Exactly, and he’d totally jump at the opportunity. Sirmon would go too, unless Knowlton hired him as (f-ing, GULP) HC in Berkeley...a Joe Brady would probably replace Musgrave, even tho he’s a Duck...someone would have to be the sacrificial lamb for Wilcox’s perpetually underachieving O’s, and Musgrave would be the easy excuse.
Being left at the alter by two guys who spurned you for Florida will make you do crazy things. Like settling for someone who may not have the highest potential but will never leave you for Florida.
At the end of the day, I still think Phil wants to make a splash...SC made one with Lincoln Riley - Ducks need to make a statement or risk losing the gains they’ve made on SC as the class of the P12...while Wilcox won’t use Oregon as a stepping stone, he’s still a decidedly underwhelming hire...maybe not after 2019, but after two subpar years, he is now.
I agree. Forget last season. Going 8-5 in 2019 and if Cal had played to its potential this season and went 8-4 or 9-3 this season, yeah I could see this happening.
Even if you spot him Arizona due to Covid, you can’t write off 1-5 due to Covid. A lot of those losses were on poor coaching and coaching decisions and not Covid. You can’t blame the 42-14 ucla loss to Covid. Yeah, we beat SC and it felt great but our offense didn’t look good doing it and this was a terrible SC team.
The O hibernated in the 2H of games more often than not in his tenure it seems, including v SC Sat...if Jaxson Dart doesn’t get concussed, that game could’ve gotten interesting, and SC was awful!
Well, Chris Brooks is leaving, Tevis is leaving, Remigio is leaving, Clark is leaving and Tonges is leaving. My guess is Garbers will be leaving as well. Meanwhile, all of our previous 4 star commits de-committed. Next we will hear that Chase is leaving. And today Wilcox interviewed for the job whereas two years ago he told them a flat out no. What does that tell you? Knowlton better have a good fucking back up plan.
Wilcox and Musgrave (Wisconsin style offense) pro style offense would be a square peg in a round hole at Oregon both in terms of player personnel and offensive identity.
Winning 8-9 games at Oregon won't cut it. 8-9 wins at Cal gets you an extension, 8-9 wins at Oregon will get you fired.
At any rate, hopefully Knowlton has Troy Taylor’s cell number, we may need to call him.
If Wilcox does go, it will probably weaken Oregon so at least a division rival will come back down closer to Cal.
I concur with that. High probability that they have an elite defense under Wilcox. D wins championships. O gets butts in the seats. He should hire the OL coach at OSU and a young bright OC. The Ducks could be a force.
Sure they do. I have no knowledge in this specific case, but often schools will interview 'potential' candidates to appease the various factions by making the search seem thorough, when they've already got a handshake deal in place with someone else. In this case however, I believe the interest is real, Wilcox (with the right OC) would be a terrific hire for them, and would put Cal back at the bottom of the PAC in search-for-a-cheap-coach-who's-willing-to-come-to-Cal mode.
Zactly. Cal is so screwed if Wilcox goes this late in the cycle. Early signing is about a week away...kiss that class goodbye, hopefully we hold onto the OL J. Brown.
Kiss the class goodbye? He already lost our top three recruits with the pathetic start to this season. I must be missing something with Wilcox... we're five years in, he's 15-25 in conference (never finishing better than 4-5, which he's done three times), and his tenure has been characterized by generally anemic offense, overall record padding with wins against weak non-conference opponents, and empty stadiums with zero fan excitement. Please educate me because I just don't get the 'we're so screwed if he leaves now' talk. Mediocrity is replaceable, and probably for less money.
Totally agree. If Wilcox goes to Oregon, I like my chances with Jay Norvell or Troy Taylor, and let's see what happens with the recruiting class. Both guys are known offensive dudes, so it might at lease attract some talent to that side of the ball.
I would rather Wilcox not leave, but if he does I'm not losing sleep over it. He wasn't exactly lighting it up here at Cal. He seems like a good guy and has at times managed to rise up and beat the best teams in the conference, which is promising. But the overall record is not great.
There isn't much evidence that coaches who were bad or mediocre at Cal go on to be much better at other stops. Marv Levy is basically the only one. Everyone else largely stayed at the same level after they left.
I think Bruce Snyder did pretty good when he left Cal to go to ASU. Took them to a Rose Bowl pretty quickly. But he wasn't bad or mediocre, either. He was sensational, and the Cal AD at the time was either too blind or too cheap to see it.
I posted it elsewhere but I’ll say it here too. It took Snyder 3 losing seasons with some god awful blowout losses to get to the happy memories people remember from that era. His first of two winning seasons in 1990 was only six regular season wins plus the Copper Bowl win. 1991 was really the one and only amazing year with a team that was stupid talented. His teams also never won the Big Game. That’s not a knock on Bruce. It’s really a testament to how hard it is to build and win here with any sort of consistency, only to be run off by that idiot AD. I’ve been very frustrated with the lack of offensive consistency/production in the Wilcox regime, but I have enjoyed seeing us get the Axe back and not being run off the field routinely.
Why don't we start with who you think Cal should have as their head coach. Make your picks realistic i.e. don't list Urban Meyer. Go ahead...I'll wait...
I'm honestly so sick of the 'we're Cal, we suck, so why even try to take a swing and improve on the mediocrity?' attitude. It's a defeatist mentality and I hate it.
He would be on my short list as well. I doubt we have a top defense in the conference but the brand of football would likely be more entertaining. Not sure that that would necessarily translate to more wins, however.
I will politely disagree. Everyone on their talk list is a legitimate candidate for the job. Whether they are in the lead spot is a different story. Schools that practice appeasing factions by interviewing people that they won't hire only hurt themselves as they would drive up salaries for extensions for all the coaches they interviewed, which ends up driving up coaching salaries everywhere. And agent's don't want their client's time wasted.
Can’t see it happening. Read somewhere that Phil Knight is 83. He doesn’t have time to wait. He needs a win now coach, like SC got. Maybe Kiffin, Sitani, Aranda, or someone from the NFL?
Kiffin just signed a big contract to stay at Old Miss and it looks like he is going to land young Manning as a recruit. He's not leaving Old Miss. Aranda is staying out. I could see Sitani jump but his dream job is BYU. Bill O'Brien from Bama would be my guess.
Agree, can't imagine they'd pick Wilcox unless they were settling for a lesser option after the more elite names spurned them. How plausible for 1 of those best & brightest to get the HC gig up in Eugene and lure Wilcox as DC?
Wishful thinking that he'd be as mediocre there as he's been at Cal. Even more wishful thinking that Knowlton hires someone with a pulse who could actually draw fans back into Memorial and build a better than .500 program over the long haul. Otherwise, the next hire will most likely be the football equivalent of Mark Fox. Yikes.
Plenty of coaches can lose a little more than they win and be 10 games under .500 in Conference at Cal, Rollah. And I think Wilcox DOES fit better in Eugene as a DC, but not sure he’d quit a HC job to be demoted to DC, even if it is his alma mater.
I’ll still be surprised if he gets the job, bc at the end of the day, he just doesn’t win enough, and you can’t blame the bull schitt mess of a Cal bureaucracy for that.
And let's not forget that Wilcox went 15-25 in conference during a period when the Pac 12 might have been the weakest in its history. I think you could almost say that by just what happened with USC during the Clay Helton era. Add in the decline of Shaw at Stanford, Chip Kelly starting out with three losing seasons and the shit show after Petersen left Washington. Freaking BYU went 5-0 against the conference this year, and they are playing in a nothing bowl game against Alabama Birmingham.
Yah, if Wilcox does go I don't want to be around while Knowlton hires a "search committee" and hires a dud retread. #nofaithinknowlton. Very scary thoughts have entered my mind (well, at least more than usual).
I'm the last person to defend Knowlton, but search committees do a lot more than identify candidates. They also help with the outreach to candidates, handle the logistics of scheduling and PR. These hires are so important, involve so much money and scrutiny and need to be handled incredibly quickly and carefully on the comms side that it's an understandable expense. Oregon I think is using a search firm, and they largely have their shit together. It's hard to say how much Knowlton used the firm to identify candidates versus using them to handle the process, which is more complex.
Things are heating up. Should be a fun next few weeks.
I wouldn't blame him for going.
It would be a huge promotion, wouldn’t blame him at all.
Oregon wanting Wilcox is the confusing matter.
Exactly, and he’d totally jump at the opportunity. Sirmon would go too, unless Knowlton hired him as (f-ing, GULP) HC in Berkeley...a Joe Brady would probably replace Musgrave, even tho he’s a Duck...someone would have to be the sacrificial lamb for Wilcox’s perpetually underachieving O’s, and Musgrave would be the easy excuse.
Well the test would be if Wilcox brought Angus McClure with him. If yes, than I would seriously need to question Wilcox's ability to assess his staff.
We’d probably interview Musgrave & McClure for the HC job.
Sadly, I do not put this past Knowlton to actually do so and seriously entertain that option. Scary.
Don't speak such evil into existence please
do not want either.
Oh hell no...hell no
Me neither.
But he’s a consolation prize...no way he’s their top pick.
I don’t think he is even top 5.
Being left at the alter by two guys who spurned you for Florida will make you do crazy things. Like settling for someone who may not have the highest potential but will never leave you for Florida.
At the end of the day, I still think Phil wants to make a splash...SC made one with Lincoln Riley - Ducks need to make a statement or risk losing the gains they’ve made on SC as the class of the P12...while Wilcox won’t use Oregon as a stepping stone, he’s still a decidedly underwhelming hire...maybe not after 2019, but after two subpar years, he is now.
I agree. Forget last season. Going 8-5 in 2019 and if Cal had played to its potential this season and went 8-4 or 9-3 this season, yeah I could see this happening.
Even if you spot him Arizona due to Covid, you can’t write off 1-5 due to Covid. A lot of those losses were on poor coaching and coaching decisions and not Covid. You can’t blame the 42-14 ucla loss to Covid. Yeah, we beat SC and it felt great but our offense didn’t look good doing it and this was a terrible SC team.
That is why people see the potential of pairing Wilcox not only with elite talent on defense, but with an elite OC.
The O hibernated in the 2H of games more often than not in his tenure it seems, including v SC Sat...if Jaxson Dart doesn’t get concussed, that game could’ve gotten interesting, and SC was awful!
Well, Chris Brooks is leaving, Tevis is leaving, Remigio is leaving, Clark is leaving and Tonges is leaving. My guess is Garbers will be leaving as well. Meanwhile, all of our previous 4 star commits de-committed. Next we will hear that Chase is leaving. And today Wilcox interviewed for the job whereas two years ago he told them a flat out no. What does that tell you? Knowlton better have a good fucking back up plan.
Wilcox and Musgrave (Wisconsin style offense) pro style offense would be a square peg in a round hole at Oregon both in terms of player personnel and offensive identity.
Winning 8-9 games at Oregon won't cut it. 8-9 wins at Cal gets you an extension, 8-9 wins at Oregon will get you fired.
At any rate, hopefully Knowlton has Troy Taylor’s cell number, we may need to call him.
If Wilcox does go, it will probably weaken Oregon so at least a division rival will come back down closer to Cal.
Can’t imagine Musgrave would be joining him.
He may not bring Musgrave but I would guess he would try to install another pro style offense.
Yeah the Oregon bloggers are telling themselves that Wilcox would be ok as long as they get a home run hire for OC.
I concur with that. High probability that they have an elite defense under Wilcox. D wins championships. O gets butts in the seats. He should hire the OL coach at OSU and a young bright OC. The Ducks could be a force.
Exactly. A Wilcox/Joe Brady partnership would be a much easier sell to Duck boners, I mean donors.
That presumes two things, not yet in evidence -
(1) Wilcox leaves Cal (for Oregon in this case) and
(2) That whoever Knowlton hires can win now with the roster that Wilcox assembled.
Quite a leap of faith on #2, if you ask me.
If they want to talk with Coach Wilcox then they are real about considering hiring him. They don't talk to coaches just to chat and waste time.
Sure they do. I have no knowledge in this specific case, but often schools will interview 'potential' candidates to appease the various factions by making the search seem thorough, when they've already got a handshake deal in place with someone else. In this case however, I believe the interest is real, Wilcox (with the right OC) would be a terrific hire for them, and would put Cal back at the bottom of the PAC in search-for-a-cheap-coach-who's-willing-to-come-to-Cal mode.
Zactly. Cal is so screwed if Wilcox goes this late in the cycle. Early signing is about a week away...kiss that class goodbye, hopefully we hold onto the OL J. Brown.
Kiss the class goodbye? He already lost our top three recruits with the pathetic start to this season. I must be missing something with Wilcox... we're five years in, he's 15-25 in conference (never finishing better than 4-5, which he's done three times), and his tenure has been characterized by generally anemic offense, overall record padding with wins against weak non-conference opponents, and empty stadiums with zero fan excitement. Please educate me because I just don't get the 'we're so screwed if he leaves now' talk. Mediocrity is replaceable, and probably for less money.
Totally agree. If Wilcox goes to Oregon, I like my chances with Jay Norvell or Troy Taylor, and let's see what happens with the recruiting class. Both guys are known offensive dudes, so it might at lease attract some talent to that side of the ball.
I would rather Wilcox not leave, but if he does I'm not losing sleep over it. He wasn't exactly lighting it up here at Cal. He seems like a good guy and has at times managed to rise up and beat the best teams in the conference, which is promising. But the overall record is not great.
There isn't much evidence that coaches who were bad or mediocre at Cal go on to be much better at other stops. Marv Levy is basically the only one. Everyone else largely stayed at the same level after they left.
I think Bruce Snyder did pretty good when he left Cal to go to ASU. Took them to a Rose Bowl pretty quickly. But he wasn't bad or mediocre, either. He was sensational, and the Cal AD at the time was either too blind or too cheap to see it.
I posted it elsewhere but I’ll say it here too. It took Snyder 3 losing seasons with some god awful blowout losses to get to the happy memories people remember from that era. His first of two winning seasons in 1990 was only six regular season wins plus the Copper Bowl win. 1991 was really the one and only amazing year with a team that was stupid talented. His teams also never won the Big Game. That’s not a knock on Bruce. It’s really a testament to how hard it is to build and win here with any sort of consistency, only to be run off by that idiot AD. I’ve been very frustrated with the lack of offensive consistency/production in the Wilcox regime, but I have enjoyed seeing us get the Axe back and not being run off the field routinely.
That supports my point, though: he was good at Cal, and then remained good at ASU.
Why don't we start with who you think Cal should have as their head coach. Make your picks realistic i.e. don't list Urban Meyer. Go ahead...I'll wait...
Troy Taylor.
I'm honestly so sick of the 'we're Cal, we suck, so why even try to take a swing and improve on the mediocrity?' attitude. It's a defeatist mentality and I hate it.
He would be on my short list as well. I doubt we have a top defense in the conference but the brand of football would likely be more entertaining. Not sure that that would necessarily translate to more wins, however.
I will politely disagree. Everyone on their talk list is a legitimate candidate for the job. Whether they are in the lead spot is a different story. Schools that practice appeasing factions by interviewing people that they won't hire only hurt themselves as they would drive up salaries for extensions for all the coaches they interviewed, which ends up driving up coaching salaries everywhere. And agent's don't want their client's time wasted.
Looks like the ducks just asked permission to interview chip Kelly
Not surprised. At all.
Will be a little surprised if he actually gets the gig.
I can understand that. I would even be a little surprised: it would mean that Chip Kelly turned down the job.
But it surprises me not at all that Wilcox was interviewed.
I want them to hire chip Kelly, because short term I expect both Oregon and UCLA would get worse
Avi, what changed? ATQ quoted a tweet of yours citing Oregun, "...had no interest..." in Wilcox??
doing their due diligence/ kicking the tires.
Can’t see it happening. Read somewhere that Phil Knight is 83. He doesn’t have time to wait. He needs a win now coach, like SC got. Maybe Kiffin, Sitani, Aranda, or someone from the NFL?
Kiffin just signed a big contract to stay at Old Miss and it looks like he is going to land young Manning as a recruit. He's not leaving Old Miss. Aranda is staying out. I could see Sitani jump but his dream job is BYU. Bill O'Brien from Bama would be my guess.
ugh
I'd expect Wilcox would take the job if offered. But I'm not sure Oregon would offer unless maybe as a backup plan. But who knows?
Agree, can't imagine they'd pick Wilcox unless they were settling for a lesser option after the more elite names spurned them. How plausible for 1 of those best & brightest to get the HC gig up in Eugene and lure Wilcox as DC?
Wishful thinking that he'd be as mediocre there as he's been at Cal. Even more wishful thinking that Knowlton hires someone with a pulse who could actually draw fans back into Memorial and build a better than .500 program over the long haul. Otherwise, the next hire will most likely be the football equivalent of Mark Fox. Yikes.
Plenty of coaches can lose a little more than they win and be 10 games under .500 in Conference at Cal, Rollah. And I think Wilcox DOES fit better in Eugene as a DC, but not sure he’d quit a HC job to be demoted to DC, even if it is his alma mater.
I’ll still be surprised if he gets the job, bc at the end of the day, he just doesn’t win enough, and you can’t blame the bull schitt mess of a Cal bureaucracy for that.
And let's not forget that Wilcox went 15-25 in conference during a period when the Pac 12 might have been the weakest in its history. I think you could almost say that by just what happened with USC during the Clay Helton era. Add in the decline of Shaw at Stanford, Chip Kelly starting out with three losing seasons and the shit show after Petersen left Washington. Freaking BYU went 5-0 against the conference this year, and they are playing in a nothing bowl game against Alabama Birmingham.
Yah, if Wilcox does go I don't want to be around while Knowlton hires a "search committee" and hires a dud retread. #nofaithinknowlton. Very scary thoughts have entered my mind (well, at least more than usual).
I'm the last person to defend Knowlton, but search committees do a lot more than identify candidates. They also help with the outreach to candidates, handle the logistics of scheduling and PR. These hires are so important, involve so much money and scrutiny and need to be handled incredibly quickly and carefully on the comms side that it's an understandable expense. Oregon I think is using a search firm, and they largely have their shit together. It's hard to say how much Knowlton used the firm to identify candidates versus using them to handle the process, which is more complex.
Agreed. I have little faith in Knowlton, and the length of time a search at Cal would take would be rather detrimental.
He won’t be mediocre at Oregon but winning 8-9 games a season won’t cut it when the expectations are 10+ win and Pac 12 title expectations annually.
If he goes two consecutive years without winning the P12 North he will be on the hot seat.