Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong for the first time Cal head coach. But there are pathways to finish strong and get ready for the years ahead.
Real problem is that neither Cal or Stanford have any business being in the ACC, or any big time conference. Both should have joined Washington State and Oregon State and re-formed the Pac 12 and lowered expectations all around. It’s not like college football was ever going to be equal to the Niners and NFL? So why spend gobs of money on pro sports and forsake the academic stuff?
I’m tempted to think this way a lot, especially when my anger is overwhelming. But we clearly belong. Our budget says that we do. We just haven’t acted like it.
I am still wondering WHY was there such a big effort to hire Lupoi in the first place? There were MANY experienced good HEAD coaches available out there. UCLA sure got one from a minor P4 conference school James Madison and his experience as a successful head coach showed that's the type of hire we needed. Lupoi had NO experience as a HEAD coach!!
I feel like nothing will ever happen. We can complain, moan and provide keystone analysis of why our team sucks but at the end of the day we are not the big donors.
We will continue to suck because the big donors don’t have a clue on how to fix this. Just like everything, people with the cash are not always the smartest just the dirtiest and lack any real insight.
Basically we are trying to convince ourselves that a 5 year wait with these coaches (like the pre-NIL days/portal) is how things will improve here at Cal? The cupboard wasn’t as bare as when Dykes took over (this was a 7 win team last year), so why the additional regression?
Sucking while putting in effort is a very different type of frustration than sucking without putting in the effort. Cal and the fanbase have genuinely invested tons of resources and we're getting...this.
I guess Rivera was willing to let Tosh build his wunderkind staff this year because pressure was so high to hire Tosh in the first place. Next year's staff has to be better curated. I'm personally worried that Tosh is screwing up some extremely basic but critical things behind the scenes due to ineptitude/inexperience that we won't know about until later. I was expecting some struggles in Y1, but not these demonstrable stretches of sheer incompetence.
An extremely sober look at the reality of the rebuild. Tosh needs better luck, better assistants, and better recruiting. If he can learn from the mistakes of this year without the program imploding permanently I still think we could produce something that utilizes his strengths towards success.
I had to re-read this article several times to try and understand what is being said. Then, it dawned on me. This article has been funded by Tosh Lupoi to try and put the most positive spin on his disastrous tenure as HC. I've been a fan for exactly 46 years. From the first day I walked onto campus as an undergrad until now. I an TIRED of the mediocrity. The there's always next year mentality. The we've got to work harder press conferences, blah, blah, blah As I said ;ast week, low rent schools like Wake Forest and Indiana have transformed without the hype train running every 4 seconds on blast. How many Rose Bowls have StanFURD been in since 2000? Four. Won 2 and lost 2. Cal has not been to a Rose Bowl in the entire time I have been alive.
I used to believe our turn would come, and with it the chance to see the Parade in person. The Game in person. Win or lose, just be there as a proud alum. Better than a National Championship in my opinion. Now, we'll never see a Rose Bowl because of the nonsense our sport is going through. But more importantly, we just don't seem to be able to make intelligent hiring decisions, or have the right process, and people in place to take football to the place we all need it to be.
I live in Northern Utah. These last 2 weeks, with ESPN Gameday at BYU last week and Utah this past Saturday just shows what players who can play, and coaches who can coach means. While I watched UCF beat BYU, I thought, could Cal get a win like that over the number 2 team in the nation? No. We're happy to beat Syracuse!
Personally I don't care who stays or who goes. Constant rebuilding cycles are for losers. All I want is a winning team. One that overachieves or underachieves, but just wins. The low rent schools do it all the time.
I do not think it’s possible that we will see much improvement this season. Tosh was a mistake but unless the big money guys are willing to burn more cash to get rid of him and then hire someone with experience to replace him, we are stuck with the problem.
Make no mistake about it. JKS is gone for next year. For him to risk his NFL future by staying with this coaching staff and supporting cast would be foolish. There are plenty of teams with loads of syndicate cash just waiting to bid on his generational talent as soon as the portal opens, and you can bet his agent is already getting feelers every day. He needs a solid junior year performance before entering the draft to increase his negotiating leverage, and he has the Mendoza template to follow.
I figure we are likely to go 4-8 of maybe 5-7, but I’m not at all sure we can beat Stanford, so we may have that loss, again, as a nice bit of frosting on the shit cake of a season we’ve been served up this year.
Beyond JKS, we will no doubt lose our best players to the portal. So for Tosh and his coaching staff it will be another building year, pretty much from scratch. Maybe we keep some of the better high school recruits, but how you sell them on this program after what they’ve seen this season is beyond me.
Short of replacing Tosh and most of his inexperienced coaching staff, Cal is doomed to more years of a mediocre football program, one that will not be in much of a position to negotiate for a better position when realignment finally rears it’s ugly head in two years. When the Big 10 looks to fill its two open spots, you can bet Cal won’t be in the list to fill one of them.
I said this before and I will say it again. We saw him destroy us on his way out to Washington. That we gave him a chance to kill us for good before realignment is… I don’t have the words. I’m going to get a drink.
At the start of the season, our ceiling was 12-0 (and the natty) and our reasonable floor was 3-9 (De La Salle HS could beat Wagner, and it's hard to expect UCLA, Syracuse, Clemson, UNLV, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, SMU, NC State, Virginia, Stanford, and Pittsburgh to all not choke). Right now, we're closer to the floor, likely ending up somewhere between 5-7 and 7-5 depending on who's healthy.
Now, the main problems this season have been poor coaching, poor offensive scheme, and a lack of talent in critical positions. The poor offensive scheme and poor holistic coaching on offense have been resolved with removing Somerville, but not after Somerville cost us 2 games (Clemson and UNLV). Our defense lacks much edge or D-line talent, leaving our defense in permanent panic mode. Our O-line is still Wilcox's with Wilcox's O-line coach, and the failure of the O-line (especially when Bastian Swinney is injured) is what is the main factor of our injury bug, the quick 3-and-outs, the lack of a good run game, and the defense being gassed. When the winter portal opens up, we'll certainly have to buy ourselves a good O-line (maybe even getting a new O-line coach with some of their players), a good backup center, good edge-rushers, and a good D-line.
Getting to 5-7 or 7-5 is way too optimistic. More like 4-8 the way our defense is playing. Giving up 41 and 59 points in the last two games is an absolute 0 in efficiency! Unless the DB's, ILB's, and edge contain players improve dramatically there is no way we can win more than 1 more game.
Sadly, $10 million as a staff budget just isn't enough. Cal needs to get serious about supporting the athletes with a experienced coaching on a Power 4 budget, not a Nordstrom Rack or Kohl's budget.
Thank you Avi for the observations + some optimism. Imo the program is what it is and has been for a long time: no conference winning record since 2009, amazement by the other ACC pundits that VATech lost to Cal (CAL!), and a mid to bottom team in a weak Power conference that gets beat bad by top 25 teams. If we are honest, next year will again bring a lot of portal turmoil, HS decommits and a mediocre record (albeit maybe better than this year), but no major improvements. Then the realignment will move Cal and Furd out of the Power Conferences and into the mid majors (Pac12 or MWC), and we will be competitive in the mid majors - and be sending talent to the Power conferences as Juniors and Seniors. This is not a negative opinion, it is just what our football program is and has been for a long time. I'm fundamentally ok with being a good or excellent team in the PAC 12 or MWC vs a perennial doormat in a Power conference with "wait til next year" aspirations. I know WFC and it's followers don't want this, and I get that, but we need to gauge current facts and look at the long history of mediocrity to see the probable future of Cal football...
Cal has a losing record against the MWC in the last decade-plus, I don't think you will get the results you want in the new Pac-12, particularly given the withdrawal of huge donor support and significant readjustment central campus will make to stadium debt reservice.
So you are saying we will not be competitive in the pac12 / MWC? I get the burden of stadium debt reserve, but there's always Paul McCartney and Grateful Dead cover bands. On donor funds, the estimate was WF raised about 1/3 the NIL Funds Cal raised, and their athletes and team look 2x as good as the GBs. My point is we need achievable targets to hit with our program, and we have been very unsuccessful in Power conferences for a very long time (even God-like Jeff Tedford had only a few really good years), so we should just face facts.
If you move down to a lower league you will get lower media payouts and likely smaller donations and attendance commensurate with the step down in competition/prestige. Cal would just readjust to its new level and would not become a powerhouse in that kind of conference either. You need to actually be good at running a football program.
But what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results. I've been a Cal fan since starting at Haas (then Berkeley Business School) in 1977. We've been doing the same thing for almost 50 years that I've been following the program - with almost always the same mediocrity - and I think it's time to do something else...
With $22.6M on the line and a raging $30M bonfire, Lyons could simply execute Section 4.2 exactly as written. Cal might gain more respect across college football by acting professionally here, which is crucial for recruit retention and protecting our pipeline. There is an obvious operational mismatch, but no one’s life, career, or reputation should be ruined over a skillset mismatch when everyone tried & shares the same goals. First, reassign Ron to a senior campus fundraising/branding role where he excels as a Cal legend, instantly slashing Tosh's resignation penalty by 50%. Simultaneously, bring in a proven, metrics-driven West Coast GM turnaround /daily ops oversight guru. Because this mechanism is built into the contract, it’s a structured transition, not a blindside. Cal can use a standard Duffy administrative reassignment as leverage, or negotiate a heavily discounted mutual settlement for him to leave completely. A negotiated settlement might be the lowest friction, lowest cost option that maximizes reputational savings on both ends. Crucially, this is not firing him. Hypothetically, handling it this way protects how recruits and elite hires respond to the transition. Would have been easier to run a comprehensive HC search from the start.
Rivera would have to leave Cal for this scenario to come into play. Cal and UC Berkeley are the same in this regard, all positions are approved through the UC system
Additionally, your scenario only comes into play if Lupoi resigns and leaves eight figures of buyout on the table, and I'm under no illusion that this scenario will ever occur.
Just breach the contract. Lupoi would be entitled only to the present value of the future payments and would have an obligation to mitigate. If he got another job, it would credit against the buy out. If he didn't, fine, but he'll have to come out of pocket to pay for the lawsuit. Companies efficiently breach contracts al the time if it is in the best interests to do so.
Sure, we would lose Lupoi recruits (the ones who don't already plan to leave this Chernobyl level meltdown). But there are many talented HCs in FCS or on Power 4 conferences who jump at the chance. Like...Cignetti did.
Others might be worried about long term reputation of doing so, but I’m not. We are staring into the abyss. An efficient breach isn’t out of the question.
"You ever have one of those years where nothing really worked out for you?"
Yeah, 2026. Cal Football was supposed to be a bright spot
Real problem is that neither Cal or Stanford have any business being in the ACC, or any big time conference. Both should have joined Washington State and Oregon State and re-formed the Pac 12 and lowered expectations all around. It’s not like college football was ever going to be equal to the Niners and NFL? So why spend gobs of money on pro sports and forsake the academic stuff?
I’m tempted to think this way a lot, especially when my anger is overwhelming. But we clearly belong. Our budget says that we do. We just haven’t acted like it.
The budget….all for the glory of Big Time football. The budget might be better served by remaining in the PAC 12
One thing that stirs me from sleep is how Chesney took the same UCLA 2025 offensive line and transformed them into a highly successful rushing unit.
I am still wondering WHY was there such a big effort to hire Lupoi in the first place? There were MANY experienced good HEAD coaches available out there. UCLA sure got one from a minor P4 conference school James Madison and his experience as a successful head coach showed that's the type of hire we needed. Lupoi had NO experience as a HEAD coach!!
People with money wanted Lupoi. Money talks. I'm not writing 7,8-figure checks. So My opinion matters not.
I feel like nothing will ever happen. We can complain, moan and provide keystone analysis of why our team sucks but at the end of the day we are not the big donors.
We will continue to suck because the big donors don’t have a clue on how to fix this. Just like everything, people with the cash are not always the smartest just the dirtiest and lack any real insight.
Don’t think this is true. And your voice does matter. And some on this site are donors. So it all matters.
I’d loved to be proved wrong but history tells me otherwise.
Why aren’t the big donors doing anything?
Basically we are trying to convince ourselves that a 5 year wait with these coaches (like the pre-NIL days/portal) is how things will improve here at Cal? The cupboard wasn’t as bare as when Dykes took over (this was a 7 win team last year), so why the additional regression?
Because of meathead
Sucking while putting in effort is a very different type of frustration than sucking without putting in the effort. Cal and the fanbase have genuinely invested tons of resources and we're getting...this.
I guess Rivera was willing to let Tosh build his wunderkind staff this year because pressure was so high to hire Tosh in the first place. Next year's staff has to be better curated. I'm personally worried that Tosh is screwing up some extremely basic but critical things behind the scenes due to ineptitude/inexperience that we won't know about until later. I was expecting some struggles in Y1, but not these demonstrable stretches of sheer incompetence.
An extremely sober look at the reality of the rebuild. Tosh needs better luck, better assistants, and better recruiting. If he can learn from the mistakes of this year without the program imploding permanently I still think we could produce something that utilizes his strengths towards success.
Thanks Avi.
I just can’t get past the penalties. It’s a complete embarrassment.
I had to re-read this article several times to try and understand what is being said. Then, it dawned on me. This article has been funded by Tosh Lupoi to try and put the most positive spin on his disastrous tenure as HC. I've been a fan for exactly 46 years. From the first day I walked onto campus as an undergrad until now. I an TIRED of the mediocrity. The there's always next year mentality. The we've got to work harder press conferences, blah, blah, blah As I said ;ast week, low rent schools like Wake Forest and Indiana have transformed without the hype train running every 4 seconds on blast. How many Rose Bowls have StanFURD been in since 2000? Four. Won 2 and lost 2. Cal has not been to a Rose Bowl in the entire time I have been alive.
I used to believe our turn would come, and with it the chance to see the Parade in person. The Game in person. Win or lose, just be there as a proud alum. Better than a National Championship in my opinion. Now, we'll never see a Rose Bowl because of the nonsense our sport is going through. But more importantly, we just don't seem to be able to make intelligent hiring decisions, or have the right process, and people in place to take football to the place we all need it to be.
I live in Northern Utah. These last 2 weeks, with ESPN Gameday at BYU last week and Utah this past Saturday just shows what players who can play, and coaches who can coach means. While I watched UCF beat BYU, I thought, could Cal get a win like that over the number 2 team in the nation? No. We're happy to beat Syracuse!
Personally I don't care who stays or who goes. Constant rebuilding cycles are for losers. All I want is a winning team. One that overachieves or underachieves, but just wins. The low rent schools do it all the time.
I do not think it’s possible that we will see much improvement this season. Tosh was a mistake but unless the big money guys are willing to burn more cash to get rid of him and then hire someone with experience to replace him, we are stuck with the problem.
Make no mistake about it. JKS is gone for next year. For him to risk his NFL future by staying with this coaching staff and supporting cast would be foolish. There are plenty of teams with loads of syndicate cash just waiting to bid on his generational talent as soon as the portal opens, and you can bet his agent is already getting feelers every day. He needs a solid junior year performance before entering the draft to increase his negotiating leverage, and he has the Mendoza template to follow.
I figure we are likely to go 4-8 of maybe 5-7, but I’m not at all sure we can beat Stanford, so we may have that loss, again, as a nice bit of frosting on the shit cake of a season we’ve been served up this year.
Beyond JKS, we will no doubt lose our best players to the portal. So for Tosh and his coaching staff it will be another building year, pretty much from scratch. Maybe we keep some of the better high school recruits, but how you sell them on this program after what they’ve seen this season is beyond me.
Short of replacing Tosh and most of his inexperienced coaching staff, Cal is doomed to more years of a mediocre football program, one that will not be in much of a position to negotiate for a better position when realignment finally rears it’s ugly head in two years. When the Big 10 looks to fill its two open spots, you can bet Cal won’t be in the list to fill one of them.
I said this before and I will say it again. We saw him destroy us on his way out to Washington. That we gave him a chance to kill us for good before realignment is… I don’t have the words. I’m going to get a drink.
Total agreement here. No words.
At the start of the season, our ceiling was 12-0 (and the natty) and our reasonable floor was 3-9 (De La Salle HS could beat Wagner, and it's hard to expect UCLA, Syracuse, Clemson, UNLV, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, SMU, NC State, Virginia, Stanford, and Pittsburgh to all not choke). Right now, we're closer to the floor, likely ending up somewhere between 5-7 and 7-5 depending on who's healthy.
Now, the main problems this season have been poor coaching, poor offensive scheme, and a lack of talent in critical positions. The poor offensive scheme and poor holistic coaching on offense have been resolved with removing Somerville, but not after Somerville cost us 2 games (Clemson and UNLV). Our defense lacks much edge or D-line talent, leaving our defense in permanent panic mode. Our O-line is still Wilcox's with Wilcox's O-line coach, and the failure of the O-line (especially when Bastian Swinney is injured) is what is the main factor of our injury bug, the quick 3-and-outs, the lack of a good run game, and the defense being gassed. When the winter portal opens up, we'll certainly have to buy ourselves a good O-line (maybe even getting a new O-line coach with some of their players), a good backup center, good edge-rushers, and a good D-line.
Getting to 5-7 or 7-5 is way too optimistic. More like 4-8 the way our defense is playing. Giving up 41 and 59 points in the last two games is an absolute 0 in efficiency! Unless the DB's, ILB's, and edge contain players improve dramatically there is no way we can win more than 1 more game.
Buying an O-line is probably harder than any other position, that's why recruiting becomes so important there.
If Tosh can poach a top O-line's coach and peel off a few linemen with them it's ideal.
Sadly, $10 million as a staff budget just isn't enough. Cal needs to get serious about supporting the athletes with a experienced coaching on a Power 4 budget, not a Nordstrom Rack or Kohl's budget.
This is just factually incorrect and about 2 years out of date
Take a look at Tosh's published contract.
You might be thinking about the past. We are at around $35m just for the roster.
Take a look at Tosh's public contract. This is staff, not player NIL.
Thank you Avi for the observations + some optimism. Imo the program is what it is and has been for a long time: no conference winning record since 2009, amazement by the other ACC pundits that VATech lost to Cal (CAL!), and a mid to bottom team in a weak Power conference that gets beat bad by top 25 teams. If we are honest, next year will again bring a lot of portal turmoil, HS decommits and a mediocre record (albeit maybe better than this year), but no major improvements. Then the realignment will move Cal and Furd out of the Power Conferences and into the mid majors (Pac12 or MWC), and we will be competitive in the mid majors - and be sending talent to the Power conferences as Juniors and Seniors. This is not a negative opinion, it is just what our football program is and has been for a long time. I'm fundamentally ok with being a good or excellent team in the PAC 12 or MWC vs a perennial doormat in a Power conference with "wait til next year" aspirations. I know WFC and it's followers don't want this, and I get that, but we need to gauge current facts and look at the long history of mediocrity to see the probable future of Cal football...
Cal has a losing record against the MWC in the last decade-plus, I don't think you will get the results you want in the new Pac-12, particularly given the withdrawal of huge donor support and significant readjustment central campus will make to stadium debt reservice.
So you are saying we will not be competitive in the pac12 / MWC? I get the burden of stadium debt reserve, but there's always Paul McCartney and Grateful Dead cover bands. On donor funds, the estimate was WF raised about 1/3 the NIL Funds Cal raised, and their athletes and team look 2x as good as the GBs. My point is we need achievable targets to hit with our program, and we have been very unsuccessful in Power conferences for a very long time (even God-like Jeff Tedford had only a few really good years), so we should just face facts.
If you move down to a lower league you will get lower media payouts and likely smaller donations and attendance commensurate with the step down in competition/prestige. Cal would just readjust to its new level and would not become a powerhouse in that kind of conference either. You need to actually be good at running a football program.
But what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results. I've been a Cal fan since starting at Haas (then Berkeley Business School) in 1977. We've been doing the same thing for almost 50 years that I've been following the program - with almost always the same mediocrity - and I think it's time to do something else...
With $22.6M on the line and a raging $30M bonfire, Lyons could simply execute Section 4.2 exactly as written. Cal might gain more respect across college football by acting professionally here, which is crucial for recruit retention and protecting our pipeline. There is an obvious operational mismatch, but no one’s life, career, or reputation should be ruined over a skillset mismatch when everyone tried & shares the same goals. First, reassign Ron to a senior campus fundraising/branding role where he excels as a Cal legend, instantly slashing Tosh's resignation penalty by 50%. Simultaneously, bring in a proven, metrics-driven West Coast GM turnaround /daily ops oversight guru. Because this mechanism is built into the contract, it’s a structured transition, not a blindside. Cal can use a standard Duffy administrative reassignment as leverage, or negotiate a heavily discounted mutual settlement for him to leave completely. A negotiated settlement might be the lowest friction, lowest cost option that maximizes reputational savings on both ends. Crucially, this is not firing him. Hypothetically, handling it this way protects how recruits and elite hires respond to the transition. Would have been easier to run a comprehensive HC search from the start.
Amen!!
Rivera would have to leave Cal for this scenario to come into play. Cal and UC Berkeley are the same in this regard, all positions are approved through the UC system
Additionally, your scenario only comes into play if Lupoi resigns and leaves eight figures of buyout on the table, and I'm under no illusion that this scenario will ever occur.
Lupoi can also be reassigned. Here's your employment, what's your hurry?
Just breach the contract. Lupoi would be entitled only to the present value of the future payments and would have an obligation to mitigate. If he got another job, it would credit against the buy out. If he didn't, fine, but he'll have to come out of pocket to pay for the lawsuit. Companies efficiently breach contracts al the time if it is in the best interests to do so.
Sure, we would lose Lupoi recruits (the ones who don't already plan to leave this Chernobyl level meltdown). But there are many talented HCs in FCS or on Power 4 conferences who jump at the chance. Like...Cignetti did.
Others might be worried about long term reputation of doing so, but I’m not. We are staring into the abyss. An efficient breach isn’t out of the question.