{"id":309831,"date":"2025-11-24T00:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T00:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/309831\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T00:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T00:03:08","slug":"sources-california-fires-football-coach-justin-wilcox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/309831\/","title":{"rendered":"Sources: California fires football coach Justin Wilcox"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cal<\/a> has fired coach Justin Wilcox, sources told ESPN on Sunday, after he went 48-55 over nine seasons with the Golden Bears.<\/p>\n

Wilcox’s final game came on Saturday, as Cal lost 31-10<\/a> to rival Stanford<\/a>, a game in which Cal was favored. The loss dropped Cal to 6-5 on the season, which marked the third-straight year that Cal reached bowl eligibility.<\/p>\n

The end of Wilcox’s tenure comes at an interesting crossroads for Cal. They have two co-directors of athletics — Jay Larson and Jenny Simon O’Neill. Cal also has a new football general manager, longtime NFL coach Ron Rivera<\/a>, who was brought in to help modernize the program.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

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Nick Rolovich, the former head coach at Washington State<\/a> and Hawai’i<\/a>, is expected to be the interim coach, sources told ESPN. He’d been working as a senior offensive assistant for Cal this season.<\/p>\n

Wilcox’s teams were always solid and competitive, but they’d recently been undercut by a lack of NIL support. A flurry of starters left the 2024 Golden Bears, including Heisman Trophy favorite Fernando Mendoza<\/a> (Indiana<\/a>), former first-team all-Pac-12 tailback Jaydn Ott<\/a> (Oklahoma<\/a>) and star tight end Jack Endries<\/a> (Texas<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Even with all the high-profile defections, it’d been a season of relative optimism for Cal until the Stanford loss, the tenor of which was unexpected. Cal had recruited perhaps the country’s best true freshman quarterback, Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele<\/a>, who flashed the promise of being a linchpin for the future.<\/p>\n

They’d also reloaded with a solid transfer class that helped them with solid wins against Minnesota<\/a>, North Carolina<\/a> and an upset win just last week at Louisville<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cal is in its second season in the ACC, and Wilcox was just 5-10 in ACC play the past two seasons. In none of his nine seasons at Cal did he manage a winning record in league play, which included seven years in the Pac-12 and two in the ACC.<\/p>\n

Wilcox, 49, is a well-regarded coach with strong ties to the West Coast, as he’d been defensive coordinator at spots like Boise State<\/a>, Washington<\/a> and USC<\/a>. He’d also been a coordinator at Tennessee<\/a> and Wisconsin<\/a>, where he worked in 2016 prior to getting the Cal head coaching job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cal has fired coach Justin Wilcox, sources told ESPN on Sunday, after he went 48-55 over nine seasons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-309831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}