From SFGATE: For the first time since 2011, there’s a growing anxiety among Cal fans about the future of their football program that stems directly from what Andrew Luck is doing at Stanford.
Two board members of California Legends Collective — the Golden Bears’ only third-party name, image and likeness collective — have announced that they will no longer personally donate to the organization they oversee until the school meets their singular demand: Put newly hired general manager, and former NFL head coach, Ron Rivera fully in charge of Cal football.
This drastic move comes at a rather interesting time in the program’s history. Over the past four years, the Golden Bears have been better on the gridiron than the Cardinal in almost every conceivable way. The four-year Cal graduates at spring commencement will be the first class since 2006 to experience a total sweep over Stanford in the Big Game. To top it all off, the school brought in Rivera on March 20 as its first football general manager.
But given the emerging circumstances in Palo Alto, the state of the program is still not good enough.
“We all have to acknowledge that we haven’t achieved everything we wanted to achieve,” Kevin Kennedy, president of California Legends Collective, told SFGATE. “So the story is still being written. We’re still working to kind of create the most competitive team possible — and teams possible — and, honestly, have Cal’s athletic success match academic excellence.”
The return of Rivera, a decorated former Cal athlete, could have universally been considered a momentous occasion for the Golden Bears. But in some Cal fans’ minds, it was ruined by their archrivals across the bay. After hiring Luck back in November to be general manager of Cardinal football, Stanford shared that the former quarterback would be above then-head coach Troy Taylor on the organization chart, which ESPN called “an innovative turn in how football operations work.” Luck then flexed that muscle when he fired Taylor after an ESPN report came out revealing investigations into employee complaints about Taylor’s workplace behavior toward women. There’s no ambiguity about Luck’s role and what he’s in charge of over at Stanford.
However, that innovation didn’t make its way to Berkeley. When Cal announced the Rivera hire four months later, the release noted that the two-time NFL Coach of the Year will report to chancellor Rich Lyons. Head coach Justin Wilcox, meanwhile, will continue to report to athletic director Jim Knowlton. This ruffled more than a few feathers among Cal’s donor community.
“You don't hire Mario Andretti and ask him to sit in the passenger seat, right?” said Kennedy, who’s been with the collective since the NIL era began in 2021. “There’s a reason that you bring someone like that on staff: In order to give him control.” In the days following the announcement, Kennedy was one of two California Legends Collective board members to release statements saying that they would withhold their personal donations until UC Berkeley followed Stanford’s lead.
Kennedy sent his message to the collective’s donor group, which he then shared with SFGATE. After complimenting Lyons and Rivera for getting this hire done, Kennedy wrote that he wasn’t fond of the lack of clarity surrounding the organizational structure of the football program. While Stanford’s announcement clearly stated that football would be under Luck’s direction and control, Cal’s, per Kennedy, left too many unaddressed concerns. For instance, how can Rivera oversee football if no one actually reports to him?
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