Cal's Justin Wilcox Ranked Among Top 30 Football Coaches as Players

Justin Wilcox’s Cal football team won’t be ranked in the preseason top-25 polls this year, but the Bears’ head coach is ranked in the top 30 of a rather unusual ranking released by ESPN in May.

ESPN ranked all college football head coaches as college players, and Wilcox was included in a group titled “The 30 Best.”

Not surprisingly Colorado head coach Deion Sanders was ranked No. 1 after being a two-time first-team All-America selection at Florida State.

But Wilcox came in at No. 27, with this comment from ESPN:

---27. Justin Wilcox, California Golden Bears: The son of Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker Dave Wilcox, Justin followed the family path and played at Oregon after quarterbacking his high school to a state title. He switched to defense with the Ducks and played safety, corner and nickel, and was on three bowl teams. Wilcox earned second-team All-Pac-10 honors as a senior in 1999.

No former Cal players are on the list, but that’s only because the ESPN rankings included only FBS head coaches. If it had ranked all Division I head coaches, which includes FCS schools, former Golden Bears star DeSean Jackson would have been ranked pretty high. He is now the head coach at Delaware State, an FCS school.

Here are ESPN’s top 30 head coaches as college players (with the college they played for in parentheses)

---1. Deion Sanders, Colorado (Florida State)

---2. Eddie George, Bowling Green (Ohio State)

---3. Josh Heupel, Tennessee (Oklahoma)

---4. Steve Sarkisian, Texas (BYU)

---5. Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State (Oklahoma State)

---6. DeSean Foster, UCLA (UCLA)

---7. Jonathan Smith, Michigan State (Oregon State)

---8. Trent Dilfer, UAB (Fresno State)

---9. Scott Frost, UCF (Nebraska)

---10. Major Applewhite, South Alabama (Texas)

---11. Timmy Chang, Hawaii (Hawaii)