ESPN Story Suggests Justin Wilcox’s Job Status at Cal Is Shaky
ESPN.com this week reported on college football coaches whose jobs might be in jeopardy in 2023, and it caught our attention because Cal head coach Justin Wilcox was included among a bunch of coaches whose job does not seem to be in imminent danger but can’t afford to have a stinker season.
Here’s the paragraph of significance:
Other than [West Virginia’ Neal] Brown, few notable coaches are squarely on the hot seat. Syracuse’s Dino Babers likely needs a solid September after a poor finish to the 2022 season. Justin Wilcox can't fall further behind in an improving Pac-12, although Cal’s financial and administrative challenges could save him. Jimbo Fisher's situation will be hotly debated if Texas A&M stumbles early, but his bloated contract makes a dismissal expensive, if not impossible. Coach-friendly contracts also favor Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald, Indiana’s Tom Allen and others who have endured recent struggles. Still, they could benefit from strong starts, as could Missouri’s Eliah Drinkwitz and a host of Group of 5 coaches, including Memphis’ Ryan Silverfield and Arkansas State’s Butch Jones.
The Wilcox reference is only one sentence and does not raise an immediate red flag about his future at Cal, but it is instructive in terms of how the Cal football program is viewed from afar. It makes you wonder how much patience Cal officials will have with Wilcox, and it also makes you wonder, about that ambiguous phrase “Cal’s financial and administrative challenges could save him.”
The financial issue is obvious. With its 30 sports, Cal has athletic budget problems that could become even bigger with the uncertain future of the Pac-12 following the departure of USC and UCLA in the summer of 2024.
And Wilcox signed a contract extension in the winter of 2022 (after he declined an offer to be Oregon’s head coach) that would cost Cal a lot of money if Wilcox were dismissed. The contract extension runs through the 2027 season, spans six seasons, and will pay him a total of $28.5 million, excluding any performance bonuses, if he merely remains the Bears’ coach through the end of 2027.
In addition, Mark Fox still had one year and about $1.8 million left on his contract when he was dismissed as Cal’s basketball coach in March.
The feeling is that Cal can’t afford to fire Wilcox even if it wanted to.
But the “administrative challenges” are a little unclear. Perhaps it pertains to the reported internal investigation of Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton on the way he handled the case of former swimming coach Teri McKeever and her alleged bullying of athletes. Or the administrative challenges may refer to the financial obligations to Fox and other coaches and administrators.
The fact is Cal has not been to a bowl game since the 2019 season, and has had a losing conference record in each of the past 13 seasons. Wilcox seemed to have the program on the rise when the Bears went 7-6 in his second season and 8-5 in his third. But the 2020 pandemic season crushed the progress, and the program has not recovered, going 5-7 and 4-8 the past two seasons.
Cover photo of Justin Wilcox by Darren Yamashita, USA TODAY Sports
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