Mike White, Head Coach of Cal's Powerful 1975 Squad, Dies

Mike White, a Cal graduate who was the Golden Bears’ head football coach when Cal tied for the Pac-8 title in 1975, died on Sunday, according to the Illinois Athletics website.

White was 89. No cause of death was provided.

White played four sports while he was a student at Cal, and he was captain of the Bears 1957 football team while playing wide receiver. He graduated from Cal’s business school.

He began his coaching career the next year as a Cal football assistant coach, serving in that role from 1958 through 1963. He helped Craig Morton develop into an NFL quarterback while at Cal.

In 1972 White was offered the head coaching job at both Stanford and Cal, and he chose his alma mater. He served as the Bears head coach for six seasons from 1972 through 1977 and finished with a 34-31-4 record in Berkeley.

The Bears struggled in his first two years as head coach, going 3-8 in 1972 and 4-7 the next year.

However, White turned the Cal program around starting in 1974, when the Bears went 7-3-1 overall, including 4-2-1 in the Pac-8, finishing tied for third in the conference standings.

Cal became a national power in 1975, when running back Chuck Muncie and quarterback Joe Roth helped White’s team finish 8-3 overall and 6-1 in the Pac-8. The Bears finished tied for first place with UCLA in the final Pac-8 standings, and that remains one of just two times since 1957 that Cal has claimed a conference title in football. The other time was 2006, when Jeff Tedford’s Cal team tied USC for the Pac-10 championship.

However, in 1975, UCLA was named the conference’s representative in the Rose Bowl because it had defeated Cal during the regular season. Cal finished the season ranked 14th but did not go to a bowl game.

The 1975 Bears led the nation in total offense, averaging 459 yards per game, and Muncie finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting.

Cal slipped to 5-6 in 1976, but bounced back in 1977 with a 7-4 record. White was dismissed by Cal following the 1977 season amid allegations of recruiting violations.

Besides developing Morton and Roth, White helped mold Steve Bartkowski into a quarterback who would become the No. 1 overall pick in the 1975 NFL draft following a standout 1974 season at Cal.

White later became the head coach at Illinois, and led the Fighting Illini to the Rose Bowl in the 1983 season. He was the Illinois head coach for eight seasons (1980 to 1987) and had a 47-41-3 record for the Illini, taking them to three bowl games.

White was also the head coach of the Oakland Raiders in 1995 and 1996, going 8-8 in 1995 and 7-9 in 1996.

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