The problem the program has now is a massive conflict of interest because there is no way wealthy alums are going to buy out Wilcox and allow Knowlton to make the next hire.
Absolving the head coach for poor play can sometimes make sense at the professional level or even the high school level but it makes no sense at all in college football
Don’t get me wrong. I would be much more aggressive in the red zone and would bring back one of our fantastically successful NFL kickers to at least mentor and consult these young kickers. But what struck me watching the highlights were the terrible missed assignments which left their receivers wide open for huge gains on 3rd and 4th down.
Yep! Wilcox’s offenses have struggled in the red zone for the entirety of his tenure. Which puts a premium on the kicking game.
And I’m talking specifically about the Mateen Bhaghani disaster.
A quality, D1 caliber kicker fell into your lap as a walk-on….then saved your season by stabilizing the position after your scholarship PK cost you W’s…
This was an absolute GIFT! And Wilcox completely flubbed it by not rewarding him with a scholarship…so now he’s making kicks for fUCLA while Wilcox repeated the exact same mistake, verbatim.
A perfect microcosm of his failures atop the program.
Luckhurst was the scholarship PK. He informed the staff he would be playing soccer.
Wilcox did not view Bhaghani as a scholarship kicker…so he went to UCLA, who gave him a scholarship.
They then recruited Coe, who was awarded the scholarship and subsequently forgot how to kick FGs despite doing so rather successfully for 4 seasons at the D1 level.
Coaches are responsible for having their guys prepared to play. There is something wrong with the preparation of this team. Repeated collapses during crunch time are a trend with Wilcox teams. What’s the record 5-21 in single score games? This is not a fluke.
I think the better question is how the hell is the record allowed to get as far as 20 games below .500 against conference foes without a change being made? Also, why was the head football coach sitting on the search committee for the athletic director hire (his future boss)? These two seem attached at the hip and it’s not healthy for the program.
Our issue with getting top list HC candidates is always institutional support. Lyons can help change that-both the perception and in the real by promising to realign resources and priorities. The real ? may be Knowlton. Even if everything else is in place—NIL, admissions flexibility, etc.—do you want to take a chance under a boss with an uncertain future here?
That’s the only wrinkle in Wilcox keeping his job for 2025.
Can you really let Knowlton make the hire? Is there a Monty or Jay John for the FB program that is going to save his a$$ like those guys did with Madsen?
But my comment was directed at the folks that think we should keep Justin Wilcox BECAUSE Nick Saban is not walking through that door. That’s the silly talk.
Right. Folks don’t realize that the bottom can get considerably lower if you merely try to maintain the status quo. As soon as recruits and fans get a whiff that something is not building towards anything, they bail and you can no longer get the talent you were accustomed to getting. That’s was the issue with the Fox hire. It sent a signal that we didn’t really take winning seriously and were comfortable with just being “not bad”. And then it turned a lot worse than that.
Yep, most people will be hung up on getting a “name” or some flashy young coordinator. NO! Hire someone with a winning pedigree. That’s it. I don’t care if it was at the fcs level. Dude wins. Period.
But, somehow, we were holding out hope that this was a clean start for both us and Wilcox, so most of us and certainly not the AD were not looking at the Cigs out there.
I am not a FB Coach. I have never played FB myself. I have watched a lot of Cal football. I saw the weakness of the OL during the SDSU game, especially that Fernando was getting rushed/sacked far too often. If I saw this, the Cal coaching staff must have seen it. And they should have fixed this back in week two. (Don’t get me started on OL penalties, especially false starts!)
One reason Tedford was fired was because his graduation rate was very low. Wilcox has brought the rate up, which is important to the University’s admin. I’m not sure how the AD reconciles the graduation rate with the desire to have a top tier FB (and BB) program.
You mistakenly assume that Knowlton wants or even knows what is required to have a championship level football program. I suspect this indifference or ignorance accounts for Christ giving Knowlton the extension that makes Knowlton, too, virtually fireproof. Happy indifference and ignorance about money sports usually proves the standard at Cal. So, yeah, I do believe the AD is perfectly happy to see high graduation rates in exchange for keeping "that element" (i.e. people who love football) out of our school.
Sadly, I believe you are correct. There are many who believe sports, especially “prestige” sports, do not belong at the University of California at all as it sullies its rarified academic & research credentials.
Nice work, Nick. I can’t recall a string of consecutive losses like this ever, in Cal football history; in fact three consecutive losses by one or two points is very, very rare indeed. Throw in a confounding loss to an otherwise winless FSU by five points and it’s all a crazy nightmare. Somehow you managed to make sense of it all.
What a frustrating game again. Same as it ever was. I plan to drive down one last time this season with my sons and a few friends for the Beavers game. That will be the last one until we get new coaches. The players and the fans deserve better.
Well Jimmy, let's hope the Bears win. I have tried to be supportive of Coach Wilcox, but ever since the loss to Colorado, it has been literally a losing battle. It is not the players; this approach to preparation and game management on the offense has been going on since he got the job, eight years ago. Seems it is getting worse. See you at the game. Go Bears!
Agreed…this is an indictment of Justin Wilcox the Head Coach, and not the man. He’s a good guy that checks a ton of boxes…unfortunately, in the current college athletics climate, the most important box is the one he does NOT check, and that’s wins.
It is sad that this is where we’re at, but if the athletic department is to survive, you have to start being relevant in football.
I think him being a good guy is part of what is leading to his downfall. A lot of his most questionable decisions have been keeping failing assistant coaches and coordinators in their positions for too long. That loyalty prevents him from making the changes needed to elevate the team to the next level.
He makes puzzling personnel moves…coaching and player.
An 8-season struggle to execute on offense, through 4 different coordinators, and a negative-80-something scoring differential in the 4Q tells you systemic issues are present.
Precisely: "I am unable to construct an argument in favor of continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result." Just watching the clock now for Basketball season and the announcement of head coach change.
It was real enough to see that Wilcox was a crap gameday coach. His turtling in the Oregon State game that year cost Cal a win. And let's recall the Big Game where Cal could not get its field goal and extra point teams lined up properly that led to two blocks that cost them the game. The early signs were very much thete.
"act like you've been there before" ... not normally heard in this circumstance but equally applicable in the case of Cal during the Wilcox tenure. Despite countless opportunities, he (and thus the team) does not appear to know what it takes or feels like to win consistently, and conversely, finds unique ways to lose. I used to get so down after losses - oddly felt ok after NC State, until I realized it meant that I just don't care anymore, which is so much worse.
9.5 point favorites over the Beavs on Saturday. What is Vegas seeing that we aren't? A win of that magnitude would be highly unexpected under our present coaching staff.
Face it, the new former Pac 12 is a better fit for Cal. Does anyone seriously think Cal will get better relative to the ACC next year or any year? Cal will probably get slaughtered after the season with transfer defections.
Absolutely not. We will always get P4 level guys who want to play P4 level football. How well they do depends on our coach. Moving down to the current Pac 12 will irreversibly crater any program interest.
Knowlton needs to be gone yesterday. Who are some good AD candidates we could go after? It seems like we won’t get any movement on a coaching change until after a new AD is in place.
Though the Madsen hire turned out to be the correct one, I think Knowlton irked much of the donor class by shutting them out on that one. I can’t imagine a scenario that the donor class doesn’t have significantly more say in a HC hire if Knowlton is still here to make one.
Cal ties are not a bad idea, but I think we need someone who understands the major conference landscape - realignment, NIL, etc.
Not sure how he is perceived by folks in the know here but I’d consider Chris Pezman who had a pretty successful run at Houston (saw them jump up a conference, make huge strides in bball, etc) and used to work in the Cal AD previously.
Would also consider going after Scott Barnes from Oregon State if he wants to get back in the P4.
The offensive coaching is getting very rough to understand. But maybe it's just very hard to find offensive coaches. Via The Athletic: "After Ludwig first left Utah following the team’s undefeated season in 2008, Whittingham had eight different offensive coordinators throughout the ensuing 10 seasons. Ludwig returned in 2019 and helped stabilize Utah’s offensive identity in tune with what Whittingham prioritized: a dedicated rushing attack and owning time of possession."
Ludwig was also terrible everywhere he went outside of Utah. It feels similar to Spav with Cal, where certain coaches just do better in certain situations.
The problem the program has now is a massive conflict of interest because there is no way wealthy alums are going to buy out Wilcox and allow Knowlton to make the next hire.
No chance
I heard utah's offensive coordinator is available
Thanks Nick.
Just watched “highlights”. These losses are on the players. Coaches can’t be on the field.
Absolving the head coach for poor play can sometimes make sense at the professional level or even the high school level but it makes no sense at all in college football
Coaches are meant to identify and correct.
If people did not need guidance to learn, why have professors?
Same mistakes game after game.
The kicking issues are squarely on Wilcox.
Good to know
Don’t get me wrong. I would be much more aggressive in the red zone and would bring back one of our fantastically successful NFL kickers to at least mentor and consult these young kickers. But what struck me watching the highlights were the terrible missed assignments which left their receivers wide open for huge gains on 3rd and 4th down.
Yep! Wilcox’s offenses have struggled in the red zone for the entirety of his tenure. Which puts a premium on the kicking game.
And I’m talking specifically about the Mateen Bhaghani disaster.
A quality, D1 caliber kicker fell into your lap as a walk-on….then saved your season by stabilizing the position after your scholarship PK cost you W’s…
This was an absolute GIFT! And Wilcox completely flubbed it by not rewarding him with a scholarship…so now he’s making kicks for fUCLA while Wilcox repeated the exact same mistake, verbatim.
A perfect microcosm of his failures atop the program.
Sigh.
how did they let this happen? I think someone said we were at our limit for scholarship kickers?
Luckhurst was the scholarship PK. He informed the staff he would be playing soccer.
Wilcox did not view Bhaghani as a scholarship kicker…so he went to UCLA, who gave him a scholarship.
They then recruited Coe, who was awarded the scholarship and subsequently forgot how to kick FGs despite doing so rather successfully for 4 seasons at the D1 level.
Coaches are responsible for having their guys prepared to play. There is something wrong with the preparation of this team. Repeated collapses during crunch time are a trend with Wilcox teams. What’s the record 5-21 in single score games? This is not a fluke.
20 games below .500 v conference foes.
20.
How is that even possible?!?!
I think the better question is how the hell is the record allowed to get as far as 20 games below .500 against conference foes without a change being made? Also, why was the head football coach sitting on the search committee for the athletic director hire (his future boss)? These two seem attached at the hip and it’s not healthy for the program.
We brought in Ryan Longwell to be staff on our team this year.
https://www.si.com/college/cal/football/ex-cal-nfl-kicker-ryan-longwell-shares-his-wisdom-with-cal-kickers-01j59bc775gk
Good to know.
Here's an interesting article about Cignett:
https://www.espn.com/college-football/insider/story/_/id/41852373/indiana-curt-cignetti-built-roster-first-year-coaches-texas-alabama-michigan
There's a Cig out there somewhere for us.
Exactly.
The defeatist attitude that “no one would come to coach at Cal” is so lame.
Our issue with getting top list HC candidates is always institutional support. Lyons can help change that-both the perception and in the real by promising to realign resources and priorities. The real ? may be Knowlton. Even if everything else is in place—NIL, admissions flexibility, etc.—do you want to take a chance under a boss with an uncertain future here?
That’s the only wrinkle in Wilcox keeping his job for 2025.
Can you really let Knowlton make the hire? Is there a Monty or Jay John for the FB program that is going to save his a$$ like those guys did with Madsen?
But my comment was directed at the folks that think we should keep Justin Wilcox BECAUSE Nick Saban is not walking through that door. That’s the silly talk.
Found Saban!
https://x.com/IAmJGlaze/status/1848074176285774237
Right. Folks don’t realize that the bottom can get considerably lower if you merely try to maintain the status quo. As soon as recruits and fans get a whiff that something is not building towards anything, they bail and you can no longer get the talent you were accustomed to getting. That’s was the issue with the Fox hire. It sent a signal that we didn’t really take winning seriously and were comfortable with just being “not bad”. And then it turned a lot worse than that.
Do you think Frank Jr. has nice things to say about Cal? Hope he does.
Frank Jr?
Curt's brother. Our former OC
Oh, Hell, yeah.
Brent Vigen
Yep, most people will be hung up on getting a “name” or some flashy young coordinator. NO! Hire someone with a winning pedigree. That’s it. I don’t care if it was at the fcs level. Dude wins. Period.
Yes.....and he was making $677,000 a year at James Madison.
ARGGH.
But, somehow, we were holding out hope that this was a clean start for both us and Wilcox, so most of us and certainly not the AD were not looking at the Cigs out there.
I am not a FB Coach. I have never played FB myself. I have watched a lot of Cal football. I saw the weakness of the OL during the SDSU game, especially that Fernando was getting rushed/sacked far too often. If I saw this, the Cal coaching staff must have seen it. And they should have fixed this back in week two. (Don’t get me started on OL penalties, especially false starts!)
One reason Tedford was fired was because his graduation rate was very low. Wilcox has brought the rate up, which is important to the University’s admin. I’m not sure how the AD reconciles the graduation rate with the desire to have a top tier FB (and BB) program.
You mistakenly assume that Knowlton wants or even knows what is required to have a championship level football program. I suspect this indifference or ignorance accounts for Christ giving Knowlton the extension that makes Knowlton, too, virtually fireproof. Happy indifference and ignorance about money sports usually proves the standard at Cal. So, yeah, I do believe the AD is perfectly happy to see high graduation rates in exchange for keeping "that element" (i.e. people who love football) out of our school.
Sadly, I believe you are correct. There are many who believe sports, especially “prestige” sports, do not belong at the University of California at all as it sullies its rarified academic & research credentials.
People who hated PE and are now wreaking revenge.
I wasn’t a fan of PE, either, but I appreciate those who are athletically skilled.
Yeah, but you're, presumably, not quietly hoping for program irrelevance or helping to kill it. Some are.
Nice work, Nick. I can’t recall a string of consecutive losses like this ever, in Cal football history; in fact three consecutive losses by one or two points is very, very rare indeed. Throw in a confounding loss to an otherwise winless FSU by five points and it’s all a crazy nightmare. Somehow you managed to make sense of it all.
It reminds me of the complete meltdown in 2007.
What a frustrating game again. Same as it ever was. I plan to drive down one last time this season with my sons and a few friends for the Beavers game. That will be the last one until we get new coaches. The players and the fans deserve better.
Agreed,
I am going to Saturday to say goodbye to the coaching staff.
Well Jimmy, let's hope the Bears win. I have tried to be supportive of Coach Wilcox, but ever since the loss to Colorado, it has been literally a losing battle. It is not the players; this approach to preparation and game management on the offense has been going on since he got the job, eight years ago. Seems it is getting worse. See you at the game. Go Bears!
Go Bears.
Agreed…this is an indictment of Justin Wilcox the Head Coach, and not the man. He’s a good guy that checks a ton of boxes…unfortunately, in the current college athletics climate, the most important box is the one he does NOT check, and that’s wins.
It is sad that this is where we’re at, but if the athletic department is to survive, you have to start being relevant in football.
I think him being a good guy is part of what is leading to his downfall. A lot of his most questionable decisions have been keeping failing assistant coaches and coordinators in their positions for too long. That loyalty prevents him from making the changes needed to elevate the team to the next level.
Could be.
He makes puzzling personnel moves…coaching and player.
An 8-season struggle to execute on offense, through 4 different coordinators, and a negative-80-something scoring differential in the 4Q tells you systemic issues are present.
Precisely: "I am unable to construct an argument in favor of continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result." Just watching the clock now for Basketball season and the announcement of head coach change.
And with this loss, Wilcox has guaranteed his 7th consecutive season of not having a winning conference record.
8th straight! Even more depressingly, Cal has not had a winning conference record since 2009. Dykes never did it either.
Technically true but I don’t count the covid season as a full and real season.
It was real enough to see that Wilcox was a crap gameday coach. His turtling in the Oregon State game that year cost Cal a win. And let's recall the Big Game where Cal could not get its field goal and extra point teams lined up properly that led to two blocks that cost them the game. The early signs were very much thete.
I didn’t say I don’t hold those losses against him. Those games were played and we should have won the Big Game if not for kicking game errors.
I just don’t hold him not having a winning conference record against him, as we didn’t play a full season of conference games.
This is 100% true.
Wilcox’s deficiencies as a Head Coach were front and center, despite the COVID pass that he received.
Fair enough
"act like you've been there before" ... not normally heard in this circumstance but equally applicable in the case of Cal during the Wilcox tenure. Despite countless opportunities, he (and thus the team) does not appear to know what it takes or feels like to win consistently, and conversely, finds unique ways to lose. I used to get so down after losses - oddly felt ok after NC State, until I realized it meant that I just don't care anymore, which is so much worse.
9.5 point favorites over the Beavs on Saturday. What is Vegas seeing that we aren't? A win of that magnitude would be highly unexpected under our present coaching staff.
Again, Justin WIlcox-coached teams are not 10 points better than P4 caliber teams.
It's what Vegas is not seeing; betting on OSU. Getting more points will hopefully (from their perspective) get some action on the Beavers.
Can Cal unjoin the ACC?
Face it, the new former Pac 12 is a better fit for Cal. Does anyone seriously think Cal will get better relative to the ACC next year or any year? Cal will probably get slaughtered after the season with transfer defections.
Absolutely not. We will always get P4 level guys who want to play P4 level football. How well they do depends on our coach. Moving down to the current Pac 12 will irreversibly crater any program interest.
Moving down will crater the entire athletic department, not just the football program.
Next year’s schedule is unbelievably easy. With a capable coaching staff, we’d be set up for a huge season. Same as this year.
Coaching matters, as well.
We could be viable rather quickly.
Knowlton needs to be gone yesterday. Who are some good AD candidates we could go after? It seems like we won’t get any movement on a coaching change until after a new AD is in place.
Ideal scenario would be Rivera.
Exactly-I cant see donors ponying up for buyout, especially as Knowlton was responsible for extending JW.
Donors will absolutely pony up for a buyout.
You don’t want Knowlton making the hire, which is probably the bigger issue.
Though the Madsen hire turned out to be the correct one, I think Knowlton irked much of the donor class by shutting them out on that one. I can’t imagine a scenario that the donor class doesn’t have significantly more say in a HC hire if Knowlton is still here to make one.
Mark Orr might fit the bill.
Cal ties are not a bad idea, but I think we need someone who understands the major conference landscape - realignment, NIL, etc.
Not sure how he is perceived by folks in the know here but I’d consider Chris Pezman who had a pretty successful run at Houston (saw them jump up a conference, make huge strides in bball, etc) and used to work in the Cal AD previously.
Would also consider going after Scott Barnes from Oregon State if he wants to get back in the P4.
The offensive coaching is getting very rough to understand. But maybe it's just very hard to find offensive coaches. Via The Athletic: "After Ludwig first left Utah following the team’s undefeated season in 2008, Whittingham had eight different offensive coordinators throughout the ensuing 10 seasons. Ludwig returned in 2019 and helped stabilize Utah’s offensive identity in tune with what Whittingham prioritized: a dedicated rushing attack and owning time of possession."
Agreed. Point being that Whittingham had 8 OCs in 10 years
Ludwig was also terrible everywhere he went outside of Utah. It feels similar to Spav with Cal, where certain coaches just do better in certain situations.
Agonizingly spot on.
Thanks again Nick!