Cal Sports Report

Jared Goff Gives a Boost to the Tosh Lupoi Recruiting Legend

Former Cal star Jared Goff returned to Berkeley this week leading up to the Super Bowl and had an interesting story for Tosh Lupoi
Jake Curtis|
Jared Goff at Cal in 2015
Jared Goff at Cal in 2015 | Russ Isabella-Imagn Images

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The recruiting prowess of new Cal head coach Tosh Lupoi is approaching legendary status, and former Cal star Jared Goff added to that narrative while on the Cal campus this week leading up Sunday’s Super Bowl in Santa Clara.

Goff and Lupoi met this week, and Goff related this story to Lupoi:

“When you got hired, I was thinking, ‘Man, I think he recruited me at some point.’ And I looked back through my Facebook, sure enough, the first message I ever received on Facebook, from Tosh Lupoi: ‘Jared, what’s going on big guy. Great game last night.’ All that, you know. ‘Go Bears.’ You were here at Cal, coaching at Cal. That was the first message  That was the first message I ever received. And, I don’t know, a few months later Coach [Jeff] Tedford offered me, and the rest is history.”

Lupoi then joked that he can take all the credit for Goff’s subsequent success.

“It was the first reach out, from Cal, from you, so very cool,” Goff said.

Goff would have been at Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield, California, at the time, and Lupoi would have been a 29-year-old defensive line coach at Cal, which was his first fulltime coaching job.

Goff committed to Cal in March 2012 but never played for Tedford, who was fired after the 2012 season. But Goff kept his commitment to Cal and played under Sonny Dykes starting in 2013, setting a number of school records before being the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 NFL draft.

He played in a Super Bowl for the Rams in 2019 (2018 season).

Goff also met with current Cal quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, who will be a sophomore in 2026 and showed more pro potential as a freshman than Goff did in his first college season. Goff and Sagapolutele are the only Cal quarterbacks in history to start the season opener of their true freshman seasons.

Jared Goff and Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele
Jared Goff and Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele | Cal football twitter

Goff also met with Cal football general manager Ron Rivera, who gets much of the credit for pulling in Cal’s highly rated group of transfers. Rivera was the head coach of NFL teams that faced Goff three times in the pros. Goff's team won all three -- two while he was the Rams quarterback and one as the Lions quarterback. Rivera lost one of those matchups as Carolina's head coach and two as Washington's head coach. But both are Cal alumni.

Other former Cal stars – Marshawn Lynch and Cam Jordan – were also nearby this week. Lynch was infamously not given the ball at the 1-yard line 11 years ago the last time Seattle and New England met in the Super Bowl. Jordan is likely to return for another NFL season after posting 10.5 sacks in 2025. He has 132 career sacks, which ranks 17th alltime and second among active players (Von Miller has 138.5 sacks and he is not retiring either).

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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