When it rains, it floods for the California Golden Bears in 2026.
Bruce Feldman, Stewart Mandel & Antonio Morales of The New York Times/The Athletic report on an ongoing rift between Cal GM Ron Rivera & head coach Tosh Lupoi from sources close to the Cal athletic program.
As you probably guessed from yesterday’s radio interview, Rivera has been critical of the approach that Lupoi has taken on his first year on the job, struggling with hiring, decision-making, and feedback. Today’s piece contends that this has been an ongoing struggle all season.
Even more alarming is that Rivera, who led the head coaching search, sought the Cal coaching job himself after firing Justin Wilcox. This never came to pass, but this does lead to questions about ulterior motives in Rivera’s own management of Lupoi. Is he doing this for the good of the program, or does he have his own agenda in mind?
Rivera told The Athletic on Thursday he supports Lupoi and described his growing pains as typical for a first-time head coach.
“In today’s world, with the kind of money being spent in college athletics, people feel they’re entitled to immediate success,” Rivera said. “The expectations were ginormous, and I don’t think that was fair. We’ve got a guy who’s a first-time head coach; he’s going to learn.”
Lupoi also has been apparently too hands-on, burning out Cal staff. He has made himself present in multiple places outside the football locker room, including helping in securing business deals like the Databricks partnership, and has spent a lot of time on off-the-field deals like figuring out how to stage concerts at Memorial Stadium. He also remains very involved in his major strength, recruiting, but has apparently spent too much time in these places.
In an interview with The Athletic on Thursday, Lupoi said he’d been reflecting on his approach during Cal’s current bye week.
“What has worked for me in the past is not necessarily the best course of action here at Cal,” Lupoi said. “It starts with me recognizing that and adapting. I’m attempting to do a much better job at, for example, how I communicate in group environments, adjusting the time practicing in full pads … there’s things that I recognize need to be adjusted.”
There was a meeting between Rivera, Lupoi and Chancellor Rich Lyons on Monday, so you can imagine things have gotten pretty serious in the past week for these struggles to be going public.
This is a brutal piece for Cal football. It makes Lupoi look overwhelmed. It makes Rivera look overbearing. And right in the middle of it is a spiralling team, heading toward the bottom of Power 4 with three games to go.
In actuality the article doesn't say much of anything new that we didn't know (or came out from the presser earlier). Other than maybe Tosh focusing on all the extracurricular stuff. And the point that sources say RR wanted the HC job (which is strange; if that was the case I would think he could have easily sold Lyons on it). But as before, a lot of this feels like RR trying to cover his behind. The whole point about throwing your arms up in the air on Tosh and all assistants being new - you allowed this. You can't sit back now and just shrug it off.
Cal Football is drowning, and all this piling on right now by the national media critters is merely describing the water...
The fact that it's reached this level of low-key chaos makes me no longer trying to figure out who to blame between Tosh and Ron, this is starting to reflect badly on Rich Lyons. Perhaps he needs to stop riding motorbikes onto the field of CMS so often and get the football program under control.