Cal Football 2025 Season Preview Part 1: Last Chance Saloon
Justin Wilcox has been given extraordinary time and patience in Berkeley. 2025 is almost certainly his last chance to prove he can be more than a .500 coach.
Justin Wilcox is entering his ninth season as head coach of the University of California. Across his first eight years, Wilcox has a collective record of 42-50 (23-43 in conference play).
I spent some time pondering what other programs in college football would keep a head coach for nearly a decade with a sub .500 record. My assumption: there are not many programs who would retain a coach for so long with on-field results that are objectively below average.
As it turns out, there are a few programs with similar situations if you squint a little bit. I looked at every single FBS coach who has at least 7 years in their current job and has a winning percentage of less than .600. Here are the results:
You’ve got the most successful coaches in the history of Iowa St. and Kentucky, two historic bottom feeders of their respective conferences. You’ve got two MAC coaches who regularly lose a ton of non-con games but do well in MAC conference play. And you’ve got three coaches of ACC programs without a ton of modern success, who have spent most of their career treading water but with occasional years of contention.
All of the coaches except one have a better winning percentage than Wilcox. All of the above have had a better ‘best season’ than Wilcox.
In short, Cal’s patience with Justin Wilcox is unique. We’ve talked about the sources for Cal’s patience over the last few years. Some of those reasons reflect poorly on Cal: lack of money, lack of ambition, a sense that Wilcox’s win/loss record was more a reflection of Cal’s poor institutional support rather than Wilcox’s ability as a head coach. Some of those reasons reflect positively on Wilcox himself: his low-key, no-complaints public persona, his ability to run a controversy free program, his loyalty to Cal, his willingness to change his approach to try to improve on-field results.
I’m not here to argue whether or not Cal’s patience has been the right decision. Until very recently, the political will to take college football seriously as a revenue sport didn’t exist, so it’s kind of a moot argument. Right or wrong, the prior leadership of Cal’s administration weren’t going to move on from a head coach who wasn’t causing a problem on or off the field.
But the leaders who took that course are gone, and I strongly suspect that this season represents Justin Wilcox’s final chance to prove that he can achieve anything more than what he has produced across his first eight seasons.
In so many ways, the 2025 season is one last desperate gamble.
Wilcox 1.0, with Beau Baldwin and Sonny Dykes’ recruits, couldn’t quite break through
Wilcox 2.0, with Bill Musgrave, was first flattened by COVID and then by a talent deficit and recruiting struggles
Wilcox 3.0, fueled by the transfer portal and a revolving cast of offensive cooks in the kitchen, probably should have broken through but couldn’t, thanks to a slew of close losses that is either bad luck or evidence of Wilcox’s hard ceiling, depending on your point of view.
With brings us to now. Wilcox is now on his FIFTH offensive coordinator, and in a final desperate attempt to find success on that side of the ball he has brought in a pair of offensive minds with more baggage than that stupid show that Jerry Springer used to host.
It’s Wilcox 4.0, and what is remarkable is that he’s getting a 4th chance to figure things out.
If you’re a Cal fan, I wouldn’t blame you for feeling a deep sense of ennui, a belief that Cal would never demand more from its football program. But as we’ve discussed previously, Cal appears to be taking revenue sports seriously again. At long last, Ron has the proverbial keys. It’s hard to imagine that Cal would willingly sink so many resources into football (and by extension, NOT into other areas of the athletic department) only to then accept on-field mediocrity.
And even IF Cal hadn’t made a commitment to football success, there’s another critical factor: Justin Wilcox quietly will only have two years left on his contract after the 2025 season. That means it’s decision time either way; Cal will either need to show commitment to Wilcox for recruiting purposes, or move on. Buying out his final two years isn’t all that palatable, but it’s significantly more palatable than offering an extension to a coach with a nine year track record of below average power conference performances.
So yeah, this is it. If Justin Wilcox produces a 2025 season that’s just like every other season he has produced at Cal, I’m confident that Cal will start 2026 with a new head coach.
How good will Cal have to be in 2025 to continue on with Justin Wilcox? And how likely is that to actually happen?
Ron Rivera may be the only person on earth who knows the answer to the first question. But you would have to think that the absolute bare minimum would be an 8-4 regular season and/or a winning conference record, two things that Justin Wilcox has never achieved in Berkeley. Anything less than that would be more of the same and would surely lead to the conclusion that it’s time to move on. Rivera, being a football lifer, would presumably add in some deeper analysis into how well Cal actually played outside of pure wins and losses . . . but at some point your record is your record, particularly when you’ve been given nearly a decade to prove yourself.
That second question? Well, August starts in just a few days, and Cal will be kicking off fall camp soon. Cal football season is less than five weeks away. Between now and then, this website will be doing in depth previews of this pivotal season before August 30, when Cal kicks off in Corvallis against Oregon State. Hopefully by then, you’ll have the information to make your own projection, before Cal actually takes the field and proves us right and/or wrong.
It’s been a long, momentous off-season, but football season is all but here.
This is definitely an intriguing season due to off-season roster and coaching changes, the new House landscape, and Wilcox's contract timing. I find myself more positive than expected, but that's probably what happens every summer before fall camp begins.
Small nit: Dave Clawson resigned at Wake Forest after last season, which maybe goes further in supporting your point. The Deacs are now coached by our old friend and fellow Pac-12 refugee Jake Dickert.
We might as well play with season predictions (no Gen-AI LLMs allowed). After starting the season 2-0 with games closer than expected, the Golden Gophers come into town for a late night affair. It's a back and forth battle where the Gophers avenge last year's loss to UNC by winning at the end 19-17 on a 38 yarder! Wilcox fumes to the press conference. Then bounce back wins in San Diego and Boston puts the sunshine pumpers in a good mood sitting at 4 - 1. Then three winnable night games - 2 on Fridays - become losses and our Bears sit at 4-4. Welcoming in a UVa team with a solid journeyman QB but little else, we win this game before traveling to Louisville where the Bears don't get out of first gear and lose 44-6. On the flight back, Wilcox is let go and Harsin takes over the team. In a deflated Stanford Stadium, the Bears win a field goal contest 12 - 6 only to be overwhelmed at home the following week at the hands a rolling Mustangs' offense. 6-6 lands our Bears in Shreveport and a loss to Arkansas State 24 - 12, on a cold, sad December night to finish 6 - 7.