1000% with you on the analysis of how this could go very very right. I'd only curb my sunshine pumping enthusiasm with the following observation...the entire country has seen the examples of Texas Tech and Indiana. So this is the new baseline from which we all start. Many, many programs will have the financial resources, along with a stunning array of new head coaches, and 50% will lose on any given weekend. So what I think will be an equal determiner of our longer range success is a point you made early in your analysis. How will Tosh and the program (and by extension the fan base) deal with the inevitable disappointments that will come. I believe with all my heart they will be fewer and different, but it is the nature of the beast. It will be interesting to see, but I for one, am very optimistic.
You make an excellent point: there will be disappointments. I know the Bears’ schedule next year is brutal, esp. compared to this year’s. In light of this, as well as the fact the Lupoi hiring happened after signing day this cycle, I’m actually looking to 2027, 2028 and 2029 as Cal’s potential breakthrough years. If wholesale changes in coaching are made, it typically takes a while (Cignetti anomaly notwithstanding) for the newly acquired talent (coaches, players) to gel under the new systems, culture, etc. So I will be pretty patient, certainly at the start.
I get your point here, but respectfully disagree. Right now Cal has a generational talent in JKS. Given Tosh's recruiting acumen, Cal has an opportunity this year to attract high caliber players both from high school and the portal. What OL, WR, and RB wouldn't want to block for, catch passes from, and run with JKS? The schedule is the schedule, and it's certainly not as tough as the Pac12 years when Cal had to play $C, ucla, UO and UW every year. Provided that the funding is there, the goal in 2026 should be no less than the conference championship game.
Cignetti: 23-2 in two years at what was a shitty Indiana program. 13-0 this year with Mendoza. We have JKS. I expect 10 wins next year and 13 in 2027, with a playoff appearance.
Wait what? What happened to “If they hire Tosh then I’m walking away from CAL football” that you said last week? Now I’m hearing you say you think this should put them in championship conversation within two years. Okay! I hope you’re correct. Cignetti is in rare air.
I did say that and I also said I hope Tosh succeeds, but I'm not excited about the hire. So for all the Tosh fans: with all the big money coming from alums because of Tosh, and with the return of JKS, why would we expect less from Tosh than Indiana got from Cignetti? Isn't he the great recruiter? If so he can get some great O-Linemen and receivers and RB's (and others) from the Portal. If he's a respected coach then he knows who the good assistants are and he can attract some great assistant coaches. We are going to find out if there is more to this hire than just Hopium. For all of us, including Tosh, I hope he succeeds.
Cignetti was a proven coach that brought in a system that he can recruit for. The biggest questions around Tosh was always his experience level, and this is the risk that we chose. He's going to have to figure it out on the run, so it's going to take longer.
I would also like to point out that Cignetti brought over most of his JMU roster, which he had already coached for years, to Indiana his first year. So it wasn't completely a hodgepodge of portal pickups. We should have more modest expectations, though I sleep easier knowing we have one of the best recruiters in the country running the program.
That’s exactly the difference. Cignetti had his system all set up. With the portal, he could just plug guys in and they were off to the races. Tosh will have to construct his own system, and that will inevitably involve some adjustments, so probably not CFP ready in year one. But if he gets JKS for three years, it could get very exciting in Memorial Stadium very soon.
We should assume we get two more years max with JKS. He's already showing NFL throws, he's going in the first round after Junior year regardless of where he plays in college. Tosh really needs to hit the ground running and destroy the transfer portal this off season so that we can use next year as a building block for year 3.
Additionally, one year ago JKS was signed with/ UO, yet here we are.
There is no reason to delay expectations, the possibilities are here now! And I fully believe Tosh intends to hit the ground running. I mean, he already has.
Preach brother. Preach. This is what we've been building toward for the past several years. The rest of the college football world is about to find out exactly what THE University of California is capable of when it puts its mind and resources toward a certain goal. Anyone ever been to Tuscaloosa? Eugene? Athens, GA? College Station? The idea that we have let ourselves be outspent by "those programs" is ludicrous. We've never lacked the ability. What we've lacked has been the vision and the will. Now we have those and the perennial powers should be deeply afraid.
There's a reckoning happening for the decades of arrogance in the South East. I can see Bear Territory spreading over the hills and valleys and across the cotton fields, with a truly bizarre advancing army of the weathered and beaten, the tireless pumpers of sunshine, the calgorithmic rebels in the matrix, and the blue and gold bleeding triumverite of RichRon and the Lunatic. We coming.
I can’t wait for this to happen. I love the southeast, but the SEC itself and its sanctimonious “it just matters more” makes me puke a little every time I hear it.
Great analysis. As a detail, I’d put SMU on the same level as Texas Tech, just luckier last year than this but still, to take your point, transformed with a donor load of cash when it joined the ACC.
All that said, I have to simply make the point that it’s the money and the portal that has completely corrupted college sports. From the TV money that destroyed the PAC 12 to the NIL money that now creates bidding wars and portal transfers of top players. This has become especially bad at the D1 P4/5 level where it has created essentially a giant farm team for the NFL.
Furthermore, for many though not all players, it’s no longer about being a student athlete and getting a degree and solid education from a great university. It’s about how much playing time and TV exposure are they going to get on their way to the holy grail of à big money NFL contract.
Coaches recruit a 5-star high school player only to have him leave through the portal for a better offer and more playing time at another fill in the blank institution.
Moreover, if I had a starred kid and was interested in the education he was going to receive in addition to the football program (and this goes for basketball and baseball as well, not to mention other sports too), I’d have to think long and hard about sending him to any of the 4 West Coast schools that are now in the ACC and Big 10.
Why? Because of the travel to the East Coast and the amount of time that takes measured in missed classes and study time. Yes, sure, one of the big selling points Tosh has is that getting a degree from UC Berkeley is worth a lot, but that’s only an effective part of his pitch if the recruit plans to stay at Cal long enough to actually graduate, which with the GD portal is no longer the case.
Recruits not in the first level rotation who’ve spent a year on the bench as freshman frequently just leave after that first year for a team where they have a better offer of playing time. Better players leave for more NIL money and the promise of more TV exposure by playing on a top 25 team.
Suffice it to say, there’s no longer the expectation that a student- athlete will be around for 4 years and can be depended upon to become a team building block following on graduating seniors.
For P4/5 coaches it can be where they need a portal reload every year rather than relying on growing high school recruits over 4 years.
It’s a whole new world of college sports at most D1 schools, and it’s not a particularly pretty picture because of the corruption brought on by the money.
Trenchant commentary on the descent into decadence of college athletics. Sad! But note recruiting still matters. See recent report that tells us 90% of Georgia's starts were by recruits, 85% at Notre Dame, 83% at Texas and so on. Tailenders not surprising: Ole Miss, Texas Tech, and Indiana at 35%. Since a Berkeley degree is a competitive advantage, may be room hold on to players if paired with player development, entrenching culture and executing winning schemes.
When Ohio State came to Memorial a few years ago, my section was filled with Ohio State fans. I asked a few of them how they got their tickets they said they just bought Cal season tickets because they were the same price a ONE GAME at Ohio State.
Some here have no idea what we are up against competing financially with the blue bloods of CFP. Do you really think the states like Texas and Florida and Ohio can't compete with "California's 5th largest GDP" when it comes to college football?
Team athletics is an actual zero-sum game. You only get a larger share of wins by taking them from someone else. All those others are playing the same NIL game with lots of money, coaches who are at a minimum just as good as ours, and fan bases that are much larger and more loyal. Trying to copy the Indiana unicorn model is going to lead to frustration and disappointment because everyone else is after the same thing with a head start and competitive advantage.
Ohio State is an exception, EVERYONE in Northeast Ohio supports the school even those that graduated from other universities in the area, Its a unique situation. Indiana success is a college football miracle but I think a program we should really be studying is Vanderbilt.
The level of fanaticism at schools like Ohio State is remarkable, even compared to schools like USC.
I once attended a microtechnology conference organized by an Ohio State professor, Mauro Ferrari. Nothing to do with football or any other sports. Ferrari showed a 1000x photo of a piece of work to demonstrate what one can do with microelectromechanical machining. It was a microscopic replica of the Ohio State football stadium.
High school recruiting is super important because it's more expensive to poach players through the transfer portal. People can demand the least when they have no resume to show.
Also, many athletes also stay -- we just don't count how many stay because of the drama around those that leave. If you have a strong culture and a shot at competing for a title, you should be able to manage your roster. But it's really hard to for any program to nail both points.
Yes, and we have to remember that a small percentage of college athletes make it to/in the pros so the value of an education is a strong selling g point. Nowhere better than Cal. Add a vibrant Bay Area and you have a damn good recruiting messages for high school athletes. Add to that playing on a good and winning team. Tosh can make hay with all of that.
Notable that Cal basketball is living off the portal. This year 2/3 of players, including most of the minutes, are transfers. Impressive that Coach Madsen is able to scramble and construct a good team on the fly. Not sure if it is thanks to ability to persuade talent or coach them up. But goodness gracious, not like the old days.
It's definitely not NIL, and our team has struggled from that. Last year we were missing guards, this year we just don't have enough bigs. Madsen does miracle work developing everyone he gets though.
When I saw Joey McGuires name I immediately thought :”SHOW ME THE MONEY!” Wrong person! But by the end of the article, the reference itself turned out to be correct.
Texas Tech is able to do that because the Big 12 just doesn't have the money to compete with the B2 at a donations level. There was a window for some team to become the "OU / UT" of the old Big 12, and it looks like Texas Tech and BYU are committing the resources.
The ACC's future is gloom at best, but Cal also has an opportunity here for the exact same reasons. There's basically 2 teams willing to spend, Miami and FSU. And Miami just doesn't seem to have elite tier of NIL.
This is the Wild West of CFB. The overall parity is much higher because coaches just aren't as great nor as consistent when 70% of their rosters are in flux every season. The ones that excel are the ones like Cignetti who have a near plug-and-play system in place and have a clear identity of who they're targeting and recruiting.
We can do it, the question is whether Tosh can work his magic and flip enough talent by the next transfer window.
This is off topic of football, but just breaking that former Cal baseball and MLB great Jeff Kent has been admitted to the MLB baseball Hall of Fame. I believe you have a writer focused on baseball. Would be great if Write for California did a post on this. Go Bears……
While Frank Chance (The Tinkers/Evers/Chance guy from the classic old baseball poem) is the Baseball HOF, and went to Cal, he didn't really play baseball on the Cal Baseball team and only go into it when he moved to a college up in Washington.
Jeff Kent, OTOH, is therefore the first Cal baseball player to be elected to the Baseball HOF. Not bad for someone who walked on to the baseball team, was never All-Conference or All-American, yet didn't do too badly for himself for a 20th Round draft pick in the MLB draft...
This is exactly why I was optimistic about the Tosh hire: not specifically because of him as a coach, but because of what it suggested about the increased seriousness of Cal's football operation.
Phenomenal post. Cal treated that 10 million dollar buyout like it was nothing, and we beat the entire nation in the JKS bidding war. All of that was before the Tosh hire inspired a new wave of donations. All evidence points to a growing war chest.
As usual Nick, right on the money (pun intended). I have been around Cal sports - going back to the late 1950s - and I have never seen the energy an excitement that I am seeing now.
I'm a CAL FOOTBALL donor. $mall Fry in an ocean of Big Fi$h. I Didn't give a dime last year and wasn't going to give anything this year. I now plan to donate as much as I ever have. My only worry is that I kinda remember feeling the same way when we hired Dikes.....and Wilcox. Hope springs eternal. LUPOI has to be THE GUY! Right?!?
I have had the same concern but unlike Dykes Tosh is truly homegrown. If he is successful he can become legendary and will be well compensated for it (only the NFL opportunity would make sense in this world).
If there is a house maximum for what goes to players, what does further money go to? Coaches, staff, and facilities, sure. But if everyone is at the house max, the playing field might get to be fairly even, no?
How to allocate the player money across the 22 O & D starters, plus the special teamers, is an interesting question, much like what NFL teams face.
I’d like to see some investment in marketing, to boost attendance and tv viewers.
Free season tix for frosh, $20 student ticket season pass for 2026 for other students, $30 for 2027, etc. Once established as a fun place to be on Saturdays, can then adjust the pricing. But we need to build more student fans so they become adult fans/investors. Helps some with student recruiting as well.
Like the idea but free is never good. It dilutes the product too much. We can get to free in a different way: merch giveaways, etc, but the tix themselves should never be free
what the ever-loving hell are you talking about? free/heavily discounted tickets are absolutely a good idea. much, much better than tarps and large swaths of empty seats.
filling the stands is unequivocally a good thing.
unless you want to be like stanfurd and price gouge the tickets so the camera can zoom in on rows and rows of empty seats.
I don't need them to appreciate it yet, I just need them to put butts in seats. They'll appreciate it the first time they witness JKS throw 70yd bomb in person.
Free could create a logistical nightmare and end up with as many empty seats, when you think about it. my first thoughts would be..
- How do they get allocated?
- If they are free, what's stopping tons of non-serious football fans from claiming them without committing to going and then flaking if something better comes up or theyre too hungover, etc. -- empty seats.
-first come first serve. tickets added to account for free. first 10k only guaranteed admission, or w/e number makes sense.
-see point above.
this isn't rocket science, and has been done before without the world coming to an end. also, plenty of people get paid 6 figures in the athletic department, I'm sure if we get enough of them in a room they can hash something out if they try hard enough.
Free is ideal until we're packing Memorial. I'll settle for affordable though.
To be clear, I'm talking about the students, freshman in particular. every good dealer know the first one's free lol
Further money goes to the players. The House maximum is what universities are allowed to pay players and comes out to around $15M / year for football, which is not enough. Most rosters are now over 100 students. Other NIL has much stricter requirements now, and many of the old NIL programs wouldn't pass the clearinghouse going forward. It's why Cal's and others' NIL went away, and it's why this previous season had such a crazy transfer portal -- a lot of money that wouldn't be able to be spent in the future was spent to win now.
Money talks! It looks like Cal is destined to be a big-time football team like Texas Tech, with the money and support from donors and the big-time fundraisers in Rob Rivera and Chancellor Lyons. It is a good idea to have Cal graduates like Lupoi, Rivera, and Lyons, who knew what Cal needed to get there to be a top-notch football team. Go Bears
If it’s all about money and top recruits, not sure how that explains the Utah Utes consistency over many years with 3-Star recruits.
As we all know, Success has a lot of variables and moving parts in sports such as football, and many such as luck and weather are unknown.
Lupoi has to be a step in the right direction, based on what we’ve seen in his past and hope in one of the aforementioned unknowns, sheer faith that Cal Football will be much improved!
Yes, coaching and team culture play a big part in success. Great stats floating around about the talent evaluations of Indiana vs Ohio State, with OSU having a bunch of 5 star and 4 star players, and Indiana having NO 5 star, just a few 4 star, and mostly 3 star players. But money still matters, as it brings in the excellent coaching, which can turn 3 star players into 4 and 5 star players. Indiana should be pretty fearsome next year if they can retain caliber of coordinator and assistant coaching, as Indiana's success and investment will bring them more 4 and 5 star players coupled with the already existing excellent coaching.
1000% with you on the analysis of how this could go very very right. I'd only curb my sunshine pumping enthusiasm with the following observation...the entire country has seen the examples of Texas Tech and Indiana. So this is the new baseline from which we all start. Many, many programs will have the financial resources, along with a stunning array of new head coaches, and 50% will lose on any given weekend. So what I think will be an equal determiner of our longer range success is a point you made early in your analysis. How will Tosh and the program (and by extension the fan base) deal with the inevitable disappointments that will come. I believe with all my heart they will be fewer and different, but it is the nature of the beast. It will be interesting to see, but I for one, am very optimistic.
You make an excellent point: there will be disappointments. I know the Bears’ schedule next year is brutal, esp. compared to this year’s. In light of this, as well as the fact the Lupoi hiring happened after signing day this cycle, I’m actually looking to 2027, 2028 and 2029 as Cal’s potential breakthrough years. If wholesale changes in coaching are made, it typically takes a while (Cignetti anomaly notwithstanding) for the newly acquired talent (coaches, players) to gel under the new systems, culture, etc. So I will be pretty patient, certainly at the start.
I get your point here, but respectfully disagree. Right now Cal has a generational talent in JKS. Given Tosh's recruiting acumen, Cal has an opportunity this year to attract high caliber players both from high school and the portal. What OL, WR, and RB wouldn't want to block for, catch passes from, and run with JKS? The schedule is the schedule, and it's certainly not as tough as the Pac12 years when Cal had to play $C, ucla, UO and UW every year. Provided that the funding is there, the goal in 2026 should be no less than the conference championship game.
Cignetti: 23-2 in two years at what was a shitty Indiana program. 13-0 this year with Mendoza. We have JKS. I expect 10 wins next year and 13 in 2027, with a playoff appearance.
That’s our Rugbear!!! I’m on your bandwagon my friend!
Wait what? What happened to “If they hire Tosh then I’m walking away from CAL football” that you said last week? Now I’m hearing you say you think this should put them in championship conversation within two years. Okay! I hope you’re correct. Cignetti is in rare air.
I did say that and I also said I hope Tosh succeeds, but I'm not excited about the hire. So for all the Tosh fans: with all the big money coming from alums because of Tosh, and with the return of JKS, why would we expect less from Tosh than Indiana got from Cignetti? Isn't he the great recruiter? If so he can get some great O-Linemen and receivers and RB's (and others) from the Portal. If he's a respected coach then he knows who the good assistants are and he can attract some great assistant coaches. We are going to find out if there is more to this hire than just Hopium. For all of us, including Tosh, I hope he succeeds.
It is now possible to turn a program around literally overnight due to the portal. Indiana went from 3-9 to 11-1 in Cignetti’s first year.
Cignetti was a proven coach that brought in a system that he can recruit for. The biggest questions around Tosh was always his experience level, and this is the risk that we chose. He's going to have to figure it out on the run, so it's going to take longer.
I would also like to point out that Cignetti brought over most of his JMU roster, which he had already coached for years, to Indiana his first year. So it wasn't completely a hodgepodge of portal pickups. We should have more modest expectations, though I sleep easier knowing we have one of the best recruiters in the country running the program.
My sunshine is pumped.
That’s exactly the difference. Cignetti had his system all set up. With the portal, he could just plug guys in and they were off to the races. Tosh will have to construct his own system, and that will inevitably involve some adjustments, so probably not CFP ready in year one. But if he gets JKS for three years, it could get very exciting in Memorial Stadium very soon.
I'm a simple guy. I'll settle for an ACCCG in year one hahaha.
Joking aside, we should see improvements but of course it's still a big climb. Excited for the future.
We should assume we get two more years max with JKS. He's already showing NFL throws, he's going in the first round after Junior year regardless of where he plays in college. Tosh really needs to hit the ground running and destroy the transfer portal this off season so that we can use next year as a building block for year 3.
Additionally, one year ago JKS was signed with/ UO, yet here we are.
There is no reason to delay expectations, the possibilities are here now! And I fully believe Tosh intends to hit the ground running. I mean, he already has.
I think we can expect to see improvements in year one.
Thanks...and yes, we will all do well to remember what you say here.
Lets make the SEC and Big 10 who spat on us when we applied, find out the hard way how much of the nation's GDP comes from California
Love it!
Preach brother. Preach. This is what we've been building toward for the past several years. The rest of the college football world is about to find out exactly what THE University of California is capable of when it puts its mind and resources toward a certain goal. Anyone ever been to Tuscaloosa? Eugene? Athens, GA? College Station? The idea that we have let ourselves be outspent by "those programs" is ludicrous. We've never lacked the ability. What we've lacked has been the vision and the will. Now we have those and the perennial powers should be deeply afraid.
There's a reckoning happening for the decades of arrogance in the South East. I can see Bear Territory spreading over the hills and valleys and across the cotton fields, with a truly bizarre advancing army of the weathered and beaten, the tireless pumpers of sunshine, the calgorithmic rebels in the matrix, and the blue and gold bleeding triumverite of RichRon and the Lunatic. We coming.
I can’t wait for this to happen. I love the southeast, but the SEC itself and its sanctimonious “it just matters more” makes me puke a little every time I hear it.
Well, looks like their CCG also matters a bit less!
Bookmark this one...love it!
Great analysis. As a detail, I’d put SMU on the same level as Texas Tech, just luckier last year than this but still, to take your point, transformed with a donor load of cash when it joined the ACC.
All that said, I have to simply make the point that it’s the money and the portal that has completely corrupted college sports. From the TV money that destroyed the PAC 12 to the NIL money that now creates bidding wars and portal transfers of top players. This has become especially bad at the D1 P4/5 level where it has created essentially a giant farm team for the NFL.
Furthermore, for many though not all players, it’s no longer about being a student athlete and getting a degree and solid education from a great university. It’s about how much playing time and TV exposure are they going to get on their way to the holy grail of à big money NFL contract.
Coaches recruit a 5-star high school player only to have him leave through the portal for a better offer and more playing time at another fill in the blank institution.
Moreover, if I had a starred kid and was interested in the education he was going to receive in addition to the football program (and this goes for basketball and baseball as well, not to mention other sports too), I’d have to think long and hard about sending him to any of the 4 West Coast schools that are now in the ACC and Big 10.
Why? Because of the travel to the East Coast and the amount of time that takes measured in missed classes and study time. Yes, sure, one of the big selling points Tosh has is that getting a degree from UC Berkeley is worth a lot, but that’s only an effective part of his pitch if the recruit plans to stay at Cal long enough to actually graduate, which with the GD portal is no longer the case.
Recruits not in the first level rotation who’ve spent a year on the bench as freshman frequently just leave after that first year for a team where they have a better offer of playing time. Better players leave for more NIL money and the promise of more TV exposure by playing on a top 25 team.
Suffice it to say, there’s no longer the expectation that a student- athlete will be around for 4 years and can be depended upon to become a team building block following on graduating seniors.
For P4/5 coaches it can be where they need a portal reload every year rather than relying on growing high school recruits over 4 years.
It’s a whole new world of college sports at most D1 schools, and it’s not a particularly pretty picture because of the corruption brought on by the money.
Trenchant commentary on the descent into decadence of college athletics. Sad! But note recruiting still matters. See recent report that tells us 90% of Georgia's starts were by recruits, 85% at Notre Dame, 83% at Texas and so on. Tailenders not surprising: Ole Miss, Texas Tech, and Indiana at 35%. Since a Berkeley degree is a competitive advantage, may be room hold on to players if paired with player development, entrenching culture and executing winning schemes.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6863114/2025/12/05/college-football-recruiting-high-school-coaches-data/
That’s a fascinating article!
To cherry pick some interesting data:
Ohio State 77.7% starts by recruits, 22.3% starts by transfers
Indiana 25.2% starts by recruits, 74.8 % starts by transfers (e.g. you-know-who)
So the top two teams are getting there in very different ways.
When Ohio State came to Memorial a few years ago, my section was filled with Ohio State fans. I asked a few of them how they got their tickets they said they just bought Cal season tickets because they were the same price a ONE GAME at Ohio State.
Some here have no idea what we are up against competing financially with the blue bloods of CFP. Do you really think the states like Texas and Florida and Ohio can't compete with "California's 5th largest GDP" when it comes to college football?
Team athletics is an actual zero-sum game. You only get a larger share of wins by taking them from someone else. All those others are playing the same NIL game with lots of money, coaches who are at a minimum just as good as ours, and fan bases that are much larger and more loyal. Trying to copy the Indiana unicorn model is going to lead to frustration and disappointment because everyone else is after the same thing with a head start and competitive advantage.
Ohio State is an exception, EVERYONE in Northeast Ohio supports the school even those that graduated from other universities in the area, Its a unique situation. Indiana success is a college football miracle but I think a program we should really be studying is Vanderbilt.
This is why you have to believe you are something special. Otherwise there isn't really a point.
The level of fanaticism at schools like Ohio State is remarkable, even compared to schools like USC.
I once attended a microtechnology conference organized by an Ohio State professor, Mauro Ferrari. Nothing to do with football or any other sports. Ferrari showed a 1000x photo of a piece of work to demonstrate what one can do with microelectromechanical machining. It was a microscopic replica of the Ohio State football stadium.
I wonder what Cal's numbers are. Maybe about 75% transfers?
Good call on SMU. There is a nice documentary on them that covers this and how they came back from the NCAA death penalty.
High school recruiting is super important because it's more expensive to poach players through the transfer portal. People can demand the least when they have no resume to show.
Also, many athletes also stay -- we just don't count how many stay because of the drama around those that leave. If you have a strong culture and a shot at competing for a title, you should be able to manage your roster. But it's really hard to for any program to nail both points.
Yes, and we have to remember that a small percentage of college athletes make it to/in the pros so the value of an education is a strong selling g point. Nowhere better than Cal. Add a vibrant Bay Area and you have a damn good recruiting messages for high school athletes. Add to that playing on a good and winning team. Tosh can make hay with all of that.
Notable that Cal basketball is living off the portal. This year 2/3 of players, including most of the minutes, are transfers. Impressive that Coach Madsen is able to scramble and construct a good team on the fly. Not sure if it is thanks to ability to persuade talent or coach them up. But goodness gracious, not like the old days.
It's definitely not NIL, and our team has struggled from that. Last year we were missing guards, this year we just don't have enough bigs. Madsen does miracle work developing everyone he gets though.
When I saw Joey McGuires name I immediately thought :”SHOW ME THE MONEY!” Wrong person! But by the end of the article, the reference itself turned out to be correct.
you should end articles like this with a link to the donation page...
marketing 101 :)
Texas Tech is able to do that because the Big 12 just doesn't have the money to compete with the B2 at a donations level. There was a window for some team to become the "OU / UT" of the old Big 12, and it looks like Texas Tech and BYU are committing the resources.
The ACC's future is gloom at best, but Cal also has an opportunity here for the exact same reasons. There's basically 2 teams willing to spend, Miami and FSU. And Miami just doesn't seem to have elite tier of NIL.
This is the Wild West of CFB. The overall parity is much higher because coaches just aren't as great nor as consistent when 70% of their rosters are in flux every season. The ones that excel are the ones like Cignetti who have a near plug-and-play system in place and have a clear identity of who they're targeting and recruiting.
We can do it, the question is whether Tosh can work his magic and flip enough talent by the next transfer window.
This is off topic of football, but just breaking that former Cal baseball and MLB great Jeff Kent has been admitted to the MLB baseball Hall of Fame. I believe you have a writer focused on baseball. Would be great if Write for California did a post on this. Go Bears……
While Frank Chance (The Tinkers/Evers/Chance guy from the classic old baseball poem) is the Baseball HOF, and went to Cal, he didn't really play baseball on the Cal Baseball team and only go into it when he moved to a college up in Washington.
Jeff Kent, OTOH, is therefore the first Cal baseball player to be elected to the Baseball HOF. Not bad for someone who walked on to the baseball team, was never All-Conference or All-American, yet didn't do too badly for himself for a 20th Round draft pick in the MLB draft...
still on topic of money though, since his endowment blesses one Cal woman per year in perpetuity
This is exactly why I was optimistic about the Tosh hire: not specifically because of him as a coach, but because of what it suggested about the increased seriousness of Cal's football operation.
Phenomenal post. Cal treated that 10 million dollar buyout like it was nothing, and we beat the entire nation in the JKS bidding war. All of that was before the Tosh hire inspired a new wave of donations. All evidence points to a growing war chest.
As usual Nick, right on the money (pun intended). I have been around Cal sports - going back to the late 1950s - and I have never seen the energy an excitement that I am seeing now.
I'm a CAL FOOTBALL donor. $mall Fry in an ocean of Big Fi$h. I Didn't give a dime last year and wasn't going to give anything this year. I now plan to donate as much as I ever have. My only worry is that I kinda remember feeling the same way when we hired Dikes.....and Wilcox. Hope springs eternal. LUPOI has to be THE GUY! Right?!?
I have had the same concern but unlike Dykes Tosh is truly homegrown. If he is successful he can become legendary and will be well compensated for it (only the NFL opportunity would make sense in this world).
Thankful for people like you - you make us stronger
If there is a house maximum for what goes to players, what does further money go to? Coaches, staff, and facilities, sure. But if everyone is at the house max, the playing field might get to be fairly even, no?
How to allocate the player money across the 22 O & D starters, plus the special teamers, is an interesting question, much like what NFL teams face.
I’d like to see some investment in marketing, to boost attendance and tv viewers.
Free season tix for frosh, $20 student ticket season pass for 2026 for other students, $30 for 2027, etc. Once established as a fun place to be on Saturdays, can then adjust the pricing. But we need to build more student fans so they become adult fans/investors. Helps some with student recruiting as well.
Like the idea but free is never good. It dilutes the product too much. We can get to free in a different way: merch giveaways, etc, but the tix themselves should never be free
what the ever-loving hell are you talking about? free/heavily discounted tickets are absolutely a good idea. much, much better than tarps and large swaths of empty seats.
filling the stands is unequivocally a good thing.
unless you want to be like stanfurd and price gouge the tickets so the camera can zoom in on rows and rows of empty seats.
Steep discount? Yes. Free? No.
Nobody appreciates whats given to them for free, especially 18 years olds.
I don't need them to appreciate it yet, I just need them to put butts in seats. They'll appreciate it the first time they witness JKS throw 70yd bomb in person.
Free could create a logistical nightmare and end up with as many empty seats, when you think about it. my first thoughts would be..
- How do they get allocated?
- If they are free, what's stopping tons of non-serious football fans from claiming them without committing to going and then flaking if something better comes up or theyre too hungover, etc. -- empty seats.
-first come first serve. tickets added to account for free. first 10k only guaranteed admission, or w/e number makes sense.
-see point above.
this isn't rocket science, and has been done before without the world coming to an end. also, plenty of people get paid 6 figures in the athletic department, I'm sure if we get enough of them in a room they can hash something out if they try hard enough.
Free is ideal until we're packing Memorial. I'll settle for affordable though.
To be clear, I'm talking about the students, freshman in particular. every good dealer know the first one's free lol
Further money goes to the players. The House maximum is what universities are allowed to pay players and comes out to around $15M / year for football, which is not enough. Most rosters are now over 100 students. Other NIL has much stricter requirements now, and many of the old NIL programs wouldn't pass the clearinghouse going forward. It's why Cal's and others' NIL went away, and it's why this previous season had such a crazy transfer portal -- a lot of money that wouldn't be able to be spent in the future was spent to win now.
Money talks! It looks like Cal is destined to be a big-time football team like Texas Tech, with the money and support from donors and the big-time fundraisers in Rob Rivera and Chancellor Lyons. It is a good idea to have Cal graduates like Lupoi, Rivera, and Lyons, who knew what Cal needed to get there to be a top-notch football team. Go Bears
Destined is too strong a word. But we seem to be very much headed in the right direction from a money standpoint
If it’s all about money and top recruits, not sure how that explains the Utah Utes consistency over many years with 3-Star recruits.
As we all know, Success has a lot of variables and moving parts in sports such as football, and many such as luck and weather are unknown.
Lupoi has to be a step in the right direction, based on what we’ve seen in his past and hope in one of the aforementioned unknowns, sheer faith that Cal Football will be much improved!
Go Bears! We Believe!
Yes, but Utah's talent deficiency specifically has always been keeping them from the top.
Yes, coaching and team culture play a big part in success. Great stats floating around about the talent evaluations of Indiana vs Ohio State, with OSU having a bunch of 5 star and 4 star players, and Indiana having NO 5 star, just a few 4 star, and mostly 3 star players. But money still matters, as it brings in the excellent coaching, which can turn 3 star players into 4 and 5 star players. Indiana should be pretty fearsome next year if they can retain caliber of coordinator and assistant coaching, as Indiana's success and investment will bring them more 4 and 5 star players coupled with the already existing excellent coaching.