The Play: Fall 2026

By the time this issue reaches you, football season will be hitting full stride, and the Golden Bears will have notched three or four wins already, no doubt. 

Certainly many Bears fans see the stars aligning for Cal football. GM Ron Rivera is a Cal alum (’89). So is Tosh Lupoi ’05, the new head coach, whom Rivera hired. So is Chancellor Rich Lyons ’82, who hired Rivera. 

Cal women’s water polo came up just short against USC in the NCAA finals in April but beat Stanford en route, their first-ever postseason win over the Cardinal. 

Write For California blogger Ruey Yen ’04 wrote that he wished he could have seen that “inspiring performance” against top-seeded Stanford back in February, before he went on Jeopardy! to compete against superchamp Jamie Ding. Alas, Yen, a self-described “baseball usher, sports blogger, and physicist,” didn’t win.

If you’re not yet acquainted, Write For California is the fan-operated website that, in the words of sports scribe Mike Silver ’88, “covers the hell out of Cal sports like a bear suffocating a tree.” If you get the reference, you’ll be at home there. The site is also closely associated with the Calgorithm, the fan-driven meme factory we wrote about in our Fall/Winter 2025 issue.

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All eyes continue to be on Fernando Mendoza ’25, Cal’s ex-QB and the No. 1 NFL draft pick last season. In May, the newly minted Raider walked the stage as a special guest at the Haas School of Business’s MBA graduation ceremony, where he received his undergraduate diploma. As we reported in our last issue, Mendoza earned his degree from Haas in three years.

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Fewer eyes have been on Jaydn Ott ’25, another Cal star who transferred via the portal—to Oklahoma. Ott (who also graduated from Cal in three years) went undrafted after a fallow year with the Sooners. He ultimately signed with the Kansas City Chiefs as a free agent. 

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That scenario is not uncommon. Less than 2 percent of all Division I football players get drafted. Even some of the very best college players never make
it to the pros. 

How many Cal players are currently in the NFL? According to Cal Athletics figures, there were 19 Golden Bears on active rosters as of September 2025.  

In the age of NIL and revenue sharing, it should come as no surprise that it’s also the age of the college general manager. In addition to Rivera, who’s in charge of football operations, the Bears have hired Meghin Williams as general manager for women’s basketball and Richard Midgley ’06 as deputy general manager for the men’s team. Midgley is a former starting guard for the Bears. 

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Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele is under center again this year for Cal. It took money to keep the QB in Berkeley. 

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Responsibility for raising the funds largely fell to Kevin Kennedy, J.D. ’91, president of California Legends, the third-party NIL collective that supports Cal’s athletics programs in raising the funds they need for revenue sharing. Kennedy told The Athletic, “It wasn’t like we had a bake sale. It was really a targeted effort to find that money, and we did it.”

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Cal Athletics reported that it raised $88.5 million in gifts and pledges in 2025–26, with 18 donors pledging $1 million or more each. 

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It wasn’t like we had a bake sale.

Speaking of general managers, Eric Tulsky, Ph.D. ’02, is GM of the Carolina Hurricanes, one of the top franchises in the National Hockey League. A scientist who specializes in nanotechnology, Tulsky started with the Hurricanes as a part-time analyst before eventually working his way to the top of the org chart. 

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He’s not the only one in the front office of a professional franchise. Paul Toboni ’12, former Cal baseball player, is in his first year as president of baseball operations for the Washington Nationals. 

A former infielder for the Bears, Toboni was part of the last Cal squad to make it to the College World Series, in 2011. They did it with the program on the line, as the university had decided to cut or redesignate five varsity teams that year, including baseball. In the end, donors led by Stu Gordon ’62, J.D. ’65, raised some $9 million to rescue the program. The aluminum bats now ring out in Stu Gordon Stadium. 

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Another varsity program that was on the chopping block in 2010–11 was women’s gymnastics. It too was saved and has done Cal proud since then, making it to its second ACC championship this year, after three straight regular-season Pac-12 titles and a second-place finish in the 2024 NCAA championships. 

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Cal’s Tonya Paulsson made history at the 2026 ACC Championships by becoming the first freshman in ACC history to win the conference all-around title.

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Cal has won more than 100 national team titles and more than 200 individual titles across its history. It added even more individual champions in 2026, including freshman (and 2024 Olympic veteran) Claire Weinstein, who won the NCAA title in the 500-yard freestyle.

Two more for the trophy case: In crew, Cal’s varsity four won a 2026 Intercollegiate Rowing Association national title. And perennial powerhouse Cal rugby won its 35th national collegiate championship title. 

One of the biggest sports stories of 2026 was the New York Knicks’ NBA championship victory over the San Antonio Spurs. Had things worked out differently, Jason Kidd might have coached the Knicks. In 2020, the franchise interviewed the former Cal superstar to take the head coaching spot. They came knocking again in 2025, but the Dallas Mavericks put the kibosh on that. 

Another Cal star with a Knicks connection is Darrall Imhoff ’94. The 6’10” center had the dubious distinction of guarding Wilt Chamberlain the night Chamberlain scored a record 100 points. Afterward, Imhoff said, “I can’t have a nightmare tonight. I’ve just lived through one.” 

Imhoff’s class year above is correct, by the way. He came back to finish his forestry degree in the ‘90s. His coach at Cal, Pete Newell, joked, “It only took you 35 years. I thought it would take 45.”

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1958–59 was the zenith of Cal Athletics. In addition to its Rose Bowl appearance, Cal, led by Imhoff, won the national basketball crown in 1959. 

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Rose Bowl quarterback Joe Kapp ’60 played both football and basketball at Cal. His roommate Earl Robinson ’58, M.A. ’71, was also a two-sport letterman, a star in basketball and baseball. He went on to play in the major leagues for the Dodgers and Orioles. He also had the distinction of being the first African American yell leader at Cal.

The 1959 Rose Bowl team was surprisingly diverse for the times, with Black, Hispanic, and Asian starters.

Anna Bright ’21 is an up-and-comer on the pro pickleball circuit. The former Cal varsity tennis player is ranked second in the world in women’s doubles.

The sporting event of the summer was the Men’s World Cup of soccer, err, football. In the U.S.’s group match against Australia in Seattle, the camera found former Cal varsity soccer players Alex Morgan ’14 and her husband, Servando Carrasco ’15, in the crowd. Like Morgan (see sidebar), Carrasco played professional soccer for several years. He retired in 2020. 

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Also spotted at the Australia game was Marshawn Lynch, who once, in the very same stadium,  made a 67-yard touchdown run in which he broke nine tackles. The reaction of Seahawks fans was so great it registered 2.0 on the Richter scale. The play is remembered as the Beast Quake.

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Lynch wasn’t just a spectator. He was also a credentialed sideline photographer! 

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For Cal rugby fans, “World Cup” has a different meaning; it’s the Bears’ annual match against the University of British Columbia. Last spring was the teams’ 100th meeting. Cal won. Naturally.