In August, when Cal took the field at Oregon State’s Reser Stadium for their first game of the season, Ron Rivera watched from high above the field, seated next to a donor. At the helm for the Bears: quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele—known on campus as JKS—a true freshman and highly prized recruit from Ewa Beach, Hawaii.
After a few runs, JKS threaded a 35-yard completion, then a quick five, then a 19-yard dart for Cal’s first touchdown.
On the sideline, players celebrated. In the box, Rivera, Cal football’s first-ever general manager, had a different reaction.
“I said, ‘Damn, it’s already starting,’” he recalled.
“What is?” the donor asked.
“I have to now think about how we’re going to keep him.”
Indeed, within days, college insiders were already speculating which programs might come after JKS—just as they’d come after Cal’s previous quarterback, Fernando Mendoza ’25, a season ago. In the end, the young quarterback defected to newly flush Indiana, lured away in the transfer portal by the promise of riches, the new reality in a world where players are now paid to do something they once did for free. (To be fair, Mendoza, now a leading Heisman candidate with the No. 2–ranked Hoosiers, had an additional motivation; he wanted to play with his younger brother, who is also at Indiana.) The result: Whereas college programs once focused mainly on attracting talent, now they must spend as much time—and much more money—trying to keep it.
Forty-two years after graduating, Rivera has returned to his alma mater in a role that didn’t exist in college sports history until now.
There’s a story Rivera likes to tell from his playing days at Cal, when he was a star linebacker in the early ’80s under Joe Kapp.
Rivera had heard that Kapp—the former Cal quarterback, class of ’59, as old-school as they come—lined up good summer jobs for players, so Rivera asked his coach if he might do the same for him. Kapp found him a construction gig for $5 an hour. Rivera got up at 6 a.m. and spent his days jackhammering concrete and demolishing chimneys. “The hardest summer I’d ever had,” he said. Still, he sweated through it, grumbling—only to learn, at the end, that some teammates were making $15 an hour in cushy law-firm or truck-driving gigs.
Rivera went to Kapp, ticked off.
Kapp responded by asking a question: Did you like doing that kind of work?
Not really, Rivera responded.
Then get your education, Kapp said. I want you to graduate.
Rivera wasn’t pleased at the time. Now? “I love Joe for it.”
Rivera told this story from behind his desk, in a small office at Memorial Stadium where—42 years after graduating, 33 years after retiring from a successful NFL playing career, and just a year removed from coaching his final NFL game—he’s returned to his alma mater in a role that didn’t exist when he played here or, really, at any point in college sports history until now. His challenge: guide the football program’s return to relevance while inspiring donors to open their wallets.
Rivera thinks this can happen, in part because he believes enough talented athletes still recognize the value of a Berkeley education—the value Joe Kapp once hammered home—and in part because he feels the community is ready to support the team once again. “The potential’s there, we’ve just got to capture it, we’ve got to re-engage with it,” he said. “And more than anything else, we have to really make an investment in it.”
The seeds of that investment trace back to 2024. The team hadn’t had a winning conference record in 15 years. Conference realignment was creating chaos. Chancellor Rich Lyons knew he needed to act.
That winter, he reached out to Rivera’s wife, Stephanie ’87—a former Cal basketball player and university trustee Rivera first met as an undergrad in the line at Yogurt Park—and said he’d like to talk to Rivera about how the NFL’s general manager model might translate to college football.
“So Stephanie comes to me, says, ‘Hey, Chancellor Lyons is going to call you,’” Rivera recalled.
By this point, Rivera had reached a crossroads in a long, winding career. The son of a Puerto Rican Army officer and a Mexican-Filipina mother, he grew up on military bases across the world before landing at Cal, where he and Kapp, “The Toughest Chicano,” clashed constantly. From that conflict grew a bond, and a mutual appreciation. “He wanted somebody that would stand up to him,” Rivera said. After his final game, they shared a shot of tequila in Kapp’s office and said their thanks.
Then came nine NFL seasons with the Chicago Bears, including a Super Bowl ring in 1985, followed by a 26-year coaching career, 13 of those as head coach, that led to two Coach of the Year awards, a Super Bowl appearance with the Carolina Panthers, and a final stop in Washington, where he coached through cancer treatments before departing after the 2023 season.
Like Kapp before him, Rivera preaches one core message: “Get your education.” But how do you sell something that, to many, seems self-evident and, to others, extraneous?
When Lyons called, Rivera began by explaining the role of an NFL general manager, listing off duties and strategies. Then he offered to help. “Let me see if I can write you a job description as to how I think it might work.”
Earlier that fall, Rivera had been in Berkeley for the first-ever appearance of ESPN’s College GameDay, when Cal played No. 8 Miami. Thousands of students packed Memorial Glade, chanting and roaring (and the Bears nearly upset Miami). For Rivera, and Lyons, it was a glimpse of what Cal could be again.
Back home, Rivera kept that vision in mind as he drafted an outline. After looking at it, Lyons told Rivera he had a guy in mind for the job: him. As Lyons saw it, Rivera brought credibility and bridge-building.
At the time, Rivera was interviewing with another NFL franchise, the Jacksonville Jaguars. Stephanie urged him to look closer to home. By this time, colleges had begun bringing on famous alumni as general managers to help raise money and recruit players. One of the most prominent hires was Andrew Luck, the College Hall of Famer and Pro Bowl quarterback who took the position at his alma mater, and Cal’s archrival, Stanford. Now, Rivera called Luck, who told him he loved the job but also struck a note of caution. “He said, ‘Ron, it’s like drinking from a fire hose.’”
Indeed, as Rivera quickly learned, a lot had changed. College athletes could now profit off NIL—licensing deals involving their name, image, and likeness—and the recently established transfer portal that operated similar to free agency. Players could enter the portal and other schools could court them with NIL deals, without the kind of binding contracts seen in pro sports. A landmark court settlement, which took effect in July 2025, further altered the landscape, allowing schools to pay players directly from a salary-cap-style pool, independent of NIL contracts. This season, the cap is roughly $20.5 million per school; at Cal, about $14 million of that goes to football, with the rest split among basketball and other sports.
After accepting the GM job in March 2025, it didn’t take long for Rivera to get a taste of the new economy. In the spring transfer portal, Cal lost a number of key players, including star running back Jaydn Ott ’25 (Oklahoma) and tight end Jack Endries ’25 (Texas). As players departed, new, less-heralded ones arrived, 38 in all. (Mendoza, who led Cal to a stirring come-from-behind victory against Stanford in 2024, had already decamped the previous December, only a week before the Bears played in the LA Bowl, a game they lost to UNLV.)
“Come on, let’s go up to practice,” Rivera said, leading this reporter to the turf behind one end zone in Memorial Stadium.
On the field, the offense ran red zone reps. Music thumped. Whistles blared. The scoreboard counted down the current drill. Rivera—clean-cut, strong chin, still thick through the shoulders, wearing sunglasses and a Cal baseball hat—fist-bumped players and Cal staff. A group of NFL scouts wandered over. “We’ve had 27 NFL teams come through already,” Rivera said.
That world, the NFL world, feels familiar to him. He’s still getting used to this new role, though, one that is being defined in real time. Currently, Cal’s co-athletic directors supervise everything but football, which Rivera directly oversees, including controlling the budget. Meanwhile, coach Justin Wilcox, now in his ninth year at Cal, makes the on-the-ground football decisions. Wilcox has publicly called Rivera “unbelievable,” describing him as an “advocate” and “resource.” “He’s got so many different experiences in pro football which have helped,” Wilcox said at the ACC kickoff presser. “Just organizational structure, roster management, talking about players, situational football.”
How this all plays out is in flux. This season, Rivera said he often stands with Wilcox at practices, but tries to stay off the sideline during games, when he’ll instead take notes and pass them along to the coach afterward. In conversation, he praises Wilcox and stresses that he’s not here to take drastic action (like firing the head coach) right away, even if some fans prefer he did. “It really wasn’t coming in and saying, oh, I got to fix this and fix this,” Rivera said. “It was me coming in and going, OK, how can I support them? So all I’ve really tried to do is be here to be supportive.”
At least for now, Rivera’s days are a mishmash of strategy, promotion, and solicitation. A day earlier, he’d met with the general manager at the Claremont Resort & Club, the football program’s go-to spot for recruits. Earlier that morning, he’d done a radio hit for KNBR, part of a regular series. After practice, he was heading to a donor lunch, and in the afternoon, he wanted to try to stir up campus enthusiasm by heading down to fraternity row—“bring a couple dozen pizzas and hang out with the guys.”
Rivera’s arrival has created optimism among Cal fans—and with good reason, according to those who know him. Mike Silver ’88, a senior writer at The Athletic, has covered Rivera for two decades in the NFL. “He’s a complete standup guy,” said Silver, who is also a member of the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame Committee. “He’s a good listener. He’s not judgy. He’s obviously really smart. He cares a lot.” Furthermore, Silver noted, Rivera has an advantage an outside hire wouldn’t: “He bleeds blue and gold.”
Though now in his early 60s, Rivera likes to believe that, were he in the shoes of the current players, he’d stay at Cal. “I don’t know if I would be who I am today if I had gone anywhere else. I really don’t,” he said. “And I honestly don’t know and I can’t tell you if I would’ve taken the money. I would like to believe I wouldn’t because of my upbringing.” He paused. “But then you really don’t know.”
This is something he’s talked about with Luck, an issue that’s hard to imagine 20 or 30 years ago—how to convince young men of the value of a Stanford or Berkeley degree. Back then, football players put that academic prestige into the equation. “I wanted to go to Cal because it was obviously the best school that I got into,” said Steve Torgersen ’04, a fullback who arrived via transfer in 2002.
Torgersen keeps in touch with other players from his era—he cuts their hair in his garage—and said they’re uniformly happy for the new generation. More autonomy. A chance to be paid. But they also realize the decisions must be hard. “I think it all depends on how much more money you can make,” Torgersen said. “If you have a degree from Cal, that sticks with you for the rest of your life. That means something. Football can get taken away so quickly.”
Rivera said a lot of it is perspective. “We’re trying to be honest with them and tell them, these are the hard, cold facts of college football and professional football,” he said. “This is the No. 1 public institution. It’s been voted that 20-plus years consecutively. We have 25 of our undergraduate majors that are in the top five in their categories. We have one of the largest alumni networks in the United States and the world, for that matter. So having said that, I tell recruits and their families, the reason why that’s important is less than 1 percent of all draft-eligible college football players make it to the NFL.” (The stats Rivera cites are all in the ballpark, if not always precise; the exact NFL number, for example, is 1.6 percent.)
Like Kapp before him, Rivera preaches one core message: “Get your education.” But how do you sell something that, to many, seems self-evident and, to those who think they’ll be in the lucky 1.6 percent, may seem extraneous?
That’s the tricky part, as Steve Etter can attest.
After graduating Cal in 1983 and Haas in 1989, Etter made his name in finance, as an executive at PricewaterhouseCoopers and a founding partner at Greyrock Capital Group. In 2004, he returned to Cal to teach corporate finance and, later, his signature course, “Financial & Business Literacy for the Professional Athlete.” At first, Etter’s focus was on preparing Cal athletes like Marshawn Lynch, Ryan Murphy ’17, and Jaylen Brown for life after Berkeley. “We were thinking about the future,” Etter said, sitting at a table outside Haas on a glorious fall afternoon. Now? “We’re thinking about the present.”
In his current class, which includes JKS, he provides advice on novel matters like NIL deals and deferred compensation. But where the school and the athletes were once largely aligned, now they may have competing perspectives. “What angle do you want to go from?” Etter asked. “Do you want to go from the [athletic director]’s job that had that 20 million in their budget to fund lacrosse and field hockey and softball? Or do you want to start with the player?” He paused. “When I had Marshawn Lynch, he had nothing.” Now, with current Cal stars, Etter pointed out, “they have a 1099 they have to pay quarterly taxes on.”
Like Rivera, Etter believes the road to football prominence runs through academics. “I think over time we drifted away from the value of the Cal education,” Etter said. “I analogize it to many of my private equity companies; we just compete on price and commoditize ourselves.”
Etter is part of the sell. Come to Cal and you’ll have him as a resource, helping you understand, and maximize, the experience. That means thinking not just about next year or the year after, but far down the line. “I hope I can turn JKS and [standout linebacker] Cade Uluave into Marshawn Lynches and Jared Goffs,” Etter says. “More than football players.”
When Rivera talks about what could be, he points to an example of what was—at least for one day, when ESPN’s College GameDay showed up, and with it, 52,000 Cal fans.
Reviving that enthusiasm will take some work; through the first five home games this season, Cal was averaging just over 36,000 fans, or less than 60 percent capacity. So Rivera tries to drum up support—hence the pizza deliveries—while also endeavoring to make the program feel bigtime. That means building both the buzz around the program and upgrading its visuals—all the elements that lure not only fans but also recruits. “Here, I’ll show you,” he said. He heads toward the concourse, on the route recruits now take on campus visits, past the view of the bay and the sign that reads Aaron Rodgers Locker Room, a not-so-subtle reminder of NFL alumni, to what used to be the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology on the second floor of Memorial Stadium. Behind tinted one-way windows, renovation is underway in a long, open space. This, Rivera explains, is the new recruiting center.
As he walked through it, he laid out the vision: dedicated recruiting and support staff, photo backdrops, TVs running Cal highlights, couches, room for 70 people. The goal: to send an immediate message. “What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create that first ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’”
Rivera knows none of this will turn the program around in a season. Cal has a lot of catching up to do, especially coming out of an earlier era when, as Silver said, “we were clearly compromised and behind in a lot of ways institutionally.” Indeed, eventually, the early buzz of Cal’s 3–0 start will give way: a rough loss at San Diego State, a drubbing by Duke, an overtime heartbreaker to Virginia Tech. There were also gutsy wins against UNC and Boston College and, in early November, a stunning upset of 15th-ranked Louisville. But the reality has already sunk in for Cal fans. Once again, this won’t be the year that the team returns to glory.
It’s all happening amid an increasingly volatile college football environment—consider, again, Indiana, which in two seasons went from 3–9 to a top five team. For his part, Rivera is looking ahead, hoping to position Cal for success in the evolving landscape. He muses about how five years from now, he expects to see a pair of “massive” conferences form, each with 50 or 60 teams, breaking college football into something akin to the NFL, with an AFC and an NFC and playoffs leading to a national championship. He argues that Cal has an advantage in this scenario.
“We’re the sixth-largest NFL market,” he said. Theoretically, at least, that means more exposure, more football fans, and more potential for NIL endorsements and television viewership. “That’s what makes us valuable. But we’ve also got to have the wins and losses to support it. So Cal, and Stanford, our goal is to be beyond relevant. To be desirable.”
The first test may come in January, when the next transfer portal opens, giving players a chance to entertain competing offers and switch programs.
That means that Rivera, who admits, “our resources aren’t where we want them yet,” has very little time to lay the groundwork and make his pitch. To hit every donor lunch, scout recruits, and tape every interview. To call in favors and buy pepperoni pizzas and echo Joe Kapp at every turn. To drill home the idea he hopes will resonate more than dollar signs or TV ratings, that when it comes to these young men, “We’re trying to help them be more.”
Addendum: As this issue was going to press, news broke that Cal’s head coach of nine years, Justin Wilcox, was fired after the Bears’ disappointing loss in the Big Game. In early December, former Golden Bear Tosh Lupoi ’05 was hired to replace him.
Chris Ballard, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for 20 years, is the author of four books, including the forthcoming The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, an Unlikely Quest, and the Transformative Power of Cold Water. A Berkeley local, he’s taught a variety of courses at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
