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When 19-year-old freshman Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele hit wide receiver Jordan King for a 29-yard gain in the first quarter on Saturday in Berkeley, 42,240 fans inside Memorial Stadium began to roar.
After the duo connected on an early touchdown pass against Duke, King’s second reception of the game set up another Cal score that pushed the lead to 14 points for a Bears team seeking its fifth win in six games.
Suddenly, the ambitious goals UC Berkeley chancellor Rich Lyons and first-year general Ron Rivera outlined for the program were within reach.
“Could we get to an eight-win regular season?” Lyons asked Rivera after he hired the Super Bowl champion and former NFL head coach in March.
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“Nine,” Rivera responded. “Nine is when we start feeling successful.”
“Game on,” Lyons said.
Lyons’ motivation to bring Rivera aboard in a first-of-its-kind role at Cal stemmed from more than just the changing landscape in college athletics. After digesting the “astonishing” events of October 5, 2024 — from its pre-dawn beginnings with ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ on campus to a dramatic, late-night finish against Miami — inspiration struck the university leader.
Eager to build upon the momentum from a day when 52,428 fans packed Memorial Stadium against a top-10 opponent, Lyons sent a message to Stephanie Rivera, a longtime acquaintance from the UC Berkeley Foundation Board and Ron’s wife.
“Call Ron,” she directed Lyons.
In December, the chancellor and Cal’s former All-American linebacker spoke over the phone for the first time. By March, they formed a team.
“It was all heart for him. It was like ‘I’m coming back to Cal,’” Lyons said, crediting Stephanie for sealing the deal.
It’s been seven short months since Rivera joined a Cal program that lost nearly 40 players to the transfer portal last offseason, including starting quarterback and projected first-round draft pick Fernando Mendoza.
After Cal’s surprising 4-1 start, fans again gathered at Memorial Glade on the first Saturday of October. A year after listening to Pat McAfee, they watched Rivera talk about the future of the program.
“Ron really has been catalytic,” Lyons said. “Boom.”
Lyons and Rivera crafted a custom vision for the general manager role, far different from the traditional responsibilities that come with the title in the pros. It had to be tailored to the university and program’s unique needs — namely player retention and revenue-generation in the age of NIL.
Despite a massive wave of departures in the portal, the Bears flipped Sagapolutele back after his dramatic signing-day turn to Oregon last winter. In the Hawaii native, Cal fans found great hope for the future — predicting a Jared Goff-esque prophecy for the freshman signal caller.
After a poised season debut — 20-of-30 passing for 234 yards and three touchdowns against Oregon State — Sagapolutele earned ACC Rookie of the Week honors and left just about everyone outside out Berkeley wondering where he would be lured next season.
Rivera was brought in to handle situations like these.
“We’ve been working on marketing plans for retaining our players,” Rivera said after a practice last week. “We’ve been working with some brands and companies to see if we can get these things off the ground like a lot of these other (programs) have been already doing.”
Lyons’ arrival as chancellor in April, 2024 and Rivera as GM less than a year later coincided with a major financial upswing for Cal Athletics, thanks in large part to motivated donors who set a record with $82 million in donations during the 2024-25 academic year. Five of Cal’s 28 Olympic (non-revenue) sports are now fully endowed. And following the House vs. NCAA settlement, which allows schools to share up to $20.5 million annually with student-athletes, Lyons’ administration also pledged to match up to $6 million in donations to the football program. This summer, Rivera shared that the program is working with roughly $14 million in NIL to divide among its players.
After acquiring capital, Cal set its sights on capturing attention. Rivera’s job includes filling seats and reintroducing the Bears to the Bay Area sports spotlight.
With the Raiders, A’s, and Warriors all departing the East Bay in recent years, Cal sees an opening — a vacuum in local sports identity and pride. The university is moving with intention, aiming to reclaim relevance and position itself within the fabric of the region as it also works to solidify a week-in, week-out spot in the national landscape.
“We want to get to a point where we know that we are going to have 55,000 to 60,000,” Rivera said.
A spike in attendance and in the win column would help Cal strategically position itself nationally by the expiration of the Big Ten’s current media rights deal with FOX, CBS, and NBC at the end of the 2029-2030 athletic year. That’s the timeframe Lyons identifies as a likely inflection point for major conference realignment to happen again.
As Lyons puts it, if there is going to be a reshuffling, “that’s the timeframe … or you’re just not going to be in the big game anymore.”
Whether it’s the rise of a potential super league or another dramatic shift in conference structures, schools that fail to show competitive and financial relevance risk being left behind — possibly for decades.
While Lyons says the program is starting out this new era by “playing the long game,” there is nonetheless a sense of urgency. He made a timeline for tangible progress of the program clear.
“We can’t have full house money on the table, plus all the other stuff, now we’ve got a GM, and then end up with a six-win regular season for the next three years. Like no, that actually doesn’t compute,” Lyons said. “If we don’t have a really fine season in the next three seasons, I think that’s really problematic.”
The thought of failure is deeply concerning.
“If we can’t deliver something special in three to four years, then it’s like, okay, folks, this is a defining moment,” Lyons said.
Cal’s Memorial Stadium can accommodate 63,000 fans and the team averaged 39,173 per home game last season. At sunset for Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. kickoff against Duke, the Bears took a small step forward as the homecoming crowd represented a steady climb in turnout from Cal’s first two home matchups this fall.
But after bringing fans to their feet by taking a 14-0 lead, the Bears began to fall apart.
When Sagapolutele’s fourth-quarter checkdown pass turned into his third interception of the night, many of the remaining fans filed out of the stadium. The early advantage evaporated as the Blue Devils scored 38 unanswered points, leaving the bleachers bare.
Reality sank in. Mediocrity has been the norm for the program for more than a decade. Cal hasn’t finished with eight or more regular season wins since 2009. In nine seasons under Wilcox, whose contract runs through 2027, the Bears haven’t won more than seven games.
This is where Lyons and Rivera hope their partnership can be most effective — in boosting a renewed winning culture.
“We hadn’t had that many winning seasons in the last 30 years,” Lyons said. “But [Rivera] is setting the bar up there, so that’s what we’re aiming at. We’re not aiming at seven. Not even aiming at eight — even though we haven’t hit eight in 15 years. I love that about him.”