scheduling luck. He got to play both North Carolina and Mississippi twice when they were in decline and about to fire their head coaches. That 7-win regular season and a bowl game in 2019 would likely have been five wins and no bowl game if Cal had played non conference teams the caliber of Nevada and TCU. Or just imagine if Cal had UCLA's non conference schedule the past four years, having to play top 25 teams like Cincinnati, Oklahoma, Texas AM, and Memphis.
There's probably a good deal of truth to this, but also, losing Gerald Alexander and now Tim DeRuyter has seemed to have a massive impact on the defensive performance. When we get high performing assistants, we lose them and seem to replace them with very young coaches or retreads with somewhat sketchy records of previous success.
I respectfully disagree with the premise. While Musgrave=Kaufman might be a valid comparison regarding retreads or demographics, neither were replacing someone high performing but the opposite.
On the performing assistants who left:
- Gerald Alexander was NFL bound regardless.
- TDR was inevitably going to leave for a higher paying gig. When Sirmon got promoted I was confused, and some people here thought it was because TDR was close retiring which didnt end up being the case. More likely Wilcox was hedging his bets by keeping Sirmon happy to keep him and ease the eventual transition. The defense regressing is a different story.
- Did I miss someone?
On some notable departures:
- Baldwin == needed to go
- Tuiasosopo == needed to go
- Edwards == meh, package deal with Baldwin
- Greatwood == retired
- Tuioti == ?
On some notable hires or role changes, who are still here:
- Browning == good hire/promotion
- Heyward == good hire
- Thompson == good hire
- Musgrave == TBD to be fair
- Toler == TBD? No idea if he's a good coach, but is/was a seemingly good choice given the legacy and seems to be a good recruiter?
- McClure == TBD?
- Sirmon == probably bad, but isnt the idea that Wilcox is a defensive coach and should be tangibly impactful on that side of the ball as well regardless of who the DC is?
On other non-departures:
- Ragle == needed to go
I dont think the current issues are with the employment decisions per se, Ragle nontwithstanding, but the bigger picture which all have some synergy:
- Wilcox overall as a head coach
- The administration / Cal Athletics as usual (academic standards, assistant coach salary)
- Talent level on the team (defense in particular)?
Yet another sign that I'm never going to see Cal win the conference in my lifetime. Hell, I'm not even sure I'll ever see them have a winning conference record again.
That's the sad thing. I've been following Cal since the Bruce Snyder era. That was probably our best shot in the past 30 years to garner a Rose Bowl appearance. Now it seems farther away than ever. Five years is a long time. Hire a new coach, expect results by year 5 (9 win season for example), only to have regression. Coach is fired. Start all over again. That's why I commented after the TCU game that Cal football was Sisyphean. Rinse and repeat.
I would say 2004. Cal so close to beating eventual national champion SC. Would they have run the table if they beat SC that day - who knows. But Mack Brown stealing the Rose Bowl was the extra dose of disappointment
My nephew was a N. Cal. offensive lineman that turned down Notre Dame to play for Snyder because Snyder had one of the best offensive line coaches in the country. Yea, that was 1991 and he had to settle for Gilbertson's high school coaching staff. He did make it to the 49rs as a backup for 4 years and one game with the Texans (acl ended his career) but I often wonder how far he could have gone with proper coaching.
In the words of Socrates:
"well... fuck."
Who wants a QB who splits infinitives, anyway?
Who can blame the guy? It's clear that the program has, once again, proved to be in decline. I flew up from Las Vegas to take my son, his wife, and two boys to the game Sat. It's the last such trips I take for this team. For 60 years it's either no hope, or hope dashed to the ground. The only other team from the Pac 10 that has failed to make it to the Rose Bowl in those 60 years is AZ. Maybe my Grandchildren will see Cal return to that hallowed game but it's clear that I won't. I'm done having my heart broken year, after year, after year.
It's time to jump on the Raiders train and that incredible new stadium. They have looked very impressive in those first two games.
Since I was born and raised in the town the Raiders put on the map and cocaine seems to keep it there, I'm already on that train. I note two years of improvement in effort! Not sure the Cal Bears will ever learn the "Just Win Baby" secret. What is most incredible about that beautiful stadium is that we residents are paying not one dime for it. The $750 million city share is paid for by a 0.8% increase in the hotel tax! When's the last time the Raiders had over 63,000 fans in the stadium?
There's an awful lot of haterade for Musgrave. Cal is currently top half of the conference in passing yds per game, rushing yards per game, and points per game. And that's including the poor showing in week 1.
Conversely, Cal is 11th in passing yards allowed, 7th in rushing yards allowed, and 11th in points allowed.
I'm not suggesting that Musgrave is the right guy for the job, but the defense gives me more cause for concern at this point in the season.
People are calling for firing of Sirmon but not Musgrave anymore
Wait a week.
Yeah, this right here.
I think that one reason people were okay-ish with Sirmon getting the solo-DC spot was the belief that Wilcox would have a hand in the weekly game plan - one has to wonder if he's going to take a more active role.
Also, Sirmon seemed to be a better recruiter and more willing to actively participate in recruiting, whereas TDR was viewed as a reluctant recruiter.
Cal fans: This is probably the disappointment talking (no alum wants to think that ANYONE couldn't like Berkeley) but the de-commitments of Ott and Martin probably aren't the end of the world. Getting players from the transfer portal is the new reality in college football so there is no reason to believe that we can't find a good QB or RB to take the place of Ott and Martin. In addition, we all know that "the grass is greener somewhere else" doesn't always turn out to be true. Look at Demetrius Robertson. He was on track to be a real stud at Cal and in the Pac-12 but he left for "personal reasons" and spent most of his time at Georgia riding the bench behind a bunch of other talented four and five star studs. Now he is at Auburn trying to get noticed one more time before his eligibility runs out and dealing with the same thing. I know that both Ott and Martin were being intensively recruited by Oregon, UCLA and U$C. But what makes them think that they have a better chance of getting on the field at those places? They may end up experiencing exactly what happened to Robertson when he left. Finally. lets admit the obvious: Cal isn't for everyone. It is a very intense place and you have to be a student AND an athlete. For anyone thinking more about the NFL as opposed to life after football, it can be rough in Berkeley.
Is there any 5* QB with a brother who plays WR for non-P5 school? Cal can take both of you.
There is a potential 5* QB who has a brother who is a starting guard at Cal.
https://247sports.com/Player/Mabrey-Mettauer-46110460/
Next Trevor Lawrence?
Cal needs a QB in this cycle and most of the good ones that would consider Cal are already off of the board. However, perhaps Noah Fifita will reconsider his commit to AZ now that Martin is gone. Fifita is a small QB 5' 10" but is a serious baller and winner. We don't need a future NFL QB, we need a good college QB ~ he fits the bill. Either way, atm Cal is completely screwed with no QB in the cycle. Transfer portal??? has it now come to that??
On the roster, IMO, once CG leaves we only have one Pac12 caliber QB, Millner. So we need more depth and competition in that room, immediately.
Anyone who watched the Utah/San Diego State game Saturday night will know that Utah started Baylor transfer Charlie Brewer at quarterback. Brewer was named the starter out of fall camp and started Utah's first two games as well. Brewer was not playing particularly well against San Diego State and was replaced in the third quarter by Texas transfer Cameron Rising, who led the team back to an exciting overtime finish that Utah lost.
To make a long story short, Brewer entered the transfer portal today. The transfer carousel - particularly at quarterback - sounds like a fool's errand.
Look above, I mentioned him
Transfer portal isn't all bad - ask Fresno State :-D But yeah, we're looking pretty lean at QB right now.
Re: depth, I thought I read that Zach Johnson was doing pretty well in camp?
I don’t know, Fifita doesn’t seem like a Wilcox OKG.
no idea what OKG means, but Cal offered Fifita ~ he chose AZ
Fire Wilcox train begins now.
I don't understand these kids. What they saw in the first three games is not much different than what they saw in the four games from last season. So much for the beautiful campus, the cool Berkeley vibe, and that education you get from one of the top public universities in the world.
Maybe coaches told the kids that the program is on the rise? And they saw the games and realized the program is in decline.
Well said. I would have loved to hear that pitch from the coaches.
I think it has to do with the fact that when he committed, Cal was being spoken of as a potential Pac-12 North contender and it was an exciting division between Cal, Oregon, UW, and Furd with Oregon State improving. Now, the entire conference landscape looks different and the Pac-12 North will likely mostly be on Pac-12 Network.
We were also early on Martin, and he committed quickly. He's now garnered attention from more popular football schools, which he thinks is better for him.
From what I can tell, a similar thing happened with Adrian Martinez, who committed to Cal early before getting attention from other schools, ultimately selecting Nebraska. While results are debatable, he's gotten his name into the national football conversation by going to a traditional football school.
Not to say I'm happy as a Cal fan – seeing this headline got me cursing out loud. But in the end, these kids are doing what any of us do: make the best choices for themselves at the time, and update their decisions when more choices are available.
Martinez was a dykes commit. When dykes was fired he Decommitted.
You're correct, he was a Dykes commit, and I'm sure the regime change factored in. But he decommitted in April 2017, three months after Wilcox took over. In the meanwhile, he had received a ton of new, big offers: https://www.californiagoldenblogs.com/2017/4/26/15432796/adrian-martinez-california-golden-bears-tennessee-volunteers-football-recruiting
Right, but committing to play QB in a historically successful Air Raid that just had the #1 overall pick is a lot different than whatever the hell Baldwin was doing.
At the time, Beau Baldwin was viewed as a fantastic hire who would continue the offensive prowess in Strawberry Canyon. I mean, check out the comments from the CGB article on his hiring: https://www.californiagoldenblogs.com/2017/1/16/14289630/beau-baldwin-announces-that-he-is-accepting-the-cal-oc-offer#comments
So again, I'm sure a coaching change affected Martinez' decision, but ultimately it came down to being subsequently offered by Alabama, Nebraska, Oregon, Ole Miss, and other top college football schools.
Yep. I remember being bummed about TDR and pumped on Beau. How wrong was I….
But Baldwin brought a very different offensive philosophy than Dykes. I’m sure bigger programs courting Adrian factored but if Sonny wasn’t fired I imagine we keep Adrian in Berkeley.
We’re in a death spiral right now.
This is a killer.
Back to the Stone Age. Cal Football meet Cal Mens Basketball.
Troubling that this seems so inevitable.
we need gifs on this platform more than ever!
deflated_oski.gif
I can’t recall the last time a season began with so much hope and enthusiasm and it all evaporated so quickly. Even in 2007 we had a great a start before cratering.
It seems like fan support for Wilcox is diminishing quickly.
There was quite a bit of hype preceding the 2001 season. Our secondary proclaimed itself the best in the nation - right before getting completely humiliated week in and week out.
That was my sophomore year at Cal, I remember some hype about that team and just like this season, it quickly dissolved.
If I saw Saturday's attendance, I would de-commit also. There is 0 excitement among the fan base, the program has hit a point of stagnation (and probably a quick decline), and our recruiting is reflecting that sad reality. Time for a leadership change, I'm afraid. Our conference record is 11-20 under Wilcox; you're not going to be pulling many 4 stars with those kind of results. But it's not all doom and gloom. Maybe now we can go find one of those diamond in the rough local kids we always seem to ignore, who then come back and torch us.
If I thought a leadership change would do anything, I'd be all for it, but the Cal admin will never spend for an Urban Meyer or equivalent ($10M/yr). Short of that, we're better off having continuity with a well-regarded head coach than starting over (again). We'll be a perrenial middle-of-the-road team with the occasional overachieving season. For anything to really change, you'd have to swap out the Berkeley City Council, the Chancellorship on down, and 1/3 of the faculty.
No no no no no. I refuse to accept this “you need a big name coach to win” ideology. We just got punched in the mouth by a coach at Nevada (Jay Norvell) who makes less than our offensive coordinator. Look what Kalen Deboer is doing at Fresno state right now. Matt Campbell at Iowa State. The list goes on. Is it harder to win at Cal? Absolutely. Is it only possible with an Urban Meyer? No.
Cal is special. We are #1 in lack of institutional support in the power 5. It's regarded as the toughest place to win therein. So, you not only need a great young coach, but a great young coach who is willing to pass up potential better future offers to sprint with a ball & chain around his ankle. I agree, an up & comer could inject some life, but it's delusional to think that any of the names you mention will start a cavalcade of 4 & 5 stars rolling into Berkeley. And if he miraculously happened to do that, he'd get snatched away for a 100% pay increase.
So we stick what we've got until the stadium is completely empty and the last Cal fan has stabbed their eyeballs out watching the slide into rock bottom? Of course none of the names I mentioned will start a cavalcade of 4 and 5 stars into Berkeley, but Nevada didn't need that come in and punk us. Fresno State didn't need that to into the Rose Bowl and beat UCLA. Iowa State didn't need it to make a New Years 6 bowl. And if the miraculous scenario happened and we started pulling massive recruiting wins and put together a 9 or 10 win season and the coach got snatched away, GOOD!!! Because at least a precedent of success would have been set unlike what we have now, which is an 11-20 conference record. That's not even freaking mediocre. Mediocre is somewhere around .500. What we have now is garbage.
I wonder how many Cal professors snuck into a totally packed Memorial to catch the excitement of the Tedford era circa 2004-2007. Maybe it was at that 2006 game where the Bears took a good Oregon team to the woodshed. Or that 2007 game against Tennessee where DeSean Jackson returned a punt for a touchdown and busted a thousand eardrums when the fans went delirious. All it took was a young head coach who was willing to sleep in a cot in the bowels of the stadium for a few years. Oh yeah, that will happen again.
A bit of hyperbole, but probably not far from the truth if such a subjective ranking could be quantified. Over the decades, having read many books and hundreds of articles relating to college athletics, as a Cal alum, I was struck that whenever the notion of a Cal football or basketball head coaching opening was discussed, the terms "10 foot pole" & "poison" came up an unsettling number of times. Lack of administrative support was mentioned in more than half of the objections to coaching here. I'm tired of comparisons to Alabama, but take any football-crazy school with lax admission standards, tons of donor money, and a rabid fanbase. If football is all about winning, and the more support you receive, the better chance of winning, what would draw a promising coach to Cal? Conquering an insurmountable challenge?
Simple: not every school can be a sports club like the Bamas and Ohio States of the world, and there's still a whole lot of money to be made at a school like Cal. Wilcox makes over $3 million a year and doesn't deal with the expectations of a coach at a program where it's national championship or bust, and a 9-10 win season is considered failure. I think the lack of admin. support argument is perhaps somewhat dated. Is our faculty/staff ever going to care a great deal about football? Of course not. But the university has shown willingness to invest in the program. Our stadium financing plan kind of necessitates that the football program find success. Michigan, Furd, and others like them have proven you can have success as an elite academic institution (although it pains me to say that about the furd). Again, it's harder, sure, but Tedford had it going even with crumbling facilities. It can be done, and I don't believe it's insurmountable.
Ahem.....well regarded defensive coordinator. Therein lies the problem.
We all were fooled. We thought Wilcox was a 7 win coach capable of 9 win seasons. He’s a 5 win coach capable of 7 win seasons. His success appears to be dependent on his coordinators, which is fine if
you have good assistants. Part of a head coaches job is to recruit good assistants. It’s not fine if you aren’t doing that.
His early success was build on sheer scheduling luck. He got to play both North Carolina and Mississippi twice when they were in decline and about to fire their head coaches. That 7-win regular season and a bowl game in 2019 would likely have been five wins and no bowl game if Cal had played non conference teams the caliber of Nevada and TCU. Or just imagine if Cal had UCLA's non conference schedule the past four years, having to play top 25 teams like Cincinnati, Oklahoma, Texas AM, and Memphis.
There's probably a good deal of truth to this, but also, losing Gerald Alexander and now Tim DeRuyter has seemed to have a massive impact on the defensive performance. When we get high performing assistants, we lose them and seem to replace them with very young coaches or retreads with somewhat sketchy records of previous success.
Musgrave = Kaufman?
Exactly.
I respectfully disagree with the premise. While Musgrave=Kaufman might be a valid comparison regarding retreads or demographics, neither were replacing someone high performing but the opposite.
On the performing assistants who left:
- Gerald Alexander was NFL bound regardless.
- TDR was inevitably going to leave for a higher paying gig. When Sirmon got promoted I was confused, and some people here thought it was because TDR was close retiring which didnt end up being the case. More likely Wilcox was hedging his bets by keeping Sirmon happy to keep him and ease the eventual transition. The defense regressing is a different story.
- Did I miss someone?
On some notable departures:
- Baldwin == needed to go
- Tuiasosopo == needed to go
- Edwards == meh, package deal with Baldwin
- Greatwood == retired
- Tuioti == ?
On some notable hires or role changes, who are still here:
- Browning == good hire/promotion
- Heyward == good hire
- Thompson == good hire
- Musgrave == TBD to be fair
- Toler == TBD? No idea if he's a good coach, but is/was a seemingly good choice given the legacy and seems to be a good recruiter?
- McClure == TBD?
- Sirmon == probably bad, but isnt the idea that Wilcox is a defensive coach and should be tangibly impactful on that side of the ball as well regardless of who the DC is?
On other non-departures:
- Ragle == needed to go
I dont think the current issues are with the employment decisions per se, Ragle nontwithstanding, but the bigger picture which all have some synergy:
- Wilcox overall as a head coach
- The administration / Cal Athletics as usual (academic standards, assistant coach salary)
- Talent level on the team (defense in particular)?
Seems like the good assistants have all left. What remains is an attempt to plug a leaking dike.
Leaking Dykes
Yet another sign that I'm never going to see Cal win the conference in my lifetime. Hell, I'm not even sure I'll ever see them have a winning conference record again.
I hope you're wrong, because I want you to have a long, happy life.
That's the sad thing. I've been following Cal since the Bruce Snyder era. That was probably our best shot in the past 30 years to garner a Rose Bowl appearance. Now it seems farther away than ever. Five years is a long time. Hire a new coach, expect results by year 5 (9 win season for example), only to have regression. Coach is fired. Start all over again. That's why I commented after the TCU game that Cal football was Sisyphean. Rinse and repeat.
I would say 2004. Cal so close to beating eventual national champion SC. Would they have run the table if they beat SC that day - who knows. But Mack Brown stealing the Rose Bowl was the extra dose of disappointment
My nephew was a N. Cal. offensive lineman that turned down Notre Dame to play for Snyder because Snyder had one of the best offensive line coaches in the country. Yea, that was 1991 and he had to settle for Gilbertson's high school coaching staff. He did make it to the 49rs as a backup for 4 years and one game with the Texans (acl ended his career) but I often wonder how far he could have gone with proper coaching.