Cal Athletics: Our Fantasy Quarantine Houses and Questions We'd Ask Golden Bears Icons

Which house would you choose and what questions do you want to ask?

Everyone is creating their favorite fantasy quarantine houses these days to combat the monotony of the COVID-19 era. Seriously, couldn’t we all use an occasional break from our personal quarantine arrangements? No offense, dear.

Jake Curtis and I decided to create a series of six Cal Quarantine Houses, but ours are a little different. Our choices are motivated by the instincts of a reporter. If we were sheltered in place with these people — all of them with a link to Cal — what would we like to ask them?

This is what reporters do. We ask questions. I’ve actually had the pleasure of talking to 14 of these folks (no, not Andy Smith!). But there are always more questions to be asked.

Jake and I split up our six Cal Quarantine Houses and came up with questions for each of their inhabitants, including some of whom aren't readily available for interviews anymore.

Let us know which house you’d choose and what questions you’d present to these Cal icons.

JAKE’S HOUSES

House #1

Ron Rivera – Is it inevitable that every NFL coach will get fired if he hangs around long enough?

Alex Morgan – Come on, you didn’t really think you could be playing at a world-class level and compete in the 2020 Olympics a few weeks after giving birth, did you?

Evan Weaver – Tell us just how energetic you were as a kid, given the fact that your mother said you would have been an only child if you had been her first born.

Chris Pine – Which was more interesting, playing Steve Trevor or James T. Kirk?

Pete Newell – How in the world do you explain the most complicated aspects of basketball in terms so simple that anyone could understand them?

HOUSE 5

Matt Biondi – Despite winning eight gold medals, do you regret the way you finished 100 butterfly in the 1988 Olympics, a decision that cost you another gold by one one-hundredth of a second?

Oski – OK, you can trust me, I know it’s a secret, but I won’t tell anyone: What is your name, I mean the name of the person inside that suit this year?

Marshawn Lynch – As a member of the media, I’d like to know why you were so reluctant to talk to the media, especially since you seemed to have interesting things to say when you did speak?

Alice Waters – Did your participation in the free-speech movement at Cal influence your cooking style?

Kevin Johnson – How surprised were you when you were the seventh overall pick in the 1987 NBA draft when you were expected to be taken much later?

HOUSE 6

Andy Smith – Can you describe the play that led to Brick Muller’s 53-yard pass to Brodie Stephens in the upset win over Ohio State in the 1921 Rose Bowl to complete an unbeaten season? One of your guys faked an injury to set it up, right?

Steve Wozniak – Are you proud of the fact that you got expelled from the University of Colorado after you hacked into the computer system and started sending prank messages? You later ended up at Cal instead, so was it a blessing?

Jerry Brown – Did you like the moniker Governor Moonbeam, and do you know how the name got started?

Kevin Moen – Did you ever meet the trombone guy (Gary Tyrrell) you clobbered at the end of The Play, and, if so, what did you talk about?

Berkeley’s Naked Guy – Most people know your name was Luis Andrew Martinez and that you were a noteworthy activist, but I would like to know why you committed suicide in jail when you were just 33 years old.

JEFF’S HOUSES

HOUSE 2

Gregory Peck — You came to Cal with ambitions of becoming a doctor. Instead, you rowed on the crew team under famed coach Ky Ebright and found your career as an actor. You once said of your three years at Berkeley, “It woke me up and made me a human being.” What aspect of your Cal experience allowed that to happen?

Nibs Price — I don’t have a question, Mr. Price. Just an apology. Many years before I worked at the Oakland Tribune, the newspaper published an obituary on the front of the sports section when you passed away in 1968. First of all, in their haste, they misspelled your name in the lead paragraph. Sadly, there is more . . . It ran with the kind of headline that was common in newspapers in the 1960s: “Death Calls Nibs Price.” And it was accompanied by a photo of you . . . on the phone. Yeah, sorry.

Joe Kapp — My first experience covering the Cal football team was your five-year run as the Bears coach. You once famously said you would never take another sip of tequila until the Bears played again in the Rose Bowl. Have you stayed true to that vow?

Darrall Imhoff — Your Cal basketball team beat Oscar Robertson and Jerry West in the Final Four to win the 1959 national championship. A year later, they were your teammates on the Olympic team. What did you learn about those future Hall of Famers at the Rome Games that you didn’t know when they were opponents?

Carol T. Christ — The position of chancellor at Cal was going to be incredibly challenging under the best of circumstances. But have you done anything in your career that remotely compares with the assignment you are facing now?

HOUSE 3

Adam Duritz — You are one of Cal’s most famous fans. What is your favorite moment from any game you have ever attended in person?

“Wrong Way” Roy Riegels — You lived 64 more years after making your infamous dash in the wrong direction in the 1929 Rose Bowl. Did a singe day ever go by when you weren’t reminded of that play?

Michele Granger — You pitched 25 no-hitters and struck out 1,640 batters during your Cal career, then pitched the gold-medal victory for the United States at the 1996 Atlantic Olympics while pregnant. Pitching a softball from Olympic distance of 40 feet, could you have struck out Barry Bonds in his prime?

Rube Goldberg — You are best known for using your Cal engineering degree to create “Rube Goldberg machines,” gadgets that created complicated ways to perform simple tasks. But early in your career you were a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. If you could choose any Cal athlete — current or past — who would you like to sketch?

Helen Wills Moody — You won seven U.S. Open tennis titles and eight Wimbledon crowns, but you career took place nearly a century ago. How well would your game translate to today, and who do you consider the greatest women’s player of all-time?

HOUSE 4

Jared Goff — I’m sure you loved all of your teammates at Cal, but . . . do you ever daydream about what you guys could have done with the defense the Bears have fielded the past couple years?

Mario Savio — Please tell me exactly what you think about the state of our country these days? Do you imagine you would find reasons to organize protests in 2020?

Susanna Hoffs — Any chance you could teach me how to walk like an Egyptian?

Leon Powe — Tell me honestly . . . how good could you have been with two healthy knees?

Pappy Waldorf — Just wondering if you ever met my dad around campus when he was an engineering student after the war and you guys were going to the Rose Bowl every year?

*** Linebacker Evan Weaver talks about his senior season and his hopes the Golden Bears have a Rose Bowl in their future.