I'm torn on the gist of this conversation. While I like Wilcox and probably would be satisfied with a regular 6-6 or 7-5 season most of the time, with an occasional 8 win season thrown in for good measure. I'd say if he can do that he has a job for life. But 5-7's and 4-8's really muddy the waters. The ennui of the program is starting to become noticeable unless we can win next week and somehow pull out an upset in addition to be beating Stanford. Blind loyalty to subordinates is not a recipe for success as a chief executive. There was another post saying we can't assume Colorado is a victory and who knows they might be primed to upset Cal. If that happens we all have reason to worry.
Seeing how close to 2/3 of FBS teams are now bowl eligible it should be considered a failure even at Cal to not make a bowl game.
Mediocrity in a program is playing in bottom tier bowls every year, with an occasional good bowl and occasional missing a bowl year thrown in. Most Cal alums would find that acceptable.
We are beneath mediocre right now which SHOULD be unacceptable, even with our moribund football history. I mean Kansas, KANSAS! got their football act together. Anyone implying we should accept this because we are losing "28-9" (which I guess is considered competitive) instead of "48-3" is doing the program a disservice by having such low expectations.
Now can mean this exact moment, or it can mean a more broader time, such as current situation.
From the context, it is pretty obvious that he means close to 2/3 of FBS teams can play in a bowl game in the current system, so it would be a failure for Cal not to play in it each year.
Inspiring speech, Andy! Mic drop that middle! I’m right there with you. Given just who Cal is as a football program (i.e. not a blue blood football program and never will be), let’s keep the floor in the middle and give the current leadership the time they need to steadily build the program's floor higher.
Cal fired Tedford with 3 years left on his contract. Fired Dykes with two years remaining on his contract. And importantly, after the season, not during. By those yardsticks, we can’t really be talking about firing Wilcox at least until after the 2024 or even 2025 season. It isn’t going to happen as long as Wilcox keeps the floor rising steadily, albeit very slowly. Cal just isn’t a program that can hire and fire and BUY its way to quick success. Other football programs can do that, but Cal cannot for all the reasons Andy mentioned in the podcast. For a middling program that needs a tortoise not a hare at the helm, I think we need to give Wilcox a LOT of time to work and build.
On the concept of the “middle”: our society is often not accepting of a middle, as Andy pointed out with the polarization of our current media and politics. And admittedly, it’s usually hard to find anything good about being in the middle because it is by definition not good. It’s the middle. But everyone hates being in the gutter, and from there the middle usually looks pretty good. Given the kind of football program Cal is, replacing coaches every 3-4 years will just get us a lot of sad “rebuilding” gutter years over the long haul with few chances for quick turnarounds because there’s no coach out there, even the greatest of them, that is going to be able to BUY Cal’s way to success. We can only slowly BUILD here, and I think Wilcox gets that, and I think the program, being what it is and not likely to change, is right to give him the time he needs to do that.
I’m on the same page as Andy and Rob. Not scoring a lot is frustrating, but I’ve been a Cal fan for a long time, and it’s a lot worse not scoring points while your defense also gives up 40-50 points a game and only winning 1-3 games a year. I feel like good defenses are harder to build and maintain than offenses and I like the fact that we’ve been able to do that consistently while not engaging in shady practices and sacrificing who we are. Musgrave and the O-Line coach definitely need to go, but I’m willing to give Wilcox another shot to install someone else who can produce points. We can do so much worse. The first half of Tedford was great. The second half, not so much. Prior to him we had the Holmoecaust from 1997-2001 with no winning seasons for 5 years and some truly horrific losses. I think people forget just how demoralizing that period of football was or weren’t around to experience it first hand. Before him, we got a really inconsistent 6-6 season in 1996 from Mooch before he bailed and went to San Francisco. From 1973 to 1995, we had three winning seasons and no bowl games with Mike White, one 6-6 season and one 6-5 season and a bowl loss with Roger Theder, one winning season, one Play, with no bowl with Joe Kapp in 1982 followed by some really bad years and him getting canned in 86. Bruce Snyder was probably the best thing to ever happen to Cal when he showed up in 1987. He was a program builder, and actually wanted to stay, but even then, he didn’t have a winning season until his fourth year in 1990 and it took a Copper Bowl victory to break .500, his teams were on the losing end of some really lop-sided losses, and his teams were often undisciplined and committed a lot of penalties. He also never won a Big Game, even with his best team, the 10-2 Citrus Bowl team in 1991. After being run off by our idiot AD, we got Washington D-Coordinator Keith Gilbertson who never really wanted to be at Cal and I don’t know why he was hired in the first place. He managed to pull one winning season and a bowl win out of his ass in 1993 largely using Snyder’s recruits. So all told, from 1973-2001, we had 7 winning seasons, 2 .500 seasons and 20 losing seasons, most of which were played by some truly horrific teams and who were on the receiving end of some epic beat-downs. The 2001 USC game in the rain captured the despondency of that era probably better than anything. I say all that because Wilcox is a cultural gem. He’s a program builder, does things the right way, and his teams aren’t on the receiving end of epic beat-downs very often. I feel like there’s some parallels with Snyder and Wilcox, and I don’t want to see him run off the way Snyder was when he was on the edge of doing something special. He just needs an offense, and it’s probably not anything he’s not already thinking about.
This was well written, and I enjoyed reading it. But it is also a case for settling for mediocrity because it's better than terrible. I don't think Wilcox is on the edge of doing something special at all, and his 16-26 conference record into his sixth season seems to bears that out. The man does not have even one signature win in his tenure. Yes, he beat two very average USC teams and even beat a Washington team in 2018 that made the Rose Bowl. But let's recall that normally stellar quarterback Jake Browning played the worst game of his career in that game and was sitting on the sidelines when his inexperienced sub threw a pick six. The win was exhilarating, but it was not career defining.
I keep thinking what Wisconsin just did in firing their head coach who had a 62-36 record at the school. Wisconsin is often called Berkeley on the shores of Lake Madison with high academic standards, progressive policies and a bunch of professors and administrators who probably thumb their nose at the sports program. Just like Cal, except they have an AD who played football at Wisconsin, played in the NFL, and understands what the importance of winning can do for the school.
As for parallels to Bruce Snyder, I remember when Snyder, coming off three losing seasons, announced to the world that his 1990 team was going to run the ball down his opponent's throats. He accomplished that with two 1,000 yard rushers. Of course he could make that prediction because he had already recruited and developed a ton of NFL talent along his O line. Anyone remember Troy Auzenne, Steve Gordon and Todd Steussie? I would love to see Wilcox make a similar turnaround, but I just don't see it.
I don’t think accepting mediocrity is what I meant so much as pointing out that while we’ve experienced historical success it’s been in extremely short unsustained stretches interspersed between sustained periods of being an embarrassing cellar-dweller. Agree on the Snyder O-lines. Tedford had those as well in his early years. The interesting thing I’ve always thought about Tedford was his best (2004 in my opinion) season was accomplished largely using a mixture of his own young talent and Holmoe recruits. 2006 was probably the only really good season made up entirely of players his staff recruited and developed. I don’t really know how to explain what happened after that. Sustaining a program is hard. Sustaining one at Cal is harder. I guess I’m saying I’m ok with sustained .500 and consistent leadership who actually want to be in a tough environment and not turning the program into an academic joke as a floor and trying to keep building the floor higher instead of constantly turning things over with people who use us as a stepping stone every 2-3 years. If nothing changes with the offense this go around, then I agree, time to move on regardless. I really don’t miss teams dropping 50-60 points on us though.
We as a fanbase tolerate mediocrity far better than most state flagships do. Most of us are okay with a .500 team most years but want to see a breakthrough every few seasons. Even Colorado of all teams did it in 2016 under McIntyre.
Why did Mike White leave? I feel like I read something somewhere about compromising on academics or something. I wasn’t alive yet. I noticed he left with a winning record in 77.
Definitely. But that raises another point on why I like Wilcox and want to be a little more patient. I don’t worry for one second that some recruiting scandal is going break. From everything I’ve seen and read, dude is squeaky clean. Trading some flashier immediate successes only to possibly have to vacate wins down the road or something because staff were cheaters and cut corners seems like a devil’s bargain.
Great Pod as always! I do have to say I disagree with some of the sentiment, even though I could very well be wrong. I didn’t go to school there, so I don’t have the academic connection. I grew up in Northern California and I’m a fan by regional association. Cal has to win games. Wanting Wilcox gone is justified. If he was fired and some young coach came in and turned the program around and was gone in three years great! It would create excitement around the program. More high school kids would be interested. Would Desean Jackson still want to leave LA for Cal if this is how Tedford looked? Last weekends game was how you lose fans and become the laughing stock. I listen to pac 12 podcasts and how other people talk about Cal is really sad. Asking to fire a coach after a year or two is crazy yes. Having a coach in year six that has a consistent losing record in conference is justifiable wanting him gone. Being apathetic and being ok with making a low tier bowl game is bullshit in year six. If Wilcox doesn’t make it to a bowl again he should resign. Like I said I may be wrong, but don’t agree with the sentiment especially after this long. That wazzu game was pathetic and also will do nothing to create new fandom/generate revenue.
Thank you for listening! Appreciate the comment even if we look at this differently. I truly hope we can build back the regional fan base with no competition in the east bay. Go Bears!
The extra practices help development big time. It also helps team morale just to go somewhere for their season. There’s only benefits to going to a bowl. Not necessarily having to do with exposure.
Enjoyed the p-cast. Makes sense to me.
Thank you for listening!
I'm torn on the gist of this conversation. While I like Wilcox and probably would be satisfied with a regular 6-6 or 7-5 season most of the time, with an occasional 8 win season thrown in for good measure. I'd say if he can do that he has a job for life. But 5-7's and 4-8's really muddy the waters. The ennui of the program is starting to become noticeable unless we can win next week and somehow pull out an upset in addition to be beating Stanford. Blind loyalty to subordinates is not a recipe for success as a chief executive. There was another post saying we can't assume Colorado is a victory and who knows they might be primed to upset Cal. If that happens we all have reason to worry.
Seeing how close to 2/3 of FBS teams are now bowl eligible it should be considered a failure even at Cal to not make a bowl game.
Mediocrity in a program is playing in bottom tier bowls every year, with an occasional good bowl and occasional missing a bowl year thrown in. Most Cal alums would find that acceptable.
We are beneath mediocre right now which SHOULD be unacceptable, even with our moribund football history. I mean Kansas, KANSAS! got their football act together. Anyone implying we should accept this because we are losing "28-9" (which I guess is considered competitive) instead of "48-3" is doing the program a disservice by having such low expectations.
3-2*
5-7 (lost 40 players at Arizona due to covid)
8-5
7-6
5-7
Remind me how we are beneath mediocrity right now?
That game last week was 14-9 with 12 mins left in the 4th and a 3rd down stop away from Cal having the ball back with a chance to take the lead.
Not only that, but nobody ever said we should accept anything because of a score.
Thanks for the comment, hope you actually listened to the podcast.
There are about 40 bowl games. There are about 130 FBS schools.
That's about 2/3 of all FBS schools that can play in a bowl game.
You did respond to the right comment.
Now can mean this exact moment, or it can mean a more broader time, such as current situation.
From the context, it is pretty obvious that he means close to 2/3 of FBS teams can play in a bowl game in the current system, so it would be a failure for Cal not to play in it each year.
Inspiring speech, Andy! Mic drop that middle! I’m right there with you. Given just who Cal is as a football program (i.e. not a blue blood football program and never will be), let’s keep the floor in the middle and give the current leadership the time they need to steadily build the program's floor higher.
Cal fired Tedford with 3 years left on his contract. Fired Dykes with two years remaining on his contract. And importantly, after the season, not during. By those yardsticks, we can’t really be talking about firing Wilcox at least until after the 2024 or even 2025 season. It isn’t going to happen as long as Wilcox keeps the floor rising steadily, albeit very slowly. Cal just isn’t a program that can hire and fire and BUY its way to quick success. Other football programs can do that, but Cal cannot for all the reasons Andy mentioned in the podcast. For a middling program that needs a tortoise not a hare at the helm, I think we need to give Wilcox a LOT of time to work and build.
On the concept of the “middle”: our society is often not accepting of a middle, as Andy pointed out with the polarization of our current media and politics. And admittedly, it’s usually hard to find anything good about being in the middle because it is by definition not good. It’s the middle. But everyone hates being in the gutter, and from there the middle usually looks pretty good. Given the kind of football program Cal is, replacing coaches every 3-4 years will just get us a lot of sad “rebuilding” gutter years over the long haul with few chances for quick turnarounds because there’s no coach out there, even the greatest of them, that is going to be able to BUY Cal’s way to success. We can only slowly BUILD here, and I think Wilcox gets that, and I think the program, being what it is and not likely to change, is right to give him the time he needs to do that.
Wonderfully said, better than both Rob and I said. Appreciate you listening, Go Bears!!
I’m on the same page as Andy and Rob. Not scoring a lot is frustrating, but I’ve been a Cal fan for a long time, and it’s a lot worse not scoring points while your defense also gives up 40-50 points a game and only winning 1-3 games a year. I feel like good defenses are harder to build and maintain than offenses and I like the fact that we’ve been able to do that consistently while not engaging in shady practices and sacrificing who we are. Musgrave and the O-Line coach definitely need to go, but I’m willing to give Wilcox another shot to install someone else who can produce points. We can do so much worse. The first half of Tedford was great. The second half, not so much. Prior to him we had the Holmoecaust from 1997-2001 with no winning seasons for 5 years and some truly horrific losses. I think people forget just how demoralizing that period of football was or weren’t around to experience it first hand. Before him, we got a really inconsistent 6-6 season in 1996 from Mooch before he bailed and went to San Francisco. From 1973 to 1995, we had three winning seasons and no bowl games with Mike White, one 6-6 season and one 6-5 season and a bowl loss with Roger Theder, one winning season, one Play, with no bowl with Joe Kapp in 1982 followed by some really bad years and him getting canned in 86. Bruce Snyder was probably the best thing to ever happen to Cal when he showed up in 1987. He was a program builder, and actually wanted to stay, but even then, he didn’t have a winning season until his fourth year in 1990 and it took a Copper Bowl victory to break .500, his teams were on the losing end of some really lop-sided losses, and his teams were often undisciplined and committed a lot of penalties. He also never won a Big Game, even with his best team, the 10-2 Citrus Bowl team in 1991. After being run off by our idiot AD, we got Washington D-Coordinator Keith Gilbertson who never really wanted to be at Cal and I don’t know why he was hired in the first place. He managed to pull one winning season and a bowl win out of his ass in 1993 largely using Snyder’s recruits. So all told, from 1973-2001, we had 7 winning seasons, 2 .500 seasons and 20 losing seasons, most of which were played by some truly horrific teams and who were on the receiving end of some epic beat-downs. The 2001 USC game in the rain captured the despondency of that era probably better than anything. I say all that because Wilcox is a cultural gem. He’s a program builder, does things the right way, and his teams aren’t on the receiving end of epic beat-downs very often. I feel like there’s some parallels with Snyder and Wilcox, and I don’t want to see him run off the way Snyder was when he was on the edge of doing something special. He just needs an offense, and it’s probably not anything he’s not already thinking about.
This was well written, and I enjoyed reading it. But it is also a case for settling for mediocrity because it's better than terrible. I don't think Wilcox is on the edge of doing something special at all, and his 16-26 conference record into his sixth season seems to bears that out. The man does not have even one signature win in his tenure. Yes, he beat two very average USC teams and even beat a Washington team in 2018 that made the Rose Bowl. But let's recall that normally stellar quarterback Jake Browning played the worst game of his career in that game and was sitting on the sidelines when his inexperienced sub threw a pick six. The win was exhilarating, but it was not career defining.
I keep thinking what Wisconsin just did in firing their head coach who had a 62-36 record at the school. Wisconsin is often called Berkeley on the shores of Lake Madison with high academic standards, progressive policies and a bunch of professors and administrators who probably thumb their nose at the sports program. Just like Cal, except they have an AD who played football at Wisconsin, played in the NFL, and understands what the importance of winning can do for the school.
As for parallels to Bruce Snyder, I remember when Snyder, coming off three losing seasons, announced to the world that his 1990 team was going to run the ball down his opponent's throats. He accomplished that with two 1,000 yard rushers. Of course he could make that prediction because he had already recruited and developed a ton of NFL talent along his O line. Anyone remember Troy Auzenne, Steve Gordon and Todd Steussie? I would love to see Wilcox make a similar turnaround, but I just don't see it.
I don’t think accepting mediocrity is what I meant so much as pointing out that while we’ve experienced historical success it’s been in extremely short unsustained stretches interspersed between sustained periods of being an embarrassing cellar-dweller. Agree on the Snyder O-lines. Tedford had those as well in his early years. The interesting thing I’ve always thought about Tedford was his best (2004 in my opinion) season was accomplished largely using a mixture of his own young talent and Holmoe recruits. 2006 was probably the only really good season made up entirely of players his staff recruited and developed. I don’t really know how to explain what happened after that. Sustaining a program is hard. Sustaining one at Cal is harder. I guess I’m saying I’m ok with sustained .500 and consistent leadership who actually want to be in a tough environment and not turning the program into an academic joke as a floor and trying to keep building the floor higher instead of constantly turning things over with people who use us as a stepping stone every 2-3 years. If nothing changes with the offense this go around, then I agree, time to move on regardless. I really don’t miss teams dropping 50-60 points on us though.
We as a fanbase tolerate mediocrity far better than most state flagships do. Most of us are okay with a .500 team most years but want to see a breakthrough every few seasons. Even Colorado of all teams did it in 2016 under McIntyre.
Yo thank you so much for this comment, its that historical context thats so so valuable to keep in perspective. Go Bears!
Why did Mike White leave? I feel like I read something somewhere about compromising on academics or something. I wasn’t alive yet. I noticed he left with a winning record in 77.
Definitely. But that raises another point on why I like Wilcox and want to be a little more patient. I don’t worry for one second that some recruiting scandal is going break. From everything I’ve seen and read, dude is squeaky clean. Trading some flashier immediate successes only to possibly have to vacate wins down the road or something because staff were cheaters and cut corners seems like a devil’s bargain.
ASU is the perfect example of that bargain, sold their soul to get a couple good seasons, now lost their entire team and coaching staff
Great Pod as always! I do have to say I disagree with some of the sentiment, even though I could very well be wrong. I didn’t go to school there, so I don’t have the academic connection. I grew up in Northern California and I’m a fan by regional association. Cal has to win games. Wanting Wilcox gone is justified. If he was fired and some young coach came in and turned the program around and was gone in three years great! It would create excitement around the program. More high school kids would be interested. Would Desean Jackson still want to leave LA for Cal if this is how Tedford looked? Last weekends game was how you lose fans and become the laughing stock. I listen to pac 12 podcasts and how other people talk about Cal is really sad. Asking to fire a coach after a year or two is crazy yes. Having a coach in year six that has a consistent losing record in conference is justifiable wanting him gone. Being apathetic and being ok with making a low tier bowl game is bullshit in year six. If Wilcox doesn’t make it to a bowl again he should resign. Like I said I may be wrong, but don’t agree with the sentiment especially after this long. That wazzu game was pathetic and also will do nothing to create new fandom/generate revenue.
Thank you for listening! Appreciate the comment even if we look at this differently. I truly hope we can build back the regional fan base with no competition in the east bay. Go Bears!
Andy this is a genuine question. I did not come back to this old thread to be a mean. Are you on the fire Wilcox train now after that Colorado game?
Appreciate the question! I am mulling everything over before we record.
In a vacuum, I still believe Wilcox can be successful at this level but I don't know if you can actually recover from a loss like this.
Losing to AZ last year and Colorado this year, retaining the o-coordinator who was the main issue last season. Its loyalty to an absolute fault.
Yeah we just need to execute to reach 6-6.
No one pays attention to Cal football on a national scale regardless….nonetheless, it would be HUGE for the program to bowl.
NOT bowling would be a major blow for Wilcox.
We played Notre Dame too.
We will play Illinois in regular season soon.
The extra practices help development big time. It also helps team morale just to go somewhere for their season. There’s only benefits to going to a bowl. Not necessarily having to do with exposure.