I’m seeing a pretty good amount of Wilcox-defending on this thread, and man, I just do not get it. I think he’s a good guy, runs a clean program, graduates players, etc., but don’t we pay him $3 million + per year to win? Is 13-23 (or whatever we’re currently sitting at) in conference not replaceable? And this comes at a time when the pac 12 is a flaming bag of dogs*#%. Am I hallucinating when I see our stadium looking like a ghost town and sounding like a freaking library on gamedays? And where the hell are the students? There is absolutely no enthusiasm around the program. I’ll be skipping big game at the furd to instead take my wife (sac state alum) to the causeway classic to watch Troy Taylor lead a team that he’s take from perennial doormat to perennial contender. It can be done. If you told me someone like Washington was gonna pay us a buyout to steal Wilcox, holy hell how do we not take that deal and laugh all the way to the bank? And people are worried about recruiting? We’ve already lost our top three recruits this year and I’m just waiting for the class to finally completely implode. Like I said, I just do not get it.
I don't get it either. I would like to see Wilcox head off to Washington and see what he can do there. Let's remember that the stars of Cal's current recruiting class starting abandoning ship well before the Covid crisis hit. They didnt' like what they were seeing on the field, and nor did the fans who stayed away in droves after the Washington State debacle. For me, the clincher was how God awful the team looked playing their second string quarterback against Arizona, arguably the worst team the conference has seen, since, well, Cal in 2000.
Someone mentioned that Tedford was a Unicorn hire, and very few other head coaches could turn around a program that quickly. Well, Steve Mariucci had Cal in a bowl game in his first and only season in 1996. Bruce Snyder took over a moribund program from Joe Kapp and had them playing fun to watch football in his first season. I would love to see what a Troy Taylor could do at Cal. He has had success wherever he has gone and has paid his dues at multiple levels. Wilcox is a fail in his fifth season, and there are only a few places in the country where a fan base would be arguing for his return because they fear something worse in his absence.
Snyder won three games his first year, exactly one more than the previous year. He was one the hot seat going into year 4, when the program finally clicked. Mooch finished 6-6 his first year and he no doubt would have taken the program to new heights had the 49ers not scooped him, but he inherited good talent. Tedford inherited a 1-10 that hadn't been to a bowl game in six years and had them crushing a highly touted MSU team on the road in just the second game in. Snyder and Mooch were all-time great Cal coaches, but neither executed a turn around so comprehensively and as quickly as Tedford did.
One of those Snyder victories in year one was over Arizona State, the previous year's Rose bowl team. His teams played hard and usually only got beat by more talented squads. Once Snyder got his own players in there, whoa now. And I will forever love Mooch for taking his team into USC and whipping some Trojan ass. I think Cal has won at USC only two or three times in the last 40 years.
Was that the year we tied a highly-ranked U of A squad too? I think they were like #3 at the time. Snyder is my favorite Cal coach. My argument is that the scale of Tedford year one turnaround was more dramatic. than the other two--and I think by quite a bit. 1-10 to 7-5.
You are right, but very few head coaches in history have been willing to sleep in a cot at the stadium during the season because they were so dedicated to their craft.
Fast forward to today, and I cannot find a parallel situation where a D-1 program in a Power 5 conference allowed a head coach with a continued losing conference record to stick around year after year because he was a decent man with a lot of close losses and well liked by his players. Oh wait a minute....there was such a guy. His name was Rich Brooks, who from 1977 to 1988 went 48-87 before getting the Oregon Ducks to his first bowl game in 1988 and then to the Rose Bowl in 1994. Wilcox to the Rose Bowl in 2034!
Yeah, we had an easy early season schedule. Then we hit up against Snyder's Jake Plummer ASU team, got clobbered, and the rest went down hill from there. But I have no doubt Mooch would have got us there in time. It's a shame we didn't hire him when we first had a chance to be Snyder's successor. The argument against him was that he was too young. He would have been in his early-thirties, which would have been fairly unique in that era. But seems ridiculous now.
I'm not sure Wilcox is going to Tedford 2.0, but I'd like to see him stay. I think folks underestimate how deep the bottom of this program could go (just look at Arizona). If I had faith in our AD to make a good hire, I'd probably feel differently. But I'd much rather roll the dice on an extra year or two of Wilcox--even if that means merely maintaining the status quo -- than I would bet on Knowlton improving the position.
I’ve been in this boat before, but it basically ended this year. I mean, we’re at 3-6 with an empty stadium and coming off a loss to Arizona. I guess I’d understand this mentality if the fans were still showing up, but they’re not. We can’t even get the students out. So realistically, something has to be done to inject some excitement into the program. I tend to agree that knowlton is worthless, but you have search firms that help with these hires and donors in his ear. Hopefully that’d be enough to not butcher it.
I get it. But If you miss this hire, you're stuck for another 5 years, and I don't know how anyone could feel confident about Knowlton hitting it right. We have used firms in the past and they've only yielded misfires. Where the program is now, coming out of this Covid debacle, this hire is going to be an even greater challenge than with previous ones. Wilcox's teams have ultimately been frustratingly mediocre, but if you're a speculator you also see that we have been a little unlucky (record in close games) and are due for a market correction. I'd rather bet on that for another year before potentially having to turn it over to our lame-o AD try to fix it.
I think my concern is that peak Wilcox may very well be the 7-5 teams of ‘18 and ‘19 and that this year is just a market correction on some of those lucky close wins from those years. Who knows. I wouldn’t be excited to fire him and pay another coach to go away, but if he left on his own and we got paid, I don’t think I’d shed any tears haha.
Thank you! Wilcox defenders will attack you for stating facts. Oh he graduates his players! So did Dykes.
Somehow Wilcox has become to some in the Cal fanbase what trump has become to the GOP, irreplaceable and Cal football will just fall apart and never have another winning Pac 12 record without him.
You're right to draw comparisons between Dykes and Wilcox. I don't think fans (myself included) gave Dykes the same benefit of the doubt that they are giving Wilcox. It may be cultural. Dykes is an outsider from the south who plays kind of an extreme style of football (whom many, again myself included weren't fans of). I think people also assumed (and not wrongly) that he was using Cal as a stepping stone. You can make the same argument of Wyking and Fox. The results are nearly identical, but Wyking got a shorter string than Fox has. Fox doesn't have any fan support like Wilcox does, but he sure seems to have the administration's support.
jibber jabber: didn't have a presser (early on) to protect HIPPA rights of players, gathering information, no matter what he did peeps wouldn't be happy, yadda yadda yadda.
Knowlton does respond to emails. I emailed him in 2019 about the incessant loud music between plays (especially on defense) which drowns out the crowd noise/cheers and hurts momentum on defense. He responded that the younger generation really likes this.
Well apologies in advance but I’m one of the ones who has been emailing constantly imploring them to do more to generate crowd noise. Memorial sounds like a library, and our fanbase generally needs to begged to make noise. My brothers and I and a few buddies have been in II this year, and for oregon state, with a two game winning streak on the line, we couldn’t get anyone around us to even stand and cheer on third downs. The enthusiasm in the stadium generally runs on a scale from uninspiring to downright depressing. I get that the program is on a downward trajectory, but that makes all of the wilcox-defending on this thread all the more dumbfounding.
Or Kate Scott, hands down the best I’ve seen in my lifetime. She’s awesome. Bring her back every fall to help out the new ones. Right now, they’re struggling mightily. And it doesn’t help that the students don’t even show up.
Most of the big time programs actually have very choreographed productions for their gameday experience that utilize sound, stadium lighting, etc. I’d be fine with canning the piped-in stuff, but they would need to let the mic men go stadium-wide to lead cheers a lot more often, because our fans are pretty clueless about when to make noise. Either that, or they’re just completely unwilling. And unfortunately, the mic men over the last few years have really struggled with timing. Generally speaking, it’s a bit of sad state of affairs right now.
It would be a great hire by the pups and good for Wilcox on many levels. One can start with Washington doesn't have state income tax. Total windfall for the Coach. And he would have institutional support. These past few weeks I'm sure reminded him of that.
How good was that institutional support for Lake? By firing Lake, UW is showing they won’t tolerate a stagnant offense and a losing Pac 12 record. Lake was as good, if not a better recruiter than Wilcox and even he was struggling to recruit kids to UW despite all their advantages and recent winning.
In this day and age the slightest physical violence by coaches on players is just cause for firing. Lake knew that. That he was on thin ice should have made him even more "aware". I fondly remember the Nuns cracking rulers over my head and smashing books on my hands. These days those Nuns would be wearing Orange. While I was never hit by a coach, I took lots of what is today considered "verbal abuse". Frankly, I didn't mind it.
But they aren’t firing him for that, or else he would have been fired last week rather than suspended. They also would be firing him with cause and not having to pay his buyout. They are firing him for his lack of success on the football field. Stagnant offense, poor recruiting and losing Pac 12 record. UWs defense has been their strength under Lake but it wasn’t good enough to overcome such poor offensive performances.
Which, and I’m not saying this to be a Wilcox hater, sounds a lot like Wilcoxs tenure at Cal.
Get real dude. The impetus for the move is what Lake did to the player last week. Perhaps they would have dumped him at the end of the year due to record. But this week it is the optics of getting rid of a coach that "assaulted" a player. Simple. Oh, and not going for cause and paying out fully is cuz no way Udub would have won the law suit that surely Lake would have filed.
UW is a big boy program, with all the institutional support Cal doesn’t have. They don’t like losing or inept and clueless offense while losing. They are firing him for his losing Pac 12 record, they will use what he did last week cover.
If Lake were 8-0 and beating Oregon when he hit that kid, they would have grudgingly looked the other way while giving Lake an extension at the end of the season.
Should Cal lose Wilcox the program will be a dumpster fire. Players will transfer en masse. Wilcox haters (> 89.73% of the fan base) should be careful what they wish for.
It's interesting how many Cal fans seem ready to fire Wilcox/donate him to any of several programs that are willing to give him a sizable raise to come over.
Taco: You are absolutely right. Wilcox is the right coach for Cal (an emphasis on defense, accountability, graduation). The only Cal coach in recent memory who absolutely turned things around in his first year was Jeff Tedford (1-11 to 7-5) but looking back, he was almost a unicorn hire and those kinds of coaches don't come along often (not to mention that at the end of his tenure only 38% of his players were graduating). If he stays then maybe let go of Musgrave (and maybe Ragel) but Wilcox is the right man to coach Cal Football.
I am not a Wilcox hater, but he is one of the many "right men" to coach Cal football...lots of coaches emphasize D and graduate their players...some can even form a competent O with a backup QB & win half their ballgames.
I hope he sticks tho bc the continuity of him being in control is most important right now.
Jimmy: Yes, continuity in college football is a rare commodity and not one to be taken lightly. I'm curious but who do you think are some other "right men" to coach Cal Football?
Some of those are pretty meh. Hoke's record got progressively worse every year at Michigan, and the 2014 season was a complete dumpster fire (google 'shane morris concussion'). Dykes has already given us four years of not much even though we always had either Jared Goff or Davis Webb at qb, and I don't think he's inclined to leave SMU in any case.
I think the program will be fine. HS recruiting is already a mess. Next season was going to be a semi rebuild and would be a total rebuild if Chase decides to leave.
The entire Pac 12, with the exception of Oregon and Utah is a current dumpster fire right now.
Nah, the program will be status quo, with or without Wilcox...JW is not the only coach in the country that can win 47% of his games in Berkeley, and plenty of kids are going to transfer whether Wilcox is here or not...it's the nature of the beast in college FB.
Hope he stays, but if not, the program will be fine.
By fine, I meant the program will largely be status quo without Wilcox. I don’t buy into all this gloom and doom if we lose Wilcox. Losing Wilcox wouldn’t be like potentially losing Tedford in early 2000s to UW.
Huh?? Defense is solid and nearly at a solid 2-deep with major players returning next year. Offense loses some WR's and perhaps (likely) Garbers. So what, our record shows CG isn't a game changer. Our OL needs talent and depth. We are loaded at WR, have a good RB room and our TE's are loaded even with graduation. If, big IF, our OL can get to just average the O will do fine in Musgrave's system.
Very happy to disagree with your, "total rebuild" semantics.
I feel like the total rebuild is from losing your QB. Good talent at the skill positions like you stated but if you don’t have a QB that can get them the ball it will just whither away on a vine and die.
We will lose Clark and Crawford at WR and probably one or two TEs. CBrooks might not come back as well but I’m not as worried about RB. OL on paper looks good and I feel like we have been saying this is the year for the last three years there.
I agree that CG isn’t a game changer but he has proven to be the best QB on our roster over the last 4 seasons. Maybe one of the younger guys step up and eventually become that game changer but I don’t see it happening in their first season.
Even if a player has eligiblity left, they have to get into Cal grad school which is the difficult part and the reason why many keep grad transferring. I think many seniors may not come back.
UC Berkeley has introduced one-year graduate certificates, which are more straightforward to get into and have been a boon for us keeping our 5th+ year seniors - particularly the entrepreneurship one: https://iande.berkeley.edu/student-resources/certificates
I think Wilcox is kind of "meh" at this point. I wouldn't be broken hearted if he left, and I have been a Wilcox supporter. Sure, we can use the Covid excuse for the past two seasons but eventually the buck has to stop on the head coach's seat. If he leaves I imagine we will be the proverbial 5-7 or 7-5 team depending on the breaks. Lots of coaches can achieve this at Cal.
This makes absolutely no sense: "If he leaves I imagine we will be the proverbial 5-7 or 7-5 team depending on the breaks. Lots of coaches can achieve this at Cal." If you believe that and Wilcox is performing at about your level of expectation why get rid of Wilcox. He's meeting your stated expectations of the program?
Bob: You are absolutely right: No other school or city in the country has COVID protocols as strict as ours. This is something that the AD and administration need to address if we want football talent (coaches and players) to come to Berkeley.
This isn’t Tedford to UW levels of worry from me. I like Wilcox, he is basically the defensive version of Dykes but with better PR. He kept the players graduating and avoided any off the field issues like Dykes did. He had similar middling success like Dykes on the field.
If Wilcox were having Tedford 02-07 success I would be upset but he isn’t.
One of the things that has always been said for Wilcox is that as an ex-DC, he's familiar with the challenges here. If he decides he's had enough of the University AND Berkeley machines, and honesty who can blame him, then tip your cap and wish him well. There will be some fallout, which there is going to be pretty much every year in the era of a no-questions-asked transfer portal, but the program will survive.
If Garbers decides against another year, '22 looks to be pretty lean, regardless if Wilcox is HC or not.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, the infectious disease expert who criticized public health officials’ handling of the Cal football program’s COVID issues last week, would like a do-over.
“I should not have commented without knowing the details,” Gandhi told the Bay Area News Group in an email exchange Sunday.
In making her original comments, Gandhi said that the football players and team staff who had tested positive were asymptomatic. That was false: There were dozens of symptomatic cases, according to information that has since come to light.
...
When asked if Berkeley and Cal health officials made the right decision to test the entire team based — and if her criticism of the process was fair — Gandhi responded:
“I will also post publicly on Twitter to ensure that I was trying to make a larger point about endemicity and media coverage of cases and I should not have commented on an evolving situation.”
dawgpound has Wilcox rated kinda hi as "realistic hire", this will be an ongoing saga for weeks now.
I’m seeing a pretty good amount of Wilcox-defending on this thread, and man, I just do not get it. I think he’s a good guy, runs a clean program, graduates players, etc., but don’t we pay him $3 million + per year to win? Is 13-23 (or whatever we’re currently sitting at) in conference not replaceable? And this comes at a time when the pac 12 is a flaming bag of dogs*#%. Am I hallucinating when I see our stadium looking like a ghost town and sounding like a freaking library on gamedays? And where the hell are the students? There is absolutely no enthusiasm around the program. I’ll be skipping big game at the furd to instead take my wife (sac state alum) to the causeway classic to watch Troy Taylor lead a team that he’s take from perennial doormat to perennial contender. It can be done. If you told me someone like Washington was gonna pay us a buyout to steal Wilcox, holy hell how do we not take that deal and laugh all the way to the bank? And people are worried about recruiting? We’ve already lost our top three recruits this year and I’m just waiting for the class to finally completely implode. Like I said, I just do not get it.
I don't get it either. I would like to see Wilcox head off to Washington and see what he can do there. Let's remember that the stars of Cal's current recruiting class starting abandoning ship well before the Covid crisis hit. They didnt' like what they were seeing on the field, and nor did the fans who stayed away in droves after the Washington State debacle. For me, the clincher was how God awful the team looked playing their second string quarterback against Arizona, arguably the worst team the conference has seen, since, well, Cal in 2000.
Someone mentioned that Tedford was a Unicorn hire, and very few other head coaches could turn around a program that quickly. Well, Steve Mariucci had Cal in a bowl game in his first and only season in 1996. Bruce Snyder took over a moribund program from Joe Kapp and had them playing fun to watch football in his first season. I would love to see what a Troy Taylor could do at Cal. He has had success wherever he has gone and has paid his dues at multiple levels. Wilcox is a fail in his fifth season, and there are only a few places in the country where a fan base would be arguing for his return because they fear something worse in his absence.
Snyder won three games his first year, exactly one more than the previous year. He was one the hot seat going into year 4, when the program finally clicked. Mooch finished 6-6 his first year and he no doubt would have taken the program to new heights had the 49ers not scooped him, but he inherited good talent. Tedford inherited a 1-10 that hadn't been to a bowl game in six years and had them crushing a highly touted MSU team on the road in just the second game in. Snyder and Mooch were all-time great Cal coaches, but neither executed a turn around so comprehensively and as quickly as Tedford did.
One of those Snyder victories in year one was over Arizona State, the previous year's Rose bowl team. His teams played hard and usually only got beat by more talented squads. Once Snyder got his own players in there, whoa now. And I will forever love Mooch for taking his team into USC and whipping some Trojan ass. I think Cal has won at USC only two or three times in the last 40 years.
Was that the year we tied a highly-ranked U of A squad too? I think they were like #3 at the time. Snyder is my favorite Cal coach. My argument is that the scale of Tedford year one turnaround was more dramatic. than the other two--and I think by quite a bit. 1-10 to 7-5.
You are right, but very few head coaches in history have been willing to sleep in a cot at the stadium during the season because they were so dedicated to their craft.
Fast forward to today, and I cannot find a parallel situation where a D-1 program in a Power 5 conference allowed a head coach with a continued losing conference record to stick around year after year because he was a decent man with a lot of close losses and well liked by his players. Oh wait a minute....there was such a guy. His name was Rich Brooks, who from 1977 to 1988 went 48-87 before getting the Oregon Ducks to his first bowl game in 1988 and then to the Rose Bowl in 1994. Wilcox to the Rose Bowl in 2034!
Had them in '90 until Robbie Keen kicked the ground first on the FG attempt to win it...
Yeah, we had an easy early season schedule. Then we hit up against Snyder's Jake Plummer ASU team, got clobbered, and the rest went down hill from there. But I have no doubt Mooch would have got us there in time. It's a shame we didn't hire him when we first had a chance to be Snyder's successor. The argument against him was that he was too young. He would have been in his early-thirties, which would have been fairly unique in that era. But seems ridiculous now.
I'm not sure Wilcox is going to Tedford 2.0, but I'd like to see him stay. I think folks underestimate how deep the bottom of this program could go (just look at Arizona). If I had faith in our AD to make a good hire, I'd probably feel differently. But I'd much rather roll the dice on an extra year or two of Wilcox--even if that means merely maintaining the status quo -- than I would bet on Knowlton improving the position.
I’ve been in this boat before, but it basically ended this year. I mean, we’re at 3-6 with an empty stadium and coming off a loss to Arizona. I guess I’d understand this mentality if the fans were still showing up, but they’re not. We can’t even get the students out. So realistically, something has to be done to inject some excitement into the program. I tend to agree that knowlton is worthless, but you have search firms that help with these hires and donors in his ear. Hopefully that’d be enough to not butcher it.
I get it. But If you miss this hire, you're stuck for another 5 years, and I don't know how anyone could feel confident about Knowlton hitting it right. We have used firms in the past and they've only yielded misfires. Where the program is now, coming out of this Covid debacle, this hire is going to be an even greater challenge than with previous ones. Wilcox's teams have ultimately been frustratingly mediocre, but if you're a speculator you also see that we have been a little unlucky (record in close games) and are due for a market correction. I'd rather bet on that for another year before potentially having to turn it over to our lame-o AD try to fix it.
I think my concern is that peak Wilcox may very well be the 7-5 teams of ‘18 and ‘19 and that this year is just a market correction on some of those lucky close wins from those years. Who knows. I wouldn’t be excited to fire him and pay another coach to go away, but if he left on his own and we got paid, I don’t think I’d shed any tears haha.
Right now, 7-5 sounds almost heavenly to me.
Thank you! Wilcox defenders will attack you for stating facts. Oh he graduates his players! So did Dykes.
Somehow Wilcox has become to some in the Cal fanbase what trump has become to the GOP, irreplaceable and Cal football will just fall apart and never have another winning Pac 12 record without him.
You're right to draw comparisons between Dykes and Wilcox. I don't think fans (myself included) gave Dykes the same benefit of the doubt that they are giving Wilcox. It may be cultural. Dykes is an outsider from the south who plays kind of an extreme style of football (whom many, again myself included weren't fans of). I think people also assumed (and not wrongly) that he was using Cal as a stepping stone. You can make the same argument of Wyking and Fox. The results are nearly identical, but Wyking got a shorter string than Fox has. Fox doesn't have any fan support like Wilcox does, but he sure seems to have the administration's support.
I stopped reading at 13 - 23. At least know your facts prior to spewing off.
Lol “I have no response to your stated facts so I’ll attack you for actually understating the head coach’s godawful conference record.”
13 - 24
You're right.
We have one more conference loss than that under Wilcox.
He's actually 13–24.
I usually am.
Boom goes the dynamite! Lol.
Is Bob Gregory going to be looking for a new job?
Almost certainly.
Unrelated but Cam Bynum is having a great game against the bolts.
Hah, Knowlton just responded to me email. Can't believe it.
What did he say?
jibber jabber: didn't have a presser (early on) to protect HIPPA rights of players, gathering information, no matter what he did peeps wouldn't be happy, yadda yadda yadda.
*HIPAA
I guess there’s ADSpeak just like CoachSpeak
Knowlton does respond to emails. I emailed him in 2019 about the incessant loud music between plays (especially on defense) which drowns out the crowd noise/cheers and hurts momentum on defense. He responded that the younger generation really likes this.
Well apologies in advance but I’m one of the ones who has been emailing constantly imploring them to do more to generate crowd noise. Memorial sounds like a library, and our fanbase generally needs to begged to make noise. My brothers and I and a few buddies have been in II this year, and for oregon state, with a two game winning streak on the line, we couldn’t get anyone around us to even stand and cheer on third downs. The enthusiasm in the stadium generally runs on a scale from uninspiring to downright depressing. I get that the program is on a downward trajectory, but that makes all of the wilcox-defending on this thread all the more dumbfounding.
Or Kate Scott, hands down the best I’ve seen in my lifetime. She’s awesome. Bring her back every fall to help out the new ones. Right now, they’re struggling mightily. And it doesn’t help that the students don’t even show up.
Kate WAS the best I've seen in my Cal lifetime (basically since The Play).
Most of the big time programs actually have very choreographed productions for their gameday experience that utilize sound, stadium lighting, etc. I’d be fine with canning the piped-in stuff, but they would need to let the mic men go stadium-wide to lead cheers a lot more often, because our fans are pretty clueless about when to make noise. Either that, or they’re just completely unwilling. And unfortunately, the mic men over the last few years have really struggled with timing. Generally speaking, it’s a bit of sad state of affairs right now.
A Ducks fan (and Washington hater) told me last night that reliable Duck sources say that Wilcox is very high on Washington's list.
It would be a great hire by the pups and good for Wilcox on many levels. One can start with Washington doesn't have state income tax. Total windfall for the Coach. And he would have institutional support. These past few weeks I'm sure reminded him of that.
How good was that institutional support for Lake? By firing Lake, UW is showing they won’t tolerate a stagnant offense and a losing Pac 12 record. Lake was as good, if not a better recruiter than Wilcox and even he was struggling to recruit kids to UW despite all their advantages and recent winning.
In this day and age the slightest physical violence by coaches on players is just cause for firing. Lake knew that. That he was on thin ice should have made him even more "aware". I fondly remember the Nuns cracking rulers over my head and smashing books on my hands. These days those Nuns would be wearing Orange. While I was never hit by a coach, I took lots of what is today considered "verbal abuse". Frankly, I didn't mind it.
But they aren’t firing him for that, or else he would have been fired last week rather than suspended. They also would be firing him with cause and not having to pay his buyout. They are firing him for his lack of success on the football field. Stagnant offense, poor recruiting and losing Pac 12 record. UWs defense has been their strength under Lake but it wasn’t good enough to overcome such poor offensive performances.
Which, and I’m not saying this to be a Wilcox hater, sounds a lot like Wilcoxs tenure at Cal.
Get real dude. The impetus for the move is what Lake did to the player last week. Perhaps they would have dumped him at the end of the year due to record. But this week it is the optics of getting rid of a coach that "assaulted" a player. Simple. Oh, and not going for cause and paying out fully is cuz no way Udub would have won the law suit that surely Lake would have filed.
UW is a big boy program, with all the institutional support Cal doesn’t have. They don’t like losing or inept and clueless offense while losing. They are firing him for his losing Pac 12 record, they will use what he did last week cover.
If Lake were 8-0 and beating Oregon when he hit that kid, they would have grudgingly looked the other way while giving Lake an extension at the end of the season.
Presiding over yet another COVID breakout on your team is also poor "optics."
That said, I hope Wilcox sticks around, though he would be more successful at UW than he ever could at Cal.
Should Cal lose Wilcox the program will be a dumpster fire. Players will transfer en masse. Wilcox haters (> 89.73% of the fan base) should be careful what they wish for.
It's interesting how many Cal fans seem ready to fire Wilcox/donate him to any of several programs that are willing to give him a sizable raise to come over.
Taco: You are absolutely right. Wilcox is the right coach for Cal (an emphasis on defense, accountability, graduation). The only Cal coach in recent memory who absolutely turned things around in his first year was Jeff Tedford (1-11 to 7-5) but looking back, he was almost a unicorn hire and those kinds of coaches don't come along often (not to mention that at the end of his tenure only 38% of his players were graduating). If he stays then maybe let go of Musgrave (and maybe Ragel) but Wilcox is the right man to coach Cal Football.
I am not a Wilcox hater, but he is one of the many "right men" to coach Cal football...lots of coaches emphasize D and graduate their players...some can even form a competent O with a backup QB & win half their ballgames.
I hope he sticks tho bc the continuity of him being in control is most important right now.
Jimmy: Yes, continuity in college football is a rare commodity and not one to be taken lightly. I'm curious but who do you think are some other "right men" to coach Cal Football?
Brady Hoke
Jay Norvell
Troy Taylor
Oregon OC
Fresno State HC
Sonny Dykes
Some of those are pretty meh. Hoke's record got progressively worse every year at Michigan, and the 2014 season was a complete dumpster fire (google 'shane morris concussion'). Dykes has already given us four years of not much even though we always had either Jared Goff or Davis Webb at qb, and I don't think he's inclined to leave SMU in any case.
Wilcox of course. Tim DeRuyter, Jay Norvell.
If Wilcox doesn't work out, bring back the 'Root!
I think the program will be fine. HS recruiting is already a mess. Next season was going to be a semi rebuild and would be a total rebuild if Chase decides to leave.
The entire Pac 12, with the exception of Oregon and Utah is a current dumpster fire right now.
Nah, the program will be status quo, with or without Wilcox...JW is not the only coach in the country that can win 47% of his games in Berkeley, and plenty of kids are going to transfer whether Wilcox is here or not...it's the nature of the beast in college FB.
Hope he stays, but if not, the program will be fine.
By fine, I meant the program will largely be status quo without Wilcox. I don’t buy into all this gloom and doom if we lose Wilcox. Losing Wilcox wouldn’t be like potentially losing Tedford in early 2000s to UW.
Huh?? Defense is solid and nearly at a solid 2-deep with major players returning next year. Offense loses some WR's and perhaps (likely) Garbers. So what, our record shows CG isn't a game changer. Our OL needs talent and depth. We are loaded at WR, have a good RB room and our TE's are loaded even with graduation. If, big IF, our OL can get to just average the O will do fine in Musgrave's system.
Very happy to disagree with your, "total rebuild" semantics.
I feel like the total rebuild is from losing your QB. Good talent at the skill positions like you stated but if you don’t have a QB that can get them the ball it will just whither away on a vine and die.
We will lose Clark and Crawford at WR and probably one or two TEs. CBrooks might not come back as well but I’m not as worried about RB. OL on paper looks good and I feel like we have been saying this is the year for the last three years there.
I agree that CG isn’t a game changer but he has proven to be the best QB on our roster over the last 4 seasons. Maybe one of the younger guys step up and eventually become that game changer but I don’t see it happening in their first season.
Even if a player has eligiblity left, they have to get into Cal grad school which is the difficult part and the reason why many keep grad transferring. I think many seniors may not come back.
UC Berkeley has introduced one-year graduate certificates, which are more straightforward to get into and have been a boon for us keeping our 5th+ year seniors - particularly the entrepreneurship one: https://iande.berkeley.edu/student-resources/certificates
I think Wilcox is kind of "meh" at this point. I wouldn't be broken hearted if he left, and I have been a Wilcox supporter. Sure, we can use the Covid excuse for the past two seasons but eventually the buck has to stop on the head coach's seat. If he leaves I imagine we will be the proverbial 5-7 or 7-5 team depending on the breaks. Lots of coaches can achieve this at Cal.
This makes absolutely no sense: "If he leaves I imagine we will be the proverbial 5-7 or 7-5 team depending on the breaks. Lots of coaches can achieve this at Cal." If you believe that and Wilcox is performing at about your level of expectation why get rid of Wilcox. He's meeting your stated expectations of the program?
Bob: You are absolutely right: No other school or city in the country has COVID protocols as strict as ours. This is something that the AD and administration need to address if we want football talent (coaches and players) to come to Berkeley.
That number is very accurate. I found it on Wikipedia.
I am fairly sure that GEaT is being sarcastic and messing with you.
A lot of smoke on this one.
That smoke now has a wee flame below it.
Really? Where there is smoke there usually is fire. I like Wilcox too but his tenure has been a bit on and off as far as success goes.
I hope you finally get your wish of Troy Taylor.
My list would be:
Troy Taylor
Jay Norvell
Brady Hoke
Ron Rivera, though his win over the bucs today won’t help get him fired from WFT.
River boat Ron isn’t in any danger of losing his job. He is in year 2 at WFC and took them to the playoffs last season.
What are we waiting for? We all like Wilcox, but…..
From the looks of it, there is a chance we're waiting UW to pay the buy out for us
Well, that will save us some shekels and eliminate the need to offer him a more lucrative contract extension next year.
Do you really think that Cal can hire someone better? Seems unlikely
Not really. Maybe the Nevada coach?
This isn’t Tedford to UW levels of worry from me. I like Wilcox, he is basically the defensive version of Dykes but with better PR. He kept the players graduating and avoided any off the field issues like Dykes did. He had similar middling success like Dykes on the field.
If Wilcox were having Tedford 02-07 success I would be upset but he isn’t.
Yes, this.
One of the things that has always been said for Wilcox is that as an ex-DC, he's familiar with the challenges here. If he decides he's had enough of the University AND Berkeley machines, and honesty who can blame him, then tip your cap and wish him well. There will be some fallout, which there is going to be pretty much every year in the era of a no-questions-asked transfer portal, but the program will survive.
If Garbers decides against another year, '22 looks to be pretty lean, regardless if Wilcox is HC or not.
Ex-LB Coach, my bad...
Dr. Monica Gandhi, the infectious disease expert who criticized public health officials’ handling of the Cal football program’s COVID issues last week, would like a do-over.
“I should not have commented without knowing the details,” Gandhi told the Bay Area News Group in an email exchange Sunday.
In making her original comments, Gandhi said that the football players and team staff who had tested positive were asymptomatic. That was false: There were dozens of symptomatic cases, according to information that has since come to light.
...
When asked if Berkeley and Cal health officials made the right decision to test the entire team based — and if her criticism of the process was fair — Gandhi responded:
“I will also post publicly on Twitter to ensure that I was trying to make a larger point about endemicity and media coverage of cases and I should not have commented on an evolving situation.”
And then a link to her Twitter post: https://twitter.com/MonicaGandhi9/status/1460013178398461952