I've been reading "Write For California" for at least three years. The last two years there was a constant drumbeat to fire Wilcox, fire Wilcox, fire Wilcox. Last year they fired Wilcox. They brought in Lupoi who did a good job recruiting. But this year's offense has sputtered and sputtered. This whole week the drumbeat was dump Somerville, dump Somerville, dump Somerville! Put in Rolovich, Put in Rolovich, Put in Rolovich. Lupoi puts in Rolovich. Changes up the offense. Let's the players practice that offense for FOUR (4) days. I saw some success. In a meaningless, out of conference game with a brand new offensive scheme, we had the lead in the fourth quarter. Heck, if the kick returner had stayed in bounds on the kickoff return, we might have won the game. The targeting calls were soft. Why no roughing the passer on the play that concussed JKS? Anyway, I know "Doom and Gloom and fire everybody" is the one play that WFC runs best, but can we at least give the new offense a full week to be implemented?
Ha. “Doom and gloom and fire everybody” is hardly unique to WFC, especially in this day and age of college sports. And Wilcox needed to be fired, so there’s that.
This is a passionate fan base and the stakes are incredibly high. Haven’t heard a ton of folks clamoring for Lupoi to be fired, though if this sloppy, undisciplined play continues it’s absolutely on the table.
Jimmy: You are absolutely right that if things continue to slide in the wrong direction then it will be time for a change. What has me so completely baffled about this season is how many smart football minds could do so badly all at once. Lupoi and Rivera are not novices at this business and are well regarded coaches so I don't understand how everything that could go wrong IS going wrong. Is Cal football simply cursed? How could a place with some of the smartest people on the planet produce such consistently bad football and basketball programs? Even the 'Furd has managed to go to and win the Rose Bowl in my lifetime. WTF is going on at Cal? Why can't our alma mater get this thing right? I may have to change my WFC handle from GoldenBear88 to SadFrustratedBear88. Sigh.....
I have various theories, but at the end of the day, we’ve been unable to find the right blend of coaching and personnel, for any number of reasons.
And at the same time, we’ve basically had 12+ years of horrible, and sometimes downright incompetent, leadership at multiple crucial positions at the worse possible time in the college sports industry…this was the wrong time to have fools like Dirks, Carol, Dope Williams, Boob Knowlton, (and extending to MBB, Wyking, Fox),etc. I don’t think the FB HCs have been incompetent, but they haven’t been good enough to overcome the obstacles here….
hmmm, seems to me that the offense ~ in the first half ~ was same old same old. THEN in the second half, with a different QB (and perhaps scheme) Cal actually outscored their opponent. So yes, the new offense/scheme needs to be given time.
Question is, with the new personnel in the 2nd half did we view a glimpse of it?
Sure but we are the clock on multiple fronts (with recruits who are each loss as a sign to go elsewhere, with P4 powers that be who may increasingly see Cal as not worth being included in realignment, with fans who started the season with high hopes and now are increasingly opting out of attending games, and with donors who ponied up millions).
We live in an era where you can buy the best talent on the field and in coaching and therefore programs have high expectations to deliver quickly. Why should Cal (with its deep resources) be any different?
Expectations that are sky high often lead to extreme disappointment if not met, or only partially fulfilled. All of us who ramped up the hype are experiencing that terrible deflated feeling now.
We expected our inexperienced staff to proceed from crawling/toddling to flat out sprinting in just a few weeks. Silly us.
If we expected a Cigneti type turn around, we should have grabbed Chesney from JMU before a school down south got him.
Those guys developed their chops out of the limelight and glare of humongous expectations. We’ve got what we’ve got. Let’s support the team. They are doing their best (which isn’t very good to be sure), so let’s cheer like we love Cal and hope the coaches/players who need to improve can do so soon.
That’s my $.02 worth. (You get what you pay for…or less.)
No one ever expected that with better talent than Wilcox had that we would be playing this poorly and looking at a record that brings the word failure to mind. We fired Wilcox to win more games. We were led to believe that our new coach and his wunderkind rookie OC along with better talen t would lead us to glory this year. Expectations are sky high because there were statements made that led us to believe that we might be a 10 win team and might even have a chance at the ACC title. We were told to fill the stadium, twice now, to back our team that was on the edge of breaking through.
Instead, from one week to the next what we have seen on the field is nothing short of a mess. My concern is that we are deluding ourselves. I wasn't one of those who wanted to hire Tosh, in fact I warned people on this site about him. But trying to be a bigger man, I said people can change and I threw my support behind Tosh when he was hired. I still want him to succeed. I am impressed with the culture he wants to build. I know he knows the X's and O's. What I worry about is his management ability.
Remember, Saban told him after his one year stint as DC at Bama that he needed to move on and he went to the NFL as a DL coach. His coordinator choices reflect a huge lack of experience.
If we fired Wilcox so that we could field a more successful team this year, then we failed miserably. It's hard to imagine us being much better next year, even with more talent. If we really want to create a top tier program at CAL, we need to be ready to make some very hard decisions at the end of this season, absent a remarkable turnaround.
I feel like we fired the CEO of a Fortune 100 company who had a steady hand at the helm, ensured there were no big revenue losses but just didn't grow the company fast enough. Then he's replace him with a golden tongued cowboy and the revenues implode. What do you do?
In closing, I wish Tosh well, but I think he needs to start at a smaller school, succeed and do it again at a larger program before jumping in at this level. That's my 2 cents.
That was worth a helluva lot more than two cents. Though we've crossed swords before I shared your strong apprehension about Tosh and once he was hired I too did a 180. I believed -- as did so many other Bear fans desperate for on-field success. Despite all my experience with California football, I've still felt punched in the gut by this season so far. There is seemingly no limit to the ways Cal football can hurt you.
I didn’t love the Tosh hire., though we absolutely needed to move on from Wilcox. I was certainly excited by the NIL financial commitment that accompanied the Tosh hire tho….whether we get the same donor support with a different HC hire is definitely a legit question tho.
The Somerville hire as a first time OC was inexcusable tho, and concerns over the OL remained. Both have totally bitten them. Strong, Hendricks and Dorian Thomas being paid a lot of money to give them basically nothing does not help either.
I'm not ready, yet, to rid of Tosh. He just needs to be kept in his lane by the GM. Changes made at the OC and OL coaching need to be made immediately, does RR have the balls to make them.
So following the capitalist tradition, what we need now after running the program into the ground is to pivot and sell it as an AI football program. No more OC, just a bot designing and calling the offense.
I too was not happy with the hiring of Lupoi. I still ask why was the job closed to any one but Lupoi in the hiring process. There were many proven HEAD coaches who were available. Chesney who is now the head coach at UCLA is one example. So many called for the firing of Wilcox but let me remind people that he always won 6 or more games post Covid and previous to Covid. He hired proven offensive coordinators and last year's one did a great job with JKS.
Tosh needs to take much of the blame as he hyped this team incessantly despite knowing that there would be minimal, if any improvement, in the OL, and that he brought in a befy of inexperienced coaches. I'm still hopeful that things can turn around, though the odds seem long.
This is my take as a Bear fan for sixty-four years. This season is so sadly typical of the experience of being a long-time Cal football fan. It is the Groundhog Day of sports fandom.
He didn't want a coach that had already built a program, he wanted a coach he could mold. And to make sure nothing got in his way, he gleefully allowed his chosen one to value supposed recruiting chops over program building experience and developmental coaching talent (which he would supply).
Rivera assumed that all his NFL experience, a dynamic coach and a boatload of money was all that was needed to reach "next level."
It will be interesting to see if Ron takes ownership of this mess his ego created - and if/when he is going to do anything about it.
I'd add, though, thar one issue with Tosh is his refusal to surround himself with more experience - he's a first time head coach surrounded by mostly inexperienced coordinators, which seems like an obvious error.
That, too, falls on Rivera. I understand the attractiveness of Tosh as a coach - I bought into the hype myself. But you'd think Ron would have understood the need to pair the guy with some proven veterans to flesh out the rest of his team and provide some stability. To me, that's the baffling error.
Well Wilcox surrounded himself with former HC guys in Tim DeRuyter and Beau Baldwin. DeRuyter was great; Beau disappointed....and so did Musgrave. So it's not just experience...
Sure, true. I'm not suggesting these are simple rules.
I'm simply pointing out that Tosh, as an inexperienced HC, is leading a staff of inexperienced coordinators and if we're scratching our heads looking for weak spots, it feels like a valid theory.
They certainly seem like a badly coached team with lousy playcalling, so.
welp, I liked your comment but don't totally agree with it. The POWER alum hired Tosh, not RR. So we agree on this point (RR responsible) for different reasons.
Not sure it's clear that he was Rivera's first choice. There's some scuttlebutt that Tosh got hired primarily because he had the best donor support and therefore could raise the most money, and Rivera therefore kind of had to go with him. In effect, that would mean that the big donors chose Tosh.
Not sure what's true, but I would be careful about assigning blame without knowing everything.
After hiring him, the 2nd most critical decision to be made was that of the head coach. And Ron, who's name is on the line, let boosters shove that decision down his throat that he didn't agree with?
If that's truly what happened, the Chancellor should ask for his resignation this afternoon.
Otherwise, Ron needs to stand up and own the decision. Because however he got there,
I mean, all big programs have to answer to their boosters. Cal is a bit new to it because they haven’t cared and/or been given the voice to the same degree they are now. It’s getting bumpy!
To be clear, I think it’s better to have engaged boosters who care about winning as opposed to the old disengaged administration. And it s better to have Rivera here than Knowlton. But he and Cal have to learn how to handle these folks too.
Fans were ready to support this team as long as they produced a good product which they were given all the resources necessary to do. Most fans, scarred by decades of malaise and mediocrity, don't have the stomach to support the team through yet another rebuild. This ineptitude may finally be the transition to mid-major status we've all feared could happen. On one hand, we'd probably have a better chance to actually succeed in a mid-major conference, on the other hand the potential we all see for Cal football to excel as a P4 team will not be realized. If I'm Cal and I want to remain a P4 team with realignment looming, I'm reorganizing the coaching staff immediately and making major personnel changes, not waiting until next year. If Lupoi is part of the problem and his buyout is unaffordable or you want to give him more time, and he's not willing to make immediate changes to the coaching staff he selected, then RR needs to intervene and make those decisions for him. I like Hutchings, Somerville is horrible, whoever is coaching OL and Special teams needs to step aside. And on the OL in particular I'd start giving opportunities to second string and/or freshmen, they can't be worse than the now-senior OLs that have been starting.
BerkeleyBear: To quote Dieter Kurtenbach of the San Jose Mercury News; "If you want the spotlight, then you had better be ready to put on a show." I might add, "show, not a shit-show." To be perfectly honest, I think that the whole get into the Big-10 during the next realignment is pure fantasy. Not only do we have a product that is pretty close to unwatchable, but the Big Ten is going to have TWO openings, which the follwoing three teams will be fighting for: Notre Dame, North Carolina or Miami. Notre Dame will probably say no but I don't see North Carolina or Miami turning down Big Ten bucks to stay in the ACC. These teams would also be desirable from a TV market standpoint since the Big Ten doesn't have any teams in the Florida/Miami or North Carolina/Charlotte markets. The Big Ten might be more interested if both Cal and Stanfurd were competitive but both programs are currently just a hot mess. Football Gods, please pray for us and don't send us to the Big Sky three years from now.
Toolhandy: You are probably right and we are all soon going to see how Oregon State and Washington State fans felt three years ago. Of course, I could be wrong and we just stay in the ACC for the foreseeable future and retain our status as a low to middling status football program with stellar academics.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for my overly optimistic pre-season prediction of 4 wins. We now have enough data to determine that there will be no turnaround. This was the season where we had to make the case for Cal remaining a P4 program. We had to win to keep current recruits, attract better ones, and keep the NIL train running. Who would throw money at this program now? We and our neighbors across bay are certain to be relegated in the coming realignment. We were headed that way anyway, so the admin had to take a big swing and chose to hire a GM. Unfortunately, like USC hiring Lynn Swan as AD, prioritizing school ties over having the right experience has produced this mess. Just hoping the Pac-12 will take us back.
Expectations based on hype are not what has gotten here. The root cause, unfortunately, rests with RR.
For now, I am OK with Tosh as HC. But he must stay in his lane, which is recruiting. Where things went tits up was the lack of supervision by RR on Tosh’s hires. As I’ve stated before, I don’t have a problem with hiring young coaches EXCEPT on the offensive side of the ball. Let’s be clear, this is the second consecutive HC hire whose orientation is defense. That went very poorly ~ for the offense ~ during Wilcox’s tenure. That Cal – specifically RR – did not mandate the best OC available in the market (there were several) lacks critical thinking. A seasoned successful college OC may have brought in a different approach/scheme that would suit student-athletes. Gents, we tried the pro-offense BS with Musgrave just a few years ago; recognizing failure wasn’t that long ago.
Y’all know we have 3 former OC on staff? I don’t care, much less will I know (behind closed doors), what Cal does next but either by committee of these 3 or 2 or 1, make the change. Perhaps we saw glimpses of it in the second half. Although I think the change in personnel had much to do with it…tbd. Next game, YES, start QB2. Let JKS see the game from a different perspective.
Meanwhile, the secondary coaches need to phone Jack Clark and get tackling lessons from the rugby team.
Discipline: First, is this the worst disciplined team in my 40+ years of fandom, fucking hell. Totally unacceptable and frankly an embarrassment to my diploma.
Let Tosh know he is in charge of recruitment and EVEN in-game decisions. All hiring decisions must be approved by RR. Tosh will recruit 4/5* players. Let’s get the right coaching staff in place in-season (NOW) and strengthened at the end of the season.
I'm not one to catastrophize, which is why it feels strange to do so as a Cal fan. We're supposed to be accustomed to perpetual and predictable failure: we've watched the team wallow in mediocrity for the greater part of decades.
But alas, I'm catastrophizing.
You've outlined the warning signs and red flags pretty clearly here - indications, that is, that the issues with the Bears don't seem like merely early season jitters, a coach getting warmed up, squads taking time to gel or new schemes being tested. Nor does it feel like the usual Cal ailment of simply not possessing quite enough talent on the field to execute reliably.
The problems look weird, deep, and pervasive. Things you'd have expected to ease up or iron out have gotten worse. New, ugly issues arise when another calms.
Basically, there's a whiff of disaster about the Bears right now... the sense that Tosh was a huge mistake.
I don’t have the words. I’m embarrassed for this team and for myself. I’ve never felt embarrassed for our team. But I am now.
Fans are caught in a tough place. We want to support the team but don’t want stupid Tosh to take that as a sign that we are supporting his boneheaded decisions. At the same time, we don’t want to not show up either.
For now, I’m leaning towards disengagement. As Tosh told me, we have two years. Well, after those two years, we will be playing Harvard, Oregon State and Nevada regularly and Tosh will be long gone. He will then have the infamy of destroying our program twice. Once to prevent us from our ascent during the Tedford years, and then to finish us off.
At this point, my only hope is that we don't stick with the Tosh mistake for too long like we did with Holmoe or Wilcox. Hit eject as soon as possible and move on.
Sy: Move on to whom? What hot coaching prospects are available and willing to come to Berkeley? Will the football gods deliver the next Curt Cignetti to us? Right now it looks like our sister school down south has nailed that particular miracle. I really hope that Oregon smashes them next week.
I couldn't possibly answer that. Run a real search process, get input from other coaches, and whittle it down to a list of interviews. Honestly, I'm not sure we've done this since Tedford (maybe Dykes too).
I wonder what Tim Plough up at Davis has done the past three years? Let's see: 2024 11-3, 2025, 9-4, this season, 3-1. He's young (41) , offensively minded, understands the UC system generally and was a TE coach at Cal. Of course it'd be great if Tosh gets this dumpster fire in front of a clown house under control, but there are other young coaches that Cal might tap into as well. I agree with the point that setting expectations sky high wasn't wise. If he'd just had them on a trajectory of improvement, built the culture (and I think he's very good at this) and had his great rep as a recruiter, I think a lot of people would have been content, for a while anyway. Lupoi reminds me of this subset of Cal coaches over the years who were viewed on the front end of things as being the newest football messiah, and then didn't work out in spite of the hype: Theder, Mouse Davis, Gilbertson, and kind of a different duck....Holmoe. Watching the Bears this season, what strikes me is just how fundamentally terrible they are so often, leaving out of it the usual propensity for just having to do epically stupid things that draw penalties, but that's not new. So we've all seen this rodeo before. Anyway, if they start looking, I'd think Plough might be worth investigating.
Good comments. And while I was part of the group of fans tricked into sky high expectations, improvement here meant the floor was 8 wins. That was the minimum. That is why this is such a disaster of a season.
Those expectations aren't really in line with our NIL, though. Our roster this year is still in the $20M-$25M range, which is still considered mediocre now that revenue sharing is active. It's not till next season that we have our full NIL at our disposal.
What's the most surprising about this Is how much of a dumpster fire this is that the consensus has landed so quickly. In early Sonny Dykes / Wilcox era, there were Blues on both sides of the fence. Signs of goodness, signs of improvement, give them time. Even if Wilcox had a ceiling, it took the base a while to get there because in fact there was something coherent.
Thx Avi for a harsh but accurate analysis of the current Cal program and its obvious coaching inadequacies. We are now rated above only Furd and BC in the ACC - with a forecasted 4-8 record. In hindsight, all the hand wringing over 1st time HC, OC and DC was perfectly warranted. I'm with others in now being willing to check the box scores after the games, but not much more. Maybe RR will find a proven HC next year, as even the UNLV coaching staff was superior to the GBs yesterday...
Still curious how the UHNW booster syndicate who architected “the RR/TL Experiment” was effectively able to force a high beta highly speculative management choice onto the org & engineer a totally mostly unhedged risk exposure treating a premier athletic asset like a speculative seed start up, neglecting basic operational due diligence & putting small donors who injected their hard earned capital into the Fight for California Initiative probably under the assumption they were funding a stabilized, institutional growth plan (not subsidizing an unhedged bet by a small group of whales) into the same risk profile as the wealthy speculators.
I've been reading "Write For California" for at least three years. The last two years there was a constant drumbeat to fire Wilcox, fire Wilcox, fire Wilcox. Last year they fired Wilcox. They brought in Lupoi who did a good job recruiting. But this year's offense has sputtered and sputtered. This whole week the drumbeat was dump Somerville, dump Somerville, dump Somerville! Put in Rolovich, Put in Rolovich, Put in Rolovich. Lupoi puts in Rolovich. Changes up the offense. Let's the players practice that offense for FOUR (4) days. I saw some success. In a meaningless, out of conference game with a brand new offensive scheme, we had the lead in the fourth quarter. Heck, if the kick returner had stayed in bounds on the kickoff return, we might have won the game. The targeting calls were soft. Why no roughing the passer on the play that concussed JKS? Anyway, I know "Doom and Gloom and fire everybody" is the one play that WFC runs best, but can we at least give the new offense a full week to be implemented?
Ha. “Doom and gloom and fire everybody” is hardly unique to WFC, especially in this day and age of college sports. And Wilcox needed to be fired, so there’s that.
This is a passionate fan base and the stakes are incredibly high. Haven’t heard a ton of folks clamoring for Lupoi to be fired, though if this sloppy, undisciplined play continues it’s absolutely on the table.
Jimmy: You are absolutely right that if things continue to slide in the wrong direction then it will be time for a change. What has me so completely baffled about this season is how many smart football minds could do so badly all at once. Lupoi and Rivera are not novices at this business and are well regarded coaches so I don't understand how everything that could go wrong IS going wrong. Is Cal football simply cursed? How could a place with some of the smartest people on the planet produce such consistently bad football and basketball programs? Even the 'Furd has managed to go to and win the Rose Bowl in my lifetime. WTF is going on at Cal? Why can't our alma mater get this thing right? I may have to change my WFC handle from GoldenBear88 to SadFrustratedBear88. Sigh.....
That’s the $64K question, GB88.
I have various theories, but at the end of the day, we’ve been unable to find the right blend of coaching and personnel, for any number of reasons.
And at the same time, we’ve basically had 12+ years of horrible, and sometimes downright incompetent, leadership at multiple crucial positions at the worse possible time in the college sports industry…this was the wrong time to have fools like Dirks, Carol, Dope Williams, Boob Knowlton, (and extending to MBB, Wyking, Fox),etc. I don’t think the FB HCs have been incompetent, but they haven’t been good enough to overcome the obstacles here….
hmmm, seems to me that the offense ~ in the first half ~ was same old same old. THEN in the second half, with a different QB (and perhaps scheme) Cal actually outscored their opponent. So yes, the new offense/scheme needs to be given time.
Question is, with the new personnel in the 2nd half did we view a glimpse of it?
FTR, I thought Niles Davis did stay inbounds on that kick return. Unfortunately it wasn’t reviewable. That could have changed the game right there.
Sure but we are the clock on multiple fronts (with recruits who are each loss as a sign to go elsewhere, with P4 powers that be who may increasingly see Cal as not worth being included in realignment, with fans who started the season with high hopes and now are increasingly opting out of attending games, and with donors who ponied up millions).
We live in an era where you can buy the best talent on the field and in coaching and therefore programs have high expectations to deliver quickly. Why should Cal (with its deep resources) be any different?
well observed...well observed
Expectations that are sky high often lead to extreme disappointment if not met, or only partially fulfilled. All of us who ramped up the hype are experiencing that terrible deflated feeling now.
We expected our inexperienced staff to proceed from crawling/toddling to flat out sprinting in just a few weeks. Silly us.
If we expected a Cigneti type turn around, we should have grabbed Chesney from JMU before a school down south got him.
Those guys developed their chops out of the limelight and glare of humongous expectations. We’ve got what we’ve got. Let’s support the team. They are doing their best (which isn’t very good to be sure), so let’s cheer like we love Cal and hope the coaches/players who need to improve can do so soon.
That’s my $.02 worth. (You get what you pay for…or less.)
Your welcome.
No one ever expected that with better talent than Wilcox had that we would be playing this poorly and looking at a record that brings the word failure to mind. We fired Wilcox to win more games. We were led to believe that our new coach and his wunderkind rookie OC along with better talen t would lead us to glory this year. Expectations are sky high because there were statements made that led us to believe that we might be a 10 win team and might even have a chance at the ACC title. We were told to fill the stadium, twice now, to back our team that was on the edge of breaking through.
Instead, from one week to the next what we have seen on the field is nothing short of a mess. My concern is that we are deluding ourselves. I wasn't one of those who wanted to hire Tosh, in fact I warned people on this site about him. But trying to be a bigger man, I said people can change and I threw my support behind Tosh when he was hired. I still want him to succeed. I am impressed with the culture he wants to build. I know he knows the X's and O's. What I worry about is his management ability.
Remember, Saban told him after his one year stint as DC at Bama that he needed to move on and he went to the NFL as a DL coach. His coordinator choices reflect a huge lack of experience.
If we fired Wilcox so that we could field a more successful team this year, then we failed miserably. It's hard to imagine us being much better next year, even with more talent. If we really want to create a top tier program at CAL, we need to be ready to make some very hard decisions at the end of this season, absent a remarkable turnaround.
I feel like we fired the CEO of a Fortune 100 company who had a steady hand at the helm, ensured there were no big revenue losses but just didn't grow the company fast enough. Then he's replace him with a golden tongued cowboy and the revenues implode. What do you do?
In closing, I wish Tosh well, but I think he needs to start at a smaller school, succeed and do it again at a larger program before jumping in at this level. That's my 2 cents.
That was worth a helluva lot more than two cents. Though we've crossed swords before I shared your strong apprehension about Tosh and once he was hired I too did a 180. I believed -- as did so many other Bear fans desperate for on-field success. Despite all my experience with California football, I've still felt punched in the gut by this season so far. There is seemingly no limit to the ways Cal football can hurt you.
I didn’t love the Tosh hire., though we absolutely needed to move on from Wilcox. I was certainly excited by the NIL financial commitment that accompanied the Tosh hire tho….whether we get the same donor support with a different HC hire is definitely a legit question tho.
The Somerville hire as a first time OC was inexcusable tho, and concerns over the OL remained. Both have totally bitten them. Strong, Hendricks and Dorian Thomas being paid a lot of money to give them basically nothing does not help either.
I'm not ready, yet, to rid of Tosh. He just needs to be kept in his lane by the GM. Changes made at the OC and OL coaching need to be made immediately, does RR have the balls to make them.
Tosh is an asset for Cal, if harnessed properly.
Golden tongued cowboy is a great mental image.
So following the capitalist tradition, what we need now after running the program into the ground is to pivot and sell it as an AI football program. No more OC, just a bot designing and calling the offense.
That would be a very Cal/Bay Area thing to do.
I too was not happy with the hiring of Lupoi. I still ask why was the job closed to any one but Lupoi in the hiring process. There were many proven HEAD coaches who were available. Chesney who is now the head coach at UCLA is one example. So many called for the firing of Wilcox but let me remind people that he always won 6 or more games post Covid and previous to Covid. He hired proven offensive coordinators and last year's one did a great job with JKS.
Tosh needs to take much of the blame as he hyped this team incessantly despite knowing that there would be minimal, if any improvement, in the OL, and that he brought in a befy of inexperienced coaches. I'm still hopeful that things can turn around, though the odds seem long.
But we can pay for better, so why stick around with mediocrity?
You're
Ha ha
1000% with you...you exceeded your declared value!
From the perspective of almost 70 years of watching the bears and hoping for something better, all I can say is Welcome to Cal Football!
This is my take as a Bear fan for sixty-four years. This season is so sadly typical of the experience of being a long-time Cal football fan. It is the Groundhog Day of sports fandom.
Let's put this blame where it belongs.
Ron Rivera.
He didn't want a coach that had already built a program, he wanted a coach he could mold. And to make sure nothing got in his way, he gleefully allowed his chosen one to value supposed recruiting chops over program building experience and developmental coaching talent (which he would supply).
Rivera assumed that all his NFL experience, a dynamic coach and a boatload of money was all that was needed to reach "next level."
It will be interesting to see if Ron takes ownership of this mess his ego created - and if/when he is going to do anything about it.
All good points.
I'd add, though, thar one issue with Tosh is his refusal to surround himself with more experience - he's a first time head coach surrounded by mostly inexperienced coordinators, which seems like an obvious error.
That, too, falls on Rivera. I understand the attractiveness of Tosh as a coach - I bought into the hype myself. But you'd think Ron would have understood the need to pair the guy with some proven veterans to flesh out the rest of his team and provide some stability. To me, that's the baffling error.
Well Wilcox surrounded himself with former HC guys in Tim DeRuyter and Beau Baldwin. DeRuyter was great; Beau disappointed....and so did Musgrave. So it's not just experience...
Sure, true. I'm not suggesting these are simple rules.
I'm simply pointing out that Tosh, as an inexperienced HC, is leading a staff of inexperienced coordinators and if we're scratching our heads looking for weak spots, it feels like a valid theory.
They certainly seem like a badly coached team with lousy playcalling, so.
No doubt.
welp, I liked your comment but don't totally agree with it. The POWER alum hired Tosh, not RR. So we agree on this point (RR responsible) for different reasons.
Not sure it's clear that he was Rivera's first choice. There's some scuttlebutt that Tosh got hired primarily because he had the best donor support and therefore could raise the most money, and Rivera therefore kind of had to go with him. In effect, that would mean that the big donors chose Tosh.
Not sure what's true, but I would be careful about assigning blame without knowing everything.
Is Ron in charge of the football program, or not?
After hiring him, the 2nd most critical decision to be made was that of the head coach. And Ron, who's name is on the line, let boosters shove that decision down his throat that he didn't agree with?
If that's truly what happened, the Chancellor should ask for his resignation this afternoon.
Otherwise, Ron needs to stand up and own the decision. Because however he got there,
he got there.
I mean, all big programs have to answer to their boosters. Cal is a bit new to it because they haven’t cared and/or been given the voice to the same degree they are now. It’s getting bumpy!
To be clear, I think it’s better to have engaged boosters who care about winning as opposed to the old disengaged administration. And it s better to have Rivera here than Knowlton. But he and Cal have to learn how to handle these folks too.
YES!!!
You are so right!!!
Fans were ready to support this team as long as they produced a good product which they were given all the resources necessary to do. Most fans, scarred by decades of malaise and mediocrity, don't have the stomach to support the team through yet another rebuild. This ineptitude may finally be the transition to mid-major status we've all feared could happen. On one hand, we'd probably have a better chance to actually succeed in a mid-major conference, on the other hand the potential we all see for Cal football to excel as a P4 team will not be realized. If I'm Cal and I want to remain a P4 team with realignment looming, I'm reorganizing the coaching staff immediately and making major personnel changes, not waiting until next year. If Lupoi is part of the problem and his buyout is unaffordable or you want to give him more time, and he's not willing to make immediate changes to the coaching staff he selected, then RR needs to intervene and make those decisions for him. I like Hutchings, Somerville is horrible, whoever is coaching OL and Special teams needs to step aside. And on the OL in particular I'd start giving opportunities to second string and/or freshmen, they can't be worse than the now-senior OLs that have been starting.
BerkeleyBear: To quote Dieter Kurtenbach of the San Jose Mercury News; "If you want the spotlight, then you had better be ready to put on a show." I might add, "show, not a shit-show." To be perfectly honest, I think that the whole get into the Big-10 during the next realignment is pure fantasy. Not only do we have a product that is pretty close to unwatchable, but the Big Ten is going to have TWO openings, which the follwoing three teams will be fighting for: Notre Dame, North Carolina or Miami. Notre Dame will probably say no but I don't see North Carolina or Miami turning down Big Ten bucks to stay in the ACC. These teams would also be desirable from a TV market standpoint since the Big Ten doesn't have any teams in the Florida/Miami or North Carolina/Charlotte markets. The Big Ten might be more interested if both Cal and Stanfurd were competitive but both programs are currently just a hot mess. Football Gods, please pray for us and don't send us to the Big Sky three years from now.
We'll probably be put in the "new" Pac12. Which is where we sadly belong
Toolhandy: You are probably right and we are all soon going to see how Oregon State and Washington State fans felt three years ago. Of course, I could be wrong and we just stay in the ACC for the foreseeable future and retain our status as a low to middling status football program with stellar academics.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for my overly optimistic pre-season prediction of 4 wins. We now have enough data to determine that there will be no turnaround. This was the season where we had to make the case for Cal remaining a P4 program. We had to win to keep current recruits, attract better ones, and keep the NIL train running. Who would throw money at this program now? We and our neighbors across bay are certain to be relegated in the coming realignment. We were headed that way anyway, so the admin had to take a big swing and chose to hire a GM. Unfortunately, like USC hiring Lynn Swan as AD, prioritizing school ties over having the right experience has produced this mess. Just hoping the Pac-12 will take us back.
Expectations based on hype are not what has gotten here. The root cause, unfortunately, rests with RR.
For now, I am OK with Tosh as HC. But he must stay in his lane, which is recruiting. Where things went tits up was the lack of supervision by RR on Tosh’s hires. As I’ve stated before, I don’t have a problem with hiring young coaches EXCEPT on the offensive side of the ball. Let’s be clear, this is the second consecutive HC hire whose orientation is defense. That went very poorly ~ for the offense ~ during Wilcox’s tenure. That Cal – specifically RR – did not mandate the best OC available in the market (there were several) lacks critical thinking. A seasoned successful college OC may have brought in a different approach/scheme that would suit student-athletes. Gents, we tried the pro-offense BS with Musgrave just a few years ago; recognizing failure wasn’t that long ago.
Y’all know we have 3 former OC on staff? I don’t care, much less will I know (behind closed doors), what Cal does next but either by committee of these 3 or 2 or 1, make the change. Perhaps we saw glimpses of it in the second half. Although I think the change in personnel had much to do with it…tbd. Next game, YES, start QB2. Let JKS see the game from a different perspective.
Meanwhile, the secondary coaches need to phone Jack Clark and get tackling lessons from the rugby team.
Discipline: First, is this the worst disciplined team in my 40+ years of fandom, fucking hell. Totally unacceptable and frankly an embarrassment to my diploma.
Let Tosh know he is in charge of recruitment and EVEN in-game decisions. All hiring decisions must be approved by RR. Tosh will recruit 4/5* players. Let’s get the right coaching staff in place in-season (NOW) and strengthened at the end of the season.
Go Bears!!
Nailed it.
I'm not one to catastrophize, which is why it feels strange to do so as a Cal fan. We're supposed to be accustomed to perpetual and predictable failure: we've watched the team wallow in mediocrity for the greater part of decades.
But alas, I'm catastrophizing.
You've outlined the warning signs and red flags pretty clearly here - indications, that is, that the issues with the Bears don't seem like merely early season jitters, a coach getting warmed up, squads taking time to gel or new schemes being tested. Nor does it feel like the usual Cal ailment of simply not possessing quite enough talent on the field to execute reliably.
The problems look weird, deep, and pervasive. Things you'd have expected to ease up or iron out have gotten worse. New, ugly issues arise when another calms.
Basically, there's a whiff of disaster about the Bears right now... the sense that Tosh was a huge mistake.
Like I said, I'm fully catastrophizing. 😐
“Catastrophizing!” WOW. Clearly a Cal alum!
I'll double dog catastrophisize you!
I see your catastrophize and raise you one hyperbolize!
lol
I don’t have the words. I’m embarrassed for this team and for myself. I’ve never felt embarrassed for our team. But I am now.
Fans are caught in a tough place. We want to support the team but don’t want stupid Tosh to take that as a sign that we are supporting his boneheaded decisions. At the same time, we don’t want to not show up either.
For now, I’m leaning towards disengagement. As Tosh told me, we have two years. Well, after those two years, we will be playing Harvard, Oregon State and Nevada regularly and Tosh will be long gone. He will then have the infamy of destroying our program twice. Once to prevent us from our ascent during the Tedford years, and then to finish us off.
Oof!
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
At this point, my only hope is that we don't stick with the Tosh mistake for too long like we did with Holmoe or Wilcox. Hit eject as soon as possible and move on.
Sy: Move on to whom? What hot coaching prospects are available and willing to come to Berkeley? Will the football gods deliver the next Curt Cignetti to us? Right now it looks like our sister school down south has nailed that particular miracle. I really hope that Oregon smashes them next week.
I couldn't possibly answer that. Run a real search process, get input from other coaches, and whittle it down to a list of interviews. Honestly, I'm not sure we've done this since Tedford (maybe Dykes too).
I wonder what Tim Plough up at Davis has done the past three years? Let's see: 2024 11-3, 2025, 9-4, this season, 3-1. He's young (41) , offensively minded, understands the UC system generally and was a TE coach at Cal. Of course it'd be great if Tosh gets this dumpster fire in front of a clown house under control, but there are other young coaches that Cal might tap into as well. I agree with the point that setting expectations sky high wasn't wise. If he'd just had them on a trajectory of improvement, built the culture (and I think he's very good at this) and had his great rep as a recruiter, I think a lot of people would have been content, for a while anyway. Lupoi reminds me of this subset of Cal coaches over the years who were viewed on the front end of things as being the newest football messiah, and then didn't work out in spite of the hype: Theder, Mouse Davis, Gilbertson, and kind of a different duck....Holmoe. Watching the Bears this season, what strikes me is just how fundamentally terrible they are so often, leaving out of it the usual propensity for just having to do epically stupid things that draw penalties, but that's not new. So we've all seen this rodeo before. Anyway, if they start looking, I'd think Plough might be worth investigating.
Davis Webb, a Cal former QB, is the OC for theDenver Broncos. So he knows offense. Maybe the next Cal HEAD COACH!
Good comments. And while I was part of the group of fans tricked into sky high expectations, improvement here meant the floor was 8 wins. That was the minimum. That is why this is such a disaster of a season.
Those expectations aren't really in line with our NIL, though. Our roster this year is still in the $20M-$25M range, which is still considered mediocre now that revenue sharing is active. It's not till next season that we have our full NIL at our disposal.
What's the most surprising about this Is how much of a dumpster fire this is that the consensus has landed so quickly. In early Sonny Dykes / Wilcox era, there were Blues on both sides of the fence. Signs of goodness, signs of improvement, give them time. Even if Wilcox had a ceiling, it took the base a while to get there because in fact there was something coherent.
Thx Avi for a harsh but accurate analysis of the current Cal program and its obvious coaching inadequacies. We are now rated above only Furd and BC in the ACC - with a forecasted 4-8 record. In hindsight, all the hand wringing over 1st time HC, OC and DC was perfectly warranted. I'm with others in now being willing to check the box scores after the games, but not much more. Maybe RR will find a proven HC next year, as even the UNLV coaching staff was superior to the GBs yesterday...
Hire Dan Mullen!!!
Still curious how the UHNW booster syndicate who architected “the RR/TL Experiment” was effectively able to force a high beta highly speculative management choice onto the org & engineer a totally mostly unhedged risk exposure treating a premier athletic asset like a speculative seed start up, neglecting basic operational due diligence & putting small donors who injected their hard earned capital into the Fight for California Initiative probably under the assumption they were funding a stabilized, institutional growth plan (not subsidizing an unhedged bet by a small group of whales) into the same risk profile as the wealthy speculators.
Ha ha! Why I prefer mutual funds….
Hopes and dreams
If Lupoi wants to go down with the Somerville ship then he should stick with him as OC.
Yes - this