Opinion: The Clock Hits Midnight on Cal Football

Decisions must be made.

Credit: me

Time’s up.

Justin Wilcox was hired at Cal as part of a last, last-minute coaching change due to declining ticket sales from the Sonny Dykes era. As far as we know, he’d never really been seriously considered for many other coaching jobs, and it came as a surprise to him when he did get the call as the first option to return to Berkeley and lead the Golden Bears.

There were signs that we might have at the very least a coach who could potentially do interesting things. Cal started going to toe-to-toe with (admittedly declining) USC and Stanford teams, and eventually ended ignominious losing streaks against both. The Bears upset the eventual Pac-12 champions Washington, then did it again in the storm. The Takers became a real phenomenon, as defensive backs found their way to the NFL.

But offense became an immediate concern, and soon became an ongoing concern (with the Cheez-it Bowl being the standout example). Cal’s offensive production declined to the bottom of FBS, with hours of scoreless football a staple of every trip to Strawberry Canyon interspersed with an occasional touchdown. The October swoon became a predictable calling card, as the Bears would stumble to yet another losing record in non-conference play. Cal would come out of its bye weeks more rested than hungry, and hand bad, bad football teams their first win of the season.

Top-25 Cal became a fleeting occurrence, as the Bears often flirted with the bottom 25 in Power football in most advanced metrics. The most relevant the program has been in the past decade is that one-month span last year, when the Calgorithm propelled the program and our fanbase to College GameDay…even after Justin Wilcox had lost to an eventual one-win Florida State team, and then would go on and blow a 25-point lead to Miami.

The further Wilcox went along, personnel decisions became more erratic. A curious Bill Musgrave hire pivoted into a Jake Spavital one-year return that eventually pivoted into a “two jobs at once” year of Mike Bloesch. Strength and conditioning never seemed to be up to par with top programs, as Cal struggled with a litany of injuries to key players that undid the team at the most inopportune times. And despite being fundamentally solid, defense began to crack at the seams in the final years, giving up scores and leads after the offense finally made a move.

Bad luck also derailed the program. A Chase Garbers shoulder injury likely prevented a 9-10 win season in 2019 that could’ve catapulted the program. The pandemic hurt the Bears from a cultural perspective, as the reputation of an unserious football team was felt. Sonny Dykes made the national title game in his first year in TCU. And Cal would lose one-score game after one-score game, culminating in the horrors of 2024.

And then there’s the Cal athletic department, which proved incapable of understanding the big picture. Jim Knowlton handed out two extremely rash extensions—one in 2018, during a big win year, but in the aggregate, a pretty average 7-6 campaign; and another in 2021, panicking after an interview with Oregon, despite coming off a 5-7 season. This handicapped Cal’s ability to do anything but grin and bear it, leading to years of disappointing results, with an overwhelmed Knowlton and distant UC leadership losing trust and faith from the donors needed to pay buyouts.

The only thing that has saved Wilcox from a full-on donor revolt is beating downtrodden Stanford teams the past half-decade. And even then, it felt like a microcosm of his entire tenure, with the Bears needing all the lucky charms to pull out 2022 and a 98-yard drive to get through 2024.

On Saturday night, that last touchstone finally came apart, against a truly dreadful Stanford team. Cal handed the game to them in an unreal three hour mess of a game, and the final protection spell was disarmed.

There is nothing left to hold onto anymore. It is sad to lose the Axe, but it always felt like this uninspiring era of Cal football was leading to a moment like this.

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Writing about this team has been hard because this season has felt more like an epilogue than most. The trajectory of this year felt decided last season, when Cal lost all of its offensive skill players and had to reboot with a patchwork squad. The lost season of 2024 has folded over into another lost season in 2025, where a last-minute team was asked to put it together for 12 straight weeks. But despite the team’s best efforts, at the worst times, they just fell all apart.

• Cal has had to go to the wire to beat 4-7 North Carolina and 1-10 Boston College, and has now lost to 3-8 Virginia Tech and 4-7 Stanford. Cal has gone 2-2 against teams that have a combined record of 12-32. Bad team underachievement has been a microcosm of Wilcox’s time here, and he did his darndest to nearly lose them all.

• Cal has given up the following runs this year: 34-0 to San Diego State, 38-0 to Duke, 17-0 to Virginia Tech, and now 24-0 to Stanford. When the Bears have shut off this year, they have shut down spectacularly. It’s happened before for Wilcox’s team, but definitely not against competition this average or poor this regularly.

• Cal has won four of its games thanks to a confluence of very fortunate plays, like a Paco Austin fumble strip at the 1, or a Luke Ferelli interception at the goal-line, or a Koi Perich muffed punt in the red zone, or Louisville deciding to never double cover Jacob de Jesus. Based on the bounces, Cal is as lucky to be 6-5 as they were unlucky to be 6-6 last year. It all evens out to 6-6 in the end, but against this schedule, it’s crazy how close this team is to not even being bowl-eligible.

• Against one of the easiest schedules in all of college football, Cal is averaging 72 rushing yards per game (54 in ACC play), marks that rank last in FBS (and worst in 5 years). 2.5 yards per rush also ranks last, 31 sacks allowed places us in the bottom 20, and the Bears have racked up more penalty yards (464) than rush yards (365) in seven ACC games.

Everyone knew this team was probably not going to be good enough to compete for the ACC. Even with surprises like Minnesota and Louisville, the Bears never seemed to have the verve to ever run the table against their easiest schedule in decades. On the verge of a 6-6 regular season for the third year in a row, this is a predictably disappointing result, where we can only wonder what happened if last year’s core had returned.

To add insult to injury, the Bears will finally see an offensive player drafted in a decade-plus of the Justin Wilcox era. The problem is that player is at Indiana, and is now the presumptive Heisman Trophy favorite. Fernando Mendoza, who was being pulled in critical moments for Chandler Rogers-designed runs a year ago, made a business decision to leave a university he loved, to go and be great elsewhere. And it’s hard not to look up at the lack of achievements from the man leading the program, and begrudge him his decision.

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Justin Wilcox has very capable and admirable qualities as a coach. He has run a scandal-free program, he has treated his players and staff with respect, and he has faithfully dealt with many bureaucratic hurdles that had coaches like Sonny Dykes fleeing for the hills. But there is an enduring, relentless, unending sameness in every season that can no longer sustain this program. At some point, Cal has to compete for something more than not being bad.

Cal is a place where competence can keep you settled for a long time. But now, marooned in the ACC, with a future that appears more uncertain than ever, with another very talented young quarterback in Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele looking to be a star. Cal needs excellence, it needs excitement, and it needs energy. These moments have come in spurts and bursts with a Big Game win here and an upset win there, but the results have been nearly the same for a decade plus, and it’s not going to help the Bears achieve their long-term goals.

Stanford not only has The Axe, but they are geared up to start competing again behind Andrew Luck. They are on the precipice of pulling all their funds into making a proper coaching hire, and these Big Game wins will be harder to come by than they’ve ever been. UCLA will be making changes and competing for a similar pool of candidates. So will a third of college football. It’s a risk to dive into this game.

But it’s time to plunge. Cal needs to take risks to compete at this level, or risk the implosion of their athletic tradition. They have a Cal alum chancellor who is invested in being great everywhere. Ron Rivera has been assessing performance week-to-week. The two have begun to win back the donors who had been peeled off by university apathy and incompetence. The buy-in appears to have been secured. Now a decision has to be made.

Justin Wilcox has given what he can to make it all work, and many, many, many chances to make it work. But these results are not close to being good enough, and this is a results-oriented thing we’re in. The Cal community is as close to united as it will ever be that there is nothing more he can do, so there is really only one thing to do.

It has to be the end of this era for Cal. We’re ready for a new beginning.