The University of California system, renowned for it’s alacrity took a mere 10 months and some weeks to finalize the deal signed by all parties on October 1st, 2026.
Cal and HC Lupoi agreed to a 5 year contract that averages $4.5 million with a $10 million for the assistant pool.
Something worth noting in the contract is that in the past the counter-parties to the deal were the Chancellor and the Athletic Director. In the case of Justin Wilcox it was Carol Christ and James “Jim” Knowlton
But for the contract with HC Tosh the representatives for the Regents of the University of California are Chancellor Lyons and “General Manager, Cal Football” Ron Rivera
Further signifying the shift in the way Cal and the University as a whole has approach football. There is a lot of talk about Ron taking the reigns of the program, but words are empty compared to the dry reality of a signature and a small clause about the reporting line. This emphasizes that Cal Football is de facto a separate entity to the rest of the Athletic Department.
Pay Structure
As it is pro-forma a coach’s salary is actually divided into “salary” and “talent fee”. The “salary” portion is usually paid directly from the university while the “talent fee” is usually paid via booster donations and contain provisions requiring the coach:
[…] to speak at booster gatherings and related University and Alumni functions, appear on television and radio broadcasts of University sports games and sports shows dedicated to University sports as may be developed, and make other appearances as reasonably directed by the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, Football General Manager or Sport Supervisor. Such appearances shall include pre-game and post-game shows connected with game broadcasts. […] Coach does not fulfill reasonable and good faith requests for appearances by the Football General Manager and/or the Director of Intercollegiate Athletics, University may at its discretion reduce payments under this section after written notice of noncompliance and a reasonable opportunity to cure.
In terms of salary it is a fixed $275,000 per annum payment, while the talent fee starts at $3,725,000 and escalates across the following 4 years to $4,725,000 in the 2030-31 year.
What this means is that for the 2025-27 year 1 period Tosh is making about $500,000 less than Justin Wilcox was in his final year at Cal. It makes sense since Justin was a beneficiary of being a long tenure where the contract kept escalating while Tosh is still a rookie headcoach who needs to prove himself.
Bonus Structure
On top of that he has certain bonuses that indicate what the donors believe the goals ought to be. Incentives in contract indicate intent, for example Justin Wilcox’s contract had the clause where he’d earn a $25,000 for beating Stanford, but only got $10,000 for beating UCLA, Oregon, or USC in the regular season and only if the opponent ends the season with 6+ wins.
The following bonuses indicate that Cal does not see any other team outside of Stanford as a rival of note, and that the rest of the incentives are more or less the same as under the Wilcox tenure. The same applies for APR and Team GPA bonuses that have remained unchanged.
There is an interesting clause here:
Which means that if HC Lupoi were to win out this year reaching 7-5 and 10 games next season the two parties (ie. Cal and HC Lupoi’s agent) would renegotiate the compensation terms. I don’t think this will come into play in 2 years.
Separation by Coach
Basically the cost of HC Lupoi and the team buying his way out of Cal to join a new college football team. The structure de-escalates from $5 million a year in this season and goes down by a million with each consecutive season. What is fascinating is the clause where the buy out goes down by 50% if GM Ron Rivera is no longer employed by the the university (so if Ron were to say become a professor in the Haas School of Business, it would still count).
Note that this section has “Cal” instead of “University” in it, I do think it is a harmless omission and would be read as the same by all parties. But it’s just sloppy work.
Separation by University
Here is the more… talked about section of the contract in the light of the recent developments.
Cal, unlike with Wilcox, was able to negotiate a buy out where the total value of the deal is not 100% of the remaining salary + talent fee. Which over the course of the deal looks as follows:
Not a cheap exit by any means and this simple arithmetic indicates we are not leaving HC Lupoi without cause.
Assistant Pool
Not only does HC Lupoi more than double the salary pool from the Wilcox era, but also secures an interesting clause wherein:
The University commits to evaluating the salary pool on an annual basis, and at the discretion of the General Manager, shall increase the salary pool as necessary to remain competitive in the conference.
While under Wilcox we had a soft:
University agrees to collaborate with Coach to develop a long-term strategy to address issues related to attracting and retaining high-quality assistant coaches in the context of maintaining competitive balance within the conference.
Which seems similar but instead of “well we will talk about if it becomes an issue” HC Lupoi has a binding agreement where he and GM Rivera meet to review the pool on an annual basis.
Based on buyout, it looks like we have Tosh for at least 3 years. Either we start winning and Cal becomes a force in the ACC, or we stay uncompetitive, get bounced from the ACC, and see CMS enpty to hear Grateful Dead cover bands. I hope it's the former but am not convinced based on performance so far...
I always wondered why these contracts don’t have any “disincentives”? Say you win only 9 games in the first three years, then your buyout goes down 50%.
Of course I would balance that out by increasing the incentives for winning more games.