GM Ron Rivera Looks At 3 Issues in Evaluating Cal Football

Cal football general manager Ron Rivera said this week that evaluation of the Bears’ football program will be based on three things: win-loss record, attendance and TV ratings.

Win-loss record is one-third of the equation.

“If you’re honest about this, there’s two things at this point," said Rivera. "One is we’re being evaluated by butts in the seats, eyeballs on television and wins and losses -- 33 1/3 %.”

As we all know, those three things are interconnected.

If you win, people in the Bay Area will come to games and watch on TV. And if people come to home games, it gives the team a better chance to win.

It’s no coincidence that Cal’s two best ACC performances last season were the games that drew the Bears’ biggest home crowds.

Cal averaged 39,173 in home attendance in 2024, and that ranked 10th in the ACC. But Cal drew sellouts of 52,428 for the home games against Miami and Stanford. 

The Bears nearly pulled off a major upset against eighth-ranked Miami, holding a 35-10 lead late in the third quarter before losing by 39-38, one of four Cal defeats by five points or fewer and one of two losses by a single point.

Later in the season, the Bears overcame an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter to beat Stanford 24-21, using a late drive pushed along by crowd support to score the winning touchdown.

“We were a fraction away from being the team they envisioned us being,” said Rivera, a two-time NFL Coach of the Year. “Why is that important? Because this is an NFL market. I bring it up because of the fact that this is the fifth-largest market in the NFL, I believe, maybe the fourth, but it’s the top five. Think about that. TV market, eyeballs. Just in this specific market.

"So we have to be successful, capture the fan base and bring them back. Being as close as we were, that makes it really, really good. Think about it. You’re 6-6 [Cal’s 2024 regular-season record], limited resources, that’s probably one of the biggest jobs I have, is to try to create resources. Going out working with the donors, working with the alumni so we can, so that we can procure the things that we need to be successful.”

(The Bay Area was considered the fifth-largest TV market in the 1990s, but it has dropped to 10th, according to Nielsen.)

Cal is in that uneasy position of being a .500 program. Over the past six seasons (not including the four-game pandemic season of 2020), Cal has a combined record of 35-37 in regular-season games.

“We’re at a point, a precipice right now that we could go either way,” Rivera said, “but what we want to do is, we want to go forward, we want to go up. We’ve been on the cusp, and we’ve had limited resources. Resources are important, but the biggest thing is the investment in us. I’m not just talking about dollars. I’m talking about time.”

Rivera is selling the idea of coming to Cal games.

“I know winning is a big part of it, but, hell, show up the first coupled weeks, see what we got, help build that momentum for us,” he said. “We had a lot of energy in the game against Miami, but somewhere along the line we lost it. Whether it was because of our play, or because everybody got nervous at the wrong time as far as ‘Oh, crap, here it goes again.’ We got to get past those things.”

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