The unraveling of Cal: Star exodus, a donor ultimatum and a football program running out of runway

What’s happening at Cal — 10 outgoing transfers this week — isn’t just a run-of-the-mill transfer portal churn. Of the 22 total outgoing transfers off a team that finished 6-7, 18 play offense, including all five running backs who transferred this week, making up for the most staggering spring portal window storyline this side of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Several people with direct knowledge of the Cal football program, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly, described to CBS Sports a program at a crossroads — the culmination of the fallout of uneasy relationships, behind-the-scenes power struggles and a program quietly slipping into one of the most precarious positions in the Power Four. 

Donor tension and the Ron Rivera factor

In early April, SFGate reported that two high-profile donors, both tied to Cal’s third-party collective, publicly vowed to stop giving to the athletic department unless alum and newly appointed football GM Ron Rivera was granted more power — essentially calling for Rivera to be Cal’s version of Andrew Luck, who exerts significant influence on football operations at Stanford and holds the power to fire and hire coaches. 

The donors want Rivera to run football, not athletic director Jim Knowlton or even head coach Justin Wilcox. It’s a high-profile activist movement rooted in frustration about a perceived overemphasis on Olympic sports and a fear that Cal, already left behind in the last round of realignment before being thrown a lift raft by the ill-fitting Atlantic Coast Conference, is once again drifting toward irrelevance. Rivera, a Cal alum who coached in the Super Bowl, should have be at the controls, the booster holdouts think, because he will put football first and is not as likely to leave in the next…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/the-unraveling-of-cal-star-exodus-a-donor-ultimatum-and-a-football-program-running-out-of-runway/

Author : Richard Johnson

Publish date : 2025-04-17 19:25:00

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