Cal Football: Counting Down the Final Hours of the Bears' Doomed Season

In the span of perhaps 28 hours last weekend a Cal football season that was wobbly from the start, staggered one last time then collapsed under the unforgiving weight of the coronavirus pandemic.

By late morning on Saturday, Cal’s game that afternoon at Washington State was scrubbed.

By early afternoon Sunday, the Bears’ freshly scheduled game the following Saturday against Arizona also was canceled.

In between, in a demonstration they refused to surrender their youthful spirit, Cal players found brief playful relief in the snow before departing for home from Pullman, Washington.

Cal coach Justin Wilcox, addressing the Bears’ crazy weekend publicly for the first time on Tuesday, admitted experiencing the emotions anyone would feel.

“It’s disappointing, it’s confusing, it’s frustrating,” he said. “There’s also a sense of the way 2020 has gone and the season has gone and COVID sets the rules, there’s just uncontrollable factors.

“I think people understand that. It doesn’t make it maybe less frustrating at times.”

The Bears, 1-3 but coming off a 21-17 win over then-No. 21 Oregon, went to bed Friday night at Pullman contemplating a second consecutive win the next afternoon.

Things began to go in the wrong direction around 7 a.m. when Wilcox said he was informed of a player who twice the day before had tested negative for COVID-19 but now was feeing ill.

As more tests were run on that player, other players went about their pre-game morning routine, including breakfast and preparation to leave for Martin Stadium.

Just before the team boarded buses at the hotel came the word that the player had tested positive. The process of contact tracing within the team began and others were quickly implicated.

“At that point it put us in a position where we would not be able to play,” Wilcox said.

The Bears were home by early evening, awaiting word from the Pac-12 about who they would play this Saturday on the final weekend of the regular season.

The conference announced all five Saturday games, each of them with a kickoff time and TV information. Except Arizona at Cal, which was listed as TBA. That was not a coincidence.

“There was some hope,” Wilcox said, when asked Tuesday if he ever believed the Arizona game would happen.

Sure, some. But not much.

Players were re-tested on Sunday morning. “Just to see if there was a different outcome on the test, just to confirm what was happening,” Wilcox said.

There was no happy ending. No negative test on the player who was positive the day before.

Wilcox also had gotten wind of COVID-19 issues within the Arizona program.

It turned out neither team would be in position to play five days later, so the Pac-12 canceled the game, calling it a no-contest.

Two canceled games within barely a day, four in a season that never got off the ground.

Wilcox talked Tuesday about how well his players responded to the challenges — and the disappointments — of this season.

By Sunday, when the final word on the final game came down, the Bears knew the storyline. It was a movie they’d already seen.

“It’s just the way it’s gone,” Wilcox said.

Asked specifically if merely three positive COVID-19 tests led to all of the Bears' personnel troubles this season, Wilcox would say only that the program had "a very limited number" of positives.

An athletic department spokesperson said it is policy not to identify the number of positive test results within any particular sport.

Wilcox did say the player who tested positive on Saturday is doing fine. “We’re hopeful that he’s past the worst of it."

Through all the disappointment, Wilcox couldn’t help but smile at the resiliency he saw on Saturday afternoon when his players — some of whom had never before seen snow — found an outlet to play.

“One of the things I love about the guys is, `OK, there’s not a lot we can do about that,’ “ Wilcox said. “A couple of them walked across the street to a department store (and) got a couple sleds. There was a few snowball fights. There was a snowman built, really kind of a premium-level snowman.

“They made the most of it. Then we got ‘em some good food to eat and we made our way home.”

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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