What Did Cal Head Coach Justin Wilcox Say to the Student Section at the San Diego State Game?
The Golden Bears received two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties after referees repeatedly warned Cal fans about their behavior.
You have got to love college football.
If you watched the Cal v. San Diego State college football game Saturday night, you might have wondered why so many penalties were called, 27 to be exact. Some flags were head-scratchers, including a targeting call on defensive back Craig Woodson in the first quarter, but two in the third quarter stood out in particular.
Cal received two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in the third quarter, prompting head coach Justin Wilcox to walk across the field to address the Cal student section directly.
“Cal fans, we love you, but stop throwing the cards on the field,” Coach Wilcox said, speaking into the referee’s microphone. “That’s two 15-yard penalties. Please stop throwing the cards on the field.”
California head coach Justin Wilcox’s pleas to the students came after the referees and stadium play-by-play announcer repeatedly asked fans to stop throwing items onto the field. The officiating crew warned the 35,197 fans at California Memorial Stadium four times to the same effect in the first half alone.
The fifth and sixth times proved to be too much for the Mountain West Conference officiating crew.
Unlike in previous seasons, the home and visiting teams’ sidelines had been swapped. Cal’s bench now sits on the stadium’s west side, and the visiting team is directly in front of the Cal student section. San Diego State’s close proximity may have made them easy targets and contributed to the issue.
“Our students were out in force... We love them out there,” Coach Wilcox told reporters in the post-game press conference. “We want them right there behind the opposing team’s sidelines as that could be a great advantage for us, but we got to make sure we don’t get penalties because we got two of them.”
The first 15-yard penalty came in the third quarter after Kadarius Calloway’s seven-yard rushing touchdown, which brought the score to 14-3 in Cal’s favor. After the successful point-after kick and the media timeout, the referees threw the flag, applying the penalty on the subsequent kickoff.
On the next drive, San Diego State got the ball on its 18-yard line and ran it four yards down the middle. Aztec offensive lineman Brayden Bryant was injured on the play, prompting an injury timeout. Then, the referees called another unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the Bears. The flag turned a second-and-six for the Aztecs into an automatic first down from their 37. Fortunately for Cal, San Diego State’s drive soon sputtered out.
Despite the penalties, Coach Wilcox told reporters after the game that he did not want the UC Rally Committee to stop organizing its halftime card stunts. The UC Rally Committee is widely credited for starting the tradition of planning and coordinating the raising of cards by fans to create a larger image during a college football game. The practice began in 1910 at the Big Game between Cal and Stanford and has continued since.
“We’ll tell them how much we appreciate them, but also, we just have to be at the game and make a great environment the right way. So when I kind of talk about [how] we’ve got to learn how to win, that’s everybody. It’s the entire school. It’s football [the team]. It’s all of us, and just doing little things better more consistently,” Coach Wilcox continued.
Cal won the game 31-10 and is now 3-0 for the first time since 2019. The Bears will travel to Tallahassee, Fla., next week to start Atlantic Coast Conference league play against the Florida State Seminoles (0-3) in its inaugural season as an ACC member. Next Saturday’s match-up will be the Cal’s first-ever against Florida State.
Just to add further context, from someone close to the student section.
1) There are two types of card stunts. The rolling card stunt (which many of you are familiar with that is done at halftime), and the standing card stunt (where cards are set out pregame for a nice chill pregame image, then not used the rest of the game.
Rolling card: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98lMDB-tWc8
Standing card: https://x.com/rallycomm/status/926882390521233408/photo/1
San Diego State was meant to be a standing card game, to be used pregame and then removed in-game. Rolling card stunts are used for mostly Stanford and Homecoming.
However some students did not return the cards. I'm guessing we will need to go back to the drawing board and stop doing standing cards until we figure out a better way to gather these cards.
2) The Memorial Stadium PA system (a major issue for me) is not very good on the east side of the stadium, and particularly in the student section. So all of the warnings were very hard to make out on the periphery of the student section. I can only imagine it being worse in that crowd. Justin Wilcox's request was very muffled on our side of the field. I believe someone else from the team did come by and give a more direct plea. But we need to fix the audio on the east side.
3) Moving the away section behind the students is the right football call, but imo Rally Comm needed to pre-plan better for what that would mean regarding card stunts. If you're going to have cards all students attending the game need to be notified about what to do with them, how to handle them, and WARN THEM that doing any shenanigans with them will cost the football team. I think it might be too late for this year, but if they want to bring them back this will need to be an integral part of student football onboarding.
There does not seem to be a good enough level of communication regarding how to educate students on what the card stunts are for, and their execution has been lacking in recent years. I think we need to go back to the drawing board, focus on maybe one event every so often (Stanford or Homecoming), and just nix it for the time being until they've worked everything out.
Cal Fans: Coach Wilcox ABSOLUTELY did the right thing. If you don't think that a fifteen yard fan interference call can change a game, think again. I was at the 1990 Big Game where an unsportsmanlike conduct call on the Cal fans moved the 'Furd into field goal range for the winning kick. Final score: Cal 25, Stanfurd 27. Let's make sure that never happens again.