Major Cal donors in standoff with school over Berkeley's football team
By: Gabe Fernandez - SFGateFor 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?
“Until I know the answers to the questions I posed above, I won’t personally invest more money in this enterprise,” he wrote. “More importantly, I cannot in good conscience ask any of you to do the same. I simply do not believe that Cal football can possibly succeed without some significant changes to how we have operated to date.”
The second message came by way of Bear Insider, an online Cal Athletics-focused outlet. On March 21, the day after the Rivera hire became official, an article headlined “The Ron Rivera Announcement - A meaningful and yet seemingly insufficient step forward” was published without an individual byline but rather with the website itself named as the author.
Despite the somewhat conciliatory headline, the article was much more combative, calling Knowlton “wholly unqualified,” crediting the success of Berkeley’s basketball and football teams to donor pressure and accusing the athletic department of fostering “a culture of ‘No.’” After boasting that “almost 90% of the dollars contributed to the Legends Collective [is] coming from the Bear Insider populace,” it concluded with a call to action.
“For now, we will be refraining from donating to the program and further will not encourage any of you to do so,” the article read. “Instead, regardless of your feelings, we strongly suggest you reach out to Chancellor Lyons and share how you feel about the state of Cal Athletics, Jim Knowlton as your Athletic Director and how you believe he can best support Ron Rivera as the Cal Football General Manager.”
The publisher of Bear Insider is Greg Richardson, another board member of California Legends Collective. Richardson told SFGATE he was on vacation and unable to talk for this story, but he took credit for the editorial. It’s also clear both he and Kennedy have a shared perspective on this issue. The collective president told SFGATE that he had a chance to read the statement shortly before it went live on Bear Insider. He said that while he agrees overall with the sentiment about empowering Rivera, his opinion differs in that he believes it’s “a distraction to get too wrapped up around the concept of whether the current administration is good for their job.”
Shortly after the Bears Insider article went live, #GiveRonTheKeys emerged as a rallying cry for fans on social media. The slogan picked up steam when Lyons cryptically posted on March 25, “Cal sports fans: It’s time to pull together.”
This brought out a flurry of responses from online Cal fans — affectionately known as the Calgorithm — some of whom coupled their hashtag with calls to get rid of Knowlton, who has had a rather tumultuous time leading Cal’s athletics. While he doesn’t agree with the extent of some of the specific posts, Kennedy did say he was “grateful” that the Calgorithm is “activated on this topic.”
“I think we feel a certain sense of obligation to inform the donors that we have brought in and cultivated for the past several years who have helped fund the collective and help generate the success that we’ve generated,” Kennedy said. “We owe them full insights into what we’re personally doing with our investments. I think it behooves all of us, and we firmly believe that, to have just clear reporting lines, and have it be clearly specified that Ron Rivera is in control of football.”
SFGATE reached out to Cal asking about the donors withholding funds and the Bears Insider article. In an emailed response on Wednesday, Lyons didn't answer SFGATE's specific questions, but sent a statement: "I am confident we have the right people, in the right places, doing the right things in support of a Cal Athletics football program that can and will excel. The world of intercollegiate sports is changing rapidly, and Cal will continue to adapt rapidly to that.”
In a worst-case scenario, the push from the California Legends Collective board leads to a drought of donations, resulting in Cal athletes losing NIL funds. It’s a situation Kennedy wants to avoid as much as possible, calling that outcome “the antithesis of what we’ve devoted all this time and all this money and all this energy to.” Instead, he argued, the idea is that this sort of pressure helps to push through a decision — elevating Rivera — that would ultimately bring in more money to the athletic program and collective by galvanizing an alumni fan base.
Ultimately, it may be difficult to fully know the extent of the donor pressure; NIL collectives aren’t required to disclose financial information. Still, it’s a bold play for Kennedy, who acknowledged in his statement that he doesn’t quite have the panache to successfully lobby the athletic department on his own. But he’s willing to withhold his financial support from the school he loves dearly in order to make sure Cal doesn’t fall back behind Stanford again.
“I’m sure there were people who didn’t like the forward pass when it was introduced into football,” Kennedy said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not part of the game. At some point, you have to adjust.”
