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.
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.
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.
Thank you, Nick. I look forward to the Fall Camp practice reports. We will be in the stands for the first game in Corvalis. I have no idea what to expect; I always love Beavers and Bears football games. We are going and that's that. Bears better win it. That all I got.
A little more perspective on patience with a head coach: Rich Brooks was 30-54-4 (20-37-2 Pac10) in his first 8 seasons at Oregon (compared with Wilcox's 42-50 (23-43 conference)), and Brooks had a scandal in his first 2 years that led to probation. Brooks' teams didn't win more than 6 games a season until his 13th year, and he didn't take the Ducks to the Rose Bowl until his 18th and final year, when the team went 9-4 (7-1 conference).
I'm not arguing that we should give Wilcox 10 more years to figure it out, but Brooks is considered to be the savior of Oregon football, even though his overall record was 91-109-4 (56-79-2 conference), and his teams won more than 6 games a season only three times over 18 seasons.
I have no idea what to expect this season after the gut punch exits of so much proven talent. But the transfer portal appears to have giveth a lot of new talent to replace what it taketh away -- especially on O-line and D-line. Maybe that will be enough to give the new "skill position" players what they need to compete and win. Hopefully Riverboat Ron's presence will help Wilcox and the team put it all together.
For all the fire Wilcox or win 8 or else talk, the question is who would Cal hire from the relatively small pool of candidates who would take the job and stay more than 2-3 years that Cal can actually get? Are you going to depose Wilcox and promote Harsin?
I think the pundits are wrong: they are focusing only on lost skill players and not on units. Oline and Dline are better this year. I think we'll get enough out of our RBs. Big questions are QB play and secondary, but I have faith that the secondary will be sufficient (fingers crossed) and I think Devin Brown (or JKS) will turn heads.
Prediction: Golden Bears surprise this year. Watch out for those boys from Berkeley.
Enough from our RBs? The current roster - https://calbears.com/sports/football/roster?view=2 - lists 3 RBs. I know we have a few portal transfers arriving this summer, but these 3 RBs listed have .... 6 carries combined.
Some time back, Wilcox said (paraphrasing) "Our goal is to score 28 pts per game." Apparently, recently, he reiterated that philosophy. I checked out on Wilcox back then when he said it the first time. That he still preaches that after the close calls and thumping by Miami suggests he hasn't learned his lesson and is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
Thx Nick, loved your Mediocrity table, that was a great take on Cal's coaching situation. Let's hope Ron "I have the keys" Rivera can take us to a Superiority table in the near future, with JW coming along for the ride. Go Bears!
Count me in a minority perhaps that think the Cal coaching team has not done a bad job (nor a great job) over the last eight years, given the changes that have taken place in college football. Given the lack of financial resources to attract and retain top talent, combined with below average community/student support for college football, as seen by the poor attendance at games and TV ratings. The final blow being left out of the Big Ten big $$$ move by USC/UCLA and having to settle for a low-payout ACC offer. Perhaps we might compare how Cal has done over the same period as our closest rival and Pac 12 exile to the ACC - Stanford? After riding high under Dennis Shaw, 2017/2018 both won 9 games, the combined 2017-present record is 38-55 (if I counted correctly) The last two seasons under Shaw, winning a combined 6 games. Do we think Shaw's coaching ability had changed that much? It was just in 2015 that Stanford went 12-2 and won the Rose Bowl. Or has had the college football environment changed so much that Stanford could no longer be competitive? Stanford had a coaching change, as we all know, with the same poor results. Let's see what the future brings...
Here's the thing: With realignment in 2030 or so in mind, would 7 or 8 wins be enough to help Cal get to the Big Ten? Clearly the answer is no. I would think 9 wins minimum, even ten should be the expectation.
So what's the problem/s? Since 1960 (65 years) Cal has only 3 coaches (check it out) winning above .500. Jeff Tedford, Mike White, and Bruce Snyder. None .600 or better. Apparently It's not only poor coaching. Grades? Entrance requirements? Acadenic Culture? Apparently the University does not and probably will not make winning football a priority.
Getting Rivera means it’s more of a priority, hopefully translating into more success. Prioritizing it is a requirement but not a guarantee of success. Look at Nebraska. It’s probably a higher priority there than anywhere else, yet I believe they’ve won one conference championship since Tom Osborne retired 28 years ago. They didn’t pick the right guy to run the program. Or when they had the right guy, which they probably did with Frank Solich, they had the wrong athletic director and he ran the right guy out of town. The same thing happened at Cal with Bruce Snyder. He was just getting going at Cal and the evil Bob Bockrath (don’t quote me on the spelling) ran him out of town
Anything short of 10 wins though, I don’t think he should. The college landscape is changing rapidly and we’re on the outside looking in. If we had Tedford (ok early Tedford) these past few years we’d be in the Big 10 not the ACC. The damage done by our mediocrity at this juncture is far more damaging than almost any time in history.
> the absolute bare minimum would be an 8-4 regular season and/or a winning conference record
I believe he keeps his job at 7-5 (4-4) + a bowl win. In other words, 8-5 is the minimum.
Though you showed Wilcox has received longer than most anyone else to produce so little, it's weirdly also true that he's on the verge of a success that no Cal coach other than Tedford has had in decades: 3 straight bowl games. To cap that with a bowl win would likely be too good to part ways with.
Bowl games really don't matter. We used to collectively agree they did, but they're post-season exhibitions and transfer/true freshman showcases now for all but the biggest bowls (and the playoffs).
But more importantly, the timing means we can't care about a bowl outcome. Imagine we're 7–5 and about to get a bowl invite. The portal is opening and some players are leaving (and some could be coming). Other coaches are getting fired (and hired). Do we wait 2 weeks to see how the bowl game—played with 2/3rds of our regular season roster—plays out, missing the chance to hire the best coaches (and recruiters) available?
I gotta agree with this; especially, with all the fresh blood coming in. Do we want to derail that? If this season crumbles, it will naturally derail, anyhow.
Exactly. The real standard for the season isn't any specific number of wins. It's improvement and momentum. Whatever number of wins we need to keep our 2026 recruits (and hopefully add some more) is the goal.
It is not “momentum.” Even if I were to accept that momentum is sufficient, and I do not, one year of improvement (likely marginal improvement at best) after many years of mediocrity is not “momentum”.
If we have any self respect at all, the floor should be 10 wins with some major victories in there. Anything less with the ACC imploding in the next few years is unacceptable.
Absolutely. Unequal earnings in a second tier conference cause we accept and embrace mediocrity. Hey I survived the Holmoe years, I know what levels of mediocrity Cal will accept. And most times, I would shake my head and say well that’s just Cal. But these are not normal times and that level of negligence has already cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and is likely to permanently kill the program as a top tier program if we continue down this path. The time to fix this is now, he gets one shot with organizational support and if/when he can’t do it, we must throw our Hail Mary and at least try make this happen. It might be too late, I’m not sure - the situation is too dynamic. But I’m reading reports of who the Big 12 will pick up out of the ACC should it collapse and we’re not on that list. So get ready for the WSU/OSU treatment if we mess this up.
But let’s explore this mythical 9 win season. How would that happen?
OSU - mid major at this point
Texas southern - mid major
SDSU - mid-major
North Carolina - sub 500 in 2024
Virginia Tech - sub 500 in 2024
Virginia - sub 500 in 2024
Stanford - sub 500 in 2024
So that’s 7 games against teams that a good to very good team should win or at least be favored against. There’s also a barely winning bowl team last year (BC was 7-6), so you could, in theory, get to nine wins with like one good win. Now winning in college is hard, I get it. And winning on the road is very hard. But we have one of the easiest schedules we’ve had in many years and my expectations arise from that fact and our desperate need to get out of the bottom of the barrel.
The bar is so low that three straight bowl games is considered accomplishment even though at least the first two came after 6-6 seasons? Even if he goes 8-5 Wilcox's body of work speaks for itself. We need to demand more from our head football coach.
I think that's where the bar is, yeah. Not because it got lower; that's where it's always been. 3 straight bowls at Cal (winning the last one) would be a feat only Tedford has accomplished in the past 50 or so years. I guess Synder probably would have, but that was its own set of bad decisions.
I suspect our divergence here is less about what counts as "good enough" and more about what a good-ish season in 2025 signifies. If we go 8-5, is Wilcox trending up and we can reasonably expect 8+ again in 26? Or do you look at his trailing average over the past 3 years, and he's not even averaging 7? Or do you look at the whole decade and he's worse than that?
I believe recent results matter a lot. He didn't get it done his first 5 years. Maybe we should have fired him then. But we didn't. If he goes 8-5 and he's holding on to a top-25 recruiting class, and we fire him then? I just don't see how we'd upgrade.
I hope Wilcox leads the Bears to a 9-3 season which is the start of a great new era of Cal football under his leadership. But I see no evidence to suggest that he's finally figured things out. He's a lucky man indeed to have been given nine years to sort things out. I've spent decades being the most optimistic Bear fan around. But entering 2025 I have little hope for the program under JW. Maybe this is what we've needed, me, of all people, being pessimistic. Is that the formula for success? Come on JW prove me wrong...and by the way, Go Bears!
And yeah I'm not zealous about any of this. It's tricky; figuring out the meaningfulness and predictive power of a hypothetical 8-5 season is next to impossible. Let alone how that hypothetical stacks up against a hypothetical 9-4 season, in the shadow of the 42-50 that came before.
I would disagree that 7 wins is acceptable for him at this point. I get what you're saying, but to use the exact history that has put Cal football at the precipice of extinction as the benchmark is a bit shortsighted. The goal in the next 3 years should be to show a meteoric improvement in both the investment into the program and the results on the field.
This season would normally be a lost season due to massive transition, but we've been gifted with a really easy strength of schedule. If he can't take advantage of that, what's going to happen when we have to play FSU / Miami / Clemson?
Regarding recruiting classes, Wilcox has never been able to recruit high school and the transfer portal & NIL have literally saved his career from a complete implosion at Cal. A new coach might break up our current recruits, but would theoretically have a much easier time recruiting kids without all the baggage that comes with Wilcox's history here.
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.
Gonna have to tape this to the fridge.
That would be on brand.
dang...you're good
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.
Ugh how did I forget that!
Thank you, Nick. I look forward to the Fall Camp practice reports. We will be in the stands for the first game in Corvalis. I have no idea what to expect; I always love Beavers and Bears football games. We are going and that's that. Bears better win it. That all I got.
A little more perspective on patience with a head coach: Rich Brooks was 30-54-4 (20-37-2 Pac10) in his first 8 seasons at Oregon (compared with Wilcox's 42-50 (23-43 conference)), and Brooks had a scandal in his first 2 years that led to probation. Brooks' teams didn't win more than 6 games a season until his 13th year, and he didn't take the Ducks to the Rose Bowl until his 18th and final year, when the team went 9-4 (7-1 conference).
I'm not arguing that we should give Wilcox 10 more years to figure it out, but Brooks is considered to be the savior of Oregon football, even though his overall record was 91-109-4 (56-79-2 conference), and his teams won more than 6 games a season only three times over 18 seasons.
I have no idea what to expect this season after the gut punch exits of so much proven talent. But the transfer portal appears to have giveth a lot of new talent to replace what it taketh away -- especially on O-line and D-line. Maybe that will be enough to give the new "skill position" players what they need to compete and win. Hopefully Riverboat Ron's presence will help Wilcox and the team put it all together.
For all the fire Wilcox or win 8 or else talk, the question is who would Cal hire from the relatively small pool of candidates who would take the job and stay more than 2-3 years that Cal can actually get? Are you going to depose Wilcox and promote Harsin?
Hmm. Well at least Wilcox is an Oregon guy so hope the comparison means something positive.
Cogently summarized, Mr. Kranz. For us latter-day out-of-staters, it’s once again nigh time to listen, watch and squirm.
I think the pundits are wrong: they are focusing only on lost skill players and not on units. Oline and Dline are better this year. I think we'll get enough out of our RBs. Big questions are QB play and secondary, but I have faith that the secondary will be sufficient (fingers crossed) and I think Devin Brown (or JKS) will turn heads.
Prediction: Golden Bears surprise this year. Watch out for those boys from Berkeley.
Enough from our RBs? The current roster - https://calbears.com/sports/football/roster?view=2 - lists 3 RBs. I know we have a few portal transfers arriving this summer, but these 3 RBs listed have .... 6 carries combined.
I like the cut of your jib.....
I think JW will be our coach next year.
Some time back, Wilcox said (paraphrasing) "Our goal is to score 28 pts per game." Apparently, recently, he reiterated that philosophy. I checked out on Wilcox back then when he said it the first time. That he still preaches that after the close calls and thumping by Miami suggests he hasn't learned his lesson and is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
Nailed it as always...thanks Nick. GO BEARS FOREVER!!!!!!!
Thx Nick, loved your Mediocrity table, that was a great take on Cal's coaching situation. Let's hope Ron "I have the keys" Rivera can take us to a Superiority table in the near future, with JW coming along for the ride. Go Bears!
Here we go again! I have no clue what to expect given so many changes, though it should be mediocrity.
Count me in a minority perhaps that think the Cal coaching team has not done a bad job (nor a great job) over the last eight years, given the changes that have taken place in college football. Given the lack of financial resources to attract and retain top talent, combined with below average community/student support for college football, as seen by the poor attendance at games and TV ratings. The final blow being left out of the Big Ten big $$$ move by USC/UCLA and having to settle for a low-payout ACC offer. Perhaps we might compare how Cal has done over the same period as our closest rival and Pac 12 exile to the ACC - Stanford? After riding high under Dennis Shaw, 2017/2018 both won 9 games, the combined 2017-present record is 38-55 (if I counted correctly) The last two seasons under Shaw, winning a combined 6 games. Do we think Shaw's coaching ability had changed that much? It was just in 2015 that Stanford went 12-2 and won the Rose Bowl. Or has had the college football environment changed so much that Stanford could no longer be competitive? Stanford had a coaching change, as we all know, with the same poor results. Let's see what the future brings...
Here's the thing: With realignment in 2030 or so in mind, would 7 or 8 wins be enough to help Cal get to the Big Ten? Clearly the answer is no. I would think 9 wins minimum, even ten should be the expectation.
Nothing would get Cal to the Big Ten though. Need an actionable plan B (C? D?).
So what's the problem/s? Since 1960 (65 years) Cal has only 3 coaches (check it out) winning above .500. Jeff Tedford, Mike White, and Bruce Snyder. None .600 or better. Apparently It's not only poor coaching. Grades? Entrance requirements? Acadenic Culture? Apparently the University does not and probably will not make winning football a priority.
Remember we had a chance to keep Snyder, but didn’t want to pay him. He left and then took ASU to the Rose Bowl.
Getting Rivera means it’s more of a priority, hopefully translating into more success. Prioritizing it is a requirement but not a guarantee of success. Look at Nebraska. It’s probably a higher priority there than anywhere else, yet I believe they’ve won one conference championship since Tom Osborne retired 28 years ago. They didn’t pick the right guy to run the program. Or when they had the right guy, which they probably did with Frank Solich, they had the wrong athletic director and he ran the right guy out of town. The same thing happened at Cal with Bruce Snyder. He was just getting going at Cal and the evil Bob Bockrath (don’t quote me on the spelling) ran him out of town
We have to move on from him no matter what happens this year. He’s been given a fair shot and it’s just not working out.
Time to take a chance on a new Coach. No guarantees that he’ll be better, but it’s a risk we have to take in order to move on.
He seems like a great guy, which makes this difficult, but we’re at the end.
I mostly agree but if he goes 11-2 and wins the ACC he should come back.
Cal wins the natty, fires Wilcox.
Anything short of 10 wins though, I don’t think he should. The college landscape is changing rapidly and we’re on the outside looking in. If we had Tedford (ok early Tedford) these past few years we’d be in the Big 10 not the ACC. The damage done by our mediocrity at this juncture is far more damaging than almost any time in history.
Good article. One small point of disagreement:
> the absolute bare minimum would be an 8-4 regular season and/or a winning conference record
I believe he keeps his job at 7-5 (4-4) + a bowl win. In other words, 8-5 is the minimum.
Though you showed Wilcox has received longer than most anyone else to produce so little, it's weirdly also true that he's on the verge of a success that no Cal coach other than Tedford has had in decades: 3 straight bowl games. To cap that with a bowl win would likely be too good to part ways with.
Bowl games really don't matter. We used to collectively agree they did, but they're post-season exhibitions and transfer/true freshman showcases now for all but the biggest bowls (and the playoffs).
But more importantly, the timing means we can't care about a bowl outcome. Imagine we're 7–5 and about to get a bowl invite. The portal is opening and some players are leaving (and some could be coming). Other coaches are getting fired (and hired). Do we wait 2 weeks to see how the bowl game—played with 2/3rds of our regular season roster—plays out, missing the chance to hire the best coaches (and recruiters) available?
I gotta agree with this; especially, with all the fresh blood coming in. Do we want to derail that? If this season crumbles, it will naturally derail, anyhow.
Exactly. The real standard for the season isn't any specific number of wins. It's improvement and momentum. Whatever number of wins we need to keep our 2026 recruits (and hopefully add some more) is the goal.
It is not “momentum.” Even if I were to accept that momentum is sufficient, and I do not, one year of improvement (likely marginal improvement at best) after many years of mediocrity is not “momentum”.
If we have any self respect at all, the floor should be 10 wins with some major victories in there. Anything less with the ACC imploding in the next few years is unacceptable.
Dunno, are you seriously saying you'd call 9 wins—for the first time in 17 years—a failure?
Absolutely. Unequal earnings in a second tier conference cause we accept and embrace mediocrity. Hey I survived the Holmoe years, I know what levels of mediocrity Cal will accept. And most times, I would shake my head and say well that’s just Cal. But these are not normal times and that level of negligence has already cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and is likely to permanently kill the program as a top tier program if we continue down this path. The time to fix this is now, he gets one shot with organizational support and if/when he can’t do it, we must throw our Hail Mary and at least try make this happen. It might be too late, I’m not sure - the situation is too dynamic. But I’m reading reports of who the Big 12 will pick up out of the ACC should it collapse and we’re not on that list. So get ready for the WSU/OSU treatment if we mess this up.
But let’s explore this mythical 9 win season. How would that happen?
OSU - mid major at this point
Texas southern - mid major
SDSU - mid-major
North Carolina - sub 500 in 2024
Virginia Tech - sub 500 in 2024
Virginia - sub 500 in 2024
Stanford - sub 500 in 2024
So that’s 7 games against teams that a good to very good team should win or at least be favored against. There’s also a barely winning bowl team last year (BC was 7-6), so you could, in theory, get to nine wins with like one good win. Now winning in college is hard, I get it. And winning on the road is very hard. But we have one of the easiest schedules we’ve had in many years and my expectations arise from that fact and our desperate need to get out of the bottom of the barrel.
9 wins would be over performing and a very good sign. There's no reason to expect this roster and staff to do better than 5.
The bar is so low that three straight bowl games is considered accomplishment even though at least the first two came after 6-6 seasons? Even if he goes 8-5 Wilcox's body of work speaks for itself. We need to demand more from our head football coach.
I think that's where the bar is, yeah. Not because it got lower; that's where it's always been. 3 straight bowls at Cal (winning the last one) would be a feat only Tedford has accomplished in the past 50 or so years. I guess Synder probably would have, but that was its own set of bad decisions.
I suspect our divergence here is less about what counts as "good enough" and more about what a good-ish season in 2025 signifies. If we go 8-5, is Wilcox trending up and we can reasonably expect 8+ again in 26? Or do you look at his trailing average over the past 3 years, and he's not even averaging 7? Or do you look at the whole decade and he's worse than that?
I believe recent results matter a lot. He didn't get it done his first 5 years. Maybe we should have fired him then. But we didn't. If he goes 8-5 and he's holding on to a top-25 recruiting class, and we fire him then? I just don't see how we'd upgrade.
I hope Wilcox leads the Bears to a 9-3 season which is the start of a great new era of Cal football under his leadership. But I see no evidence to suggest that he's finally figured things out. He's a lucky man indeed to have been given nine years to sort things out. I've spent decades being the most optimistic Bear fan around. But entering 2025 I have little hope for the program under JW. Maybe this is what we've needed, me, of all people, being pessimistic. Is that the formula for success? Come on JW prove me wrong...and by the way, Go Bears!
Go Bears forever!
And yeah I'm not zealous about any of this. It's tricky; figuring out the meaningfulness and predictive power of a hypothetical 8-5 season is next to impossible. Let alone how that hypothetical stacks up against a hypothetical 9-4 season, in the shadow of the 42-50 that came before.
I would disagree that 7 wins is acceptable for him at this point. I get what you're saying, but to use the exact history that has put Cal football at the precipice of extinction as the benchmark is a bit shortsighted. The goal in the next 3 years should be to show a meteoric improvement in both the investment into the program and the results on the field.
This season would normally be a lost season due to massive transition, but we've been gifted with a really easy strength of schedule. If he can't take advantage of that, what's going to happen when we have to play FSU / Miami / Clemson?
Regarding recruiting classes, Wilcox has never been able to recruit high school and the transfer portal & NIL have literally saved his career from a complete implosion at Cal. A new coach might break up our current recruits, but would theoretically have a much easier time recruiting kids without all the baggage that comes with Wilcox's history here.
Regarding basketball.. what happened to Usc coming to Hass this year? Not listed as a pre season opponent