Cal Headed to Hawaii Bowl, Creating Reunion for Bears Interim Head Coach

Cal will play Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl on December 24 in Honolulu, setting up a homecoming for Cal interim head coach Nick Rolovich and a matchup of former Hawaii quarterbacks.

Cal announced on Thursday that it has accepted a invitation to the Hawaii Bowl, which had been expected for the past few weeks and provides several storylines involving players and coaches. This Christmas Eve bowl game will start at 5 p.m. Pacific time at Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex in Honolulu and will be televised by ESPN.

Ron Rivera shares Cal's bowl assignment with the players | Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

Cal general manager Ron Rivera shared the bowl game assignment with players after practice Thursday. And he made it clear this will not be a vacation.

“We will be playing the University of Hawaii, so it’s kind of a home game for them but we can take over," Rivera told them." Understand, we’re not going there just to have a good time. We’re going there to win. Understand, that’s probably the most important thing.

“You upset two Top-25 teams in the last four weeks of the season. That’s a damn good thing, set things in motion to take the trajectory of this program up. We can finish with eight wins this year, and that’s what the goal is. We’re not going there just to have a good time. We’re going there to play and play well and win a football game.”

The head coach for Hawaii (8-4) is Timmy Chang, and he and Rolovich were teammates at Hawaii and competed for the starting quarterback job with the Rainbow Warriors. They were both on the Hawaii roster in 2000 and 2001, and Chang won the starting job in 2000 and passed for 3,041 yards, 19 touchdowns and 19 interceptions as a freshman.

However, Rolovich won the starting quarterback job in 2001, which was his second season at Hawaii after playing two years at City College of San Francisco. Rolovich threw for 3,361 yards, 34 touchdowns and nine interceptions in 2001. In his final game as a player at Hawaii, Rolovich passed for 543 yards, eight touchdowns and one interception in Hawaii's 72-45 upset of BYU, which came into the game with a 12-0 record and a No. 9 national ranking.

Chang regained the starting job in 2002 after Rolovich left, and Chang set several NCAA records.

Rolovich was also Hawaii's head coach for four years from 2016 to 2019, and he led the Rainbow Warriors to the Hawaii Bowl in three of those seasons, winning two of those three bowl games. In Rolovich's final game as Hawaii's head coach, Rolovich's Hawaii team again beat BYU, this time recording a 38-34 victory over the Cougars in the 2019 Hawaii Bowl.

Presumably Rolovich will remain the interim head coach for the Bears (7-5) even though Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi is finalizing a deal that will make him Cal's head coach for 2026.

This will also be a homecoming of sorts for several Cal players. Four members of the Cal roster are from Hawaii, and that includes freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele and freshman starting safety Aiden Manutai.

Sagapolutele is from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, which is about 10 miles from Honolulu (20 miles driving), and Manutai is from Waipahu, Hawaii, which is just a 15-mile drive from Honolulu.

Cal linemen LeBron Williams and Stanley Saole-McKenzie are both from Kahuku, Hawaii, which is about a 36-mile drive from Honolulu.

Cal also signed four players from Hawaii on Wednesday, the first day of the signing period.

Hawaii (8-4) and Cal (7-5) have played two common opponents this season -- San Diego State and Stanford -- and that comparison does not work out well for the Bears. Cal lost both of those games by lopsided margins, falling to San Diego State 34-0 and losing to Stanford 31-10. Meanwhile Hawaii beat both of those teams, defeating Stanford in the season opener for both teams 23-20, and knocking off San Diego State 38-6.

Both of those Hawaii victories were played at Clarence T.C. Ching Complex, which is the home stadium for the Rainbow Warriors and the site of the Hawaii Bowl.

Hawaii finished with a 5-3 record in Mountain West Conference play, just one game out of first place. The Rainbow Warriors were 6-1 at home, the only loss being a 23-21 defeat against Fresno State when Hawaii failed to convert a two-point try after scoring with 10 seconds left.

The starting quarterback for Hawaii is Micah Alejado, who is a redshirt freshman from Las Vegas who played at Bishop Goman High School.

So freshmen quarterbacks will be going against each other and former Hawaii starting quarterbacks will be going against each other as head coaches.

This will be the third straight season that Cal will play in a bowl game, but the Bears lost the previous two.

“We are excited to accept an invitation from the Sheraton Hawai’i Bowl and continue our season in Honolulu,” Cal football general manager Ron Rivera said in a statement provided by Cal “This is a reward for the hard work our student-athletes put in during the season, and we are looking forward to competing against an excellent Hawai’i team in front of a nationally televised audience.”

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