The Cal 100: The People Who Didn't Quite Make the List

We never expected everyone to agree with our selections for The Cal 100, but we did expect it to encourage discussion.

A major debate concerns the people we left out completely, so we are providing a list of many of the people we considered but, for one reason another, did not make the cut.

Remember, our Cal 100 was based on how much impact the person had in sports and in the world in general. The impact on the world in general is why people like Gregory Peck, Robert McNamara, Bob Mansbach, Glenn Seaborg and Cynt Marshall were included. Some standout athletes – such as Archie Williams, Stanley Barnes and Walter Gordon -- were pushed higher on our Cal 100 list because of their off-the-field achievements.

Here we identify 62 people who barely missed making our Cal 100, starting with 13 people associated with Cal sports who need explanations as to why they were not included.

Don Budge – Yes, he did attend Cal, and, yes, he was one of the best tennis players in history. But he was enrolled at Cal for only half his freshman year before leaving to join the Davis Cup squad. Budge was never on the Cal men’s tennis team and is not a member of the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame. (Helen Wills and Helen Jacobs are members of the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame even though Cal did not have a women’s tennis team at the time.)

Teri McKeever – She won four national championships as Cal’s women’s swim coach and was the head coach of the 2012 U.S. Olympic women’s swimming team, but we disqualified her from consideration because she was fired at Cal following an investigation into allegations of bullying.

Marianne Stanley – She is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, but she earned that honor on the basis of her work at Old Dominion, well before she became the women’s basketball coach at Cal. The Bears were just 14-49 in her three seasons as head coach and she was fired in 2000.

Phil Chenier – A three-time NBA all-Star who average 17.2 points for his career and averaged better than 20 points three times, Chenier perhaps should have been included on second thought. But we felt we had too many basketball players in contention and decided some of them had to go.

Missy Franklin – She won five swimming Olympic gold medals and was 2015 NCAA swimmer of the year while at Cal. She won four of her five gold medals before she arrived at Cal, but you can make a persuasive argument that Franklin should have been included in our Cal 100.

Bill Walsh – His only connection with Cal sports was his three years as a receivers coach (1960-62) on three lousy Cal football teams (four wins in the three seasons combined). However, his accomplishments after that made him a contender for our Cal 100.

Marv Levy – Yes, he was the head coach of a Buffalo Bills team that reached the Super Bowl four straight seasons, but Cal’s record of 8-29-2 (including 3-13 in conference play) in his four seasons as head coach of the Golden Bears from 1960 to 1963 was too ugly to overlook.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II – A hurdler on the Cal track team, Abdul-Mateen is now an actor known for playing Black Manta in the film Aquaman and Cal Abar in the HBO series Watchman, for which he won a 2020 Emmy. He falls into the Nnamdi Asomugha category, but Asomugha was more impressive athletically.

Bob Herwig – An All-America selection in 1936 and 1937, Herwig is in the Football Hall of Fame, and he was a captain of the Bears’ basketball team. Herwig won the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart with three Oak Leaf clusters for gallantry in World War II. He’s someone who easily could have been included, but we wanted to cut down our long list of football possibilities. Playing nearly 90 years ago and not having a pro career hurt his cause.

Rod Franz – An All-America lineman who played in two Rose Bowls under Pappy Waldorf, Franz had no pro career and was part of the football cutdown on our list.

Cameron Jordan and Keenan Allen – Jordan, an eight-time Pro Bowl selection, and Allen, a five-time Pro Bowl pick, were casualties of the football-contender overflow. Neither was an All-America pick at Cal, and their resumes are not yet complete.

Paul Larson – He finished fifth in the 1954 Heisman Trophy voting as Cal’s quarterback, but he did little in the pros.

Here are some of the others who were considered (and we’re certain there are others who should have been considered):

Jack Hart, football

Matt Hazeltine, football

Dan McMillan, football

Steve Rivera, football

Wesley Walker, football

Evan Weaver, football

Johnny Olszewski, football

David Ortega, football

Deltha O’Neal, football

Mike Pawlawski, football

Jim Hanifan, football coaching

Geoff McArthur, football

Jahvid Best, football

DeSean Jackson, football

Mitchell Schwartz, football

Nibs Price, football, basketball coach

Ryan Tollner, football agent

Mykolas Alekna, discus thrower

Sean Marks, basketball, NBA general manager

Lamond Murray, basketball

Mark McNamara, basketball

Milica Vukadinovic, basketball

Brittany Boyd, basketball

Colleen Galloway, basketball

Larry Friend, basketball

Russ Critchfield, basketball

Bob McKeen, basketball

Mark Canha, baseball

Xavier Nady, baseball

Bob Melvin, baseball

Dean Witter, rowing

Dana Vollmer, swimming

Nort Thornton, swimming coach

Mike Fleiss, TV producer

Gary Pomerantz, journalist

Chris Ballard, journalist

Mike Silver, sports journalist

Kate Scott, TV sports journalist

Luella Lilly, college administration

Jonny Moseley, freestyle skier

Tom Stow, tennis

Tom Brown, tennis

Jim McManus, tennis

Mike McDonald, rugby

Diane Ninemire, softball coach

Valerie Arioto, softball

Jolene Henderson, softball

Rube Goldberg, sports cartoonist, inventor

Jack Scott, sports activist

Cover photo of Keenan Allen by Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports

Follow Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

Find Cal Sports Report on Facebook by going to https://www.facebook.com/si.calsportsreport