Ron Rivera came home to raise the bar.
The Cal Athletics Hall of Famer proudly returned to Berkeley as the football team’s inaugural general manager to help the program reach the same heights that the nation’s best public university is known for academically.
“This is the University of California,” Rivera told The Daily Californian. “We’re the public university. We are at the anchor. We are the ones that everybody looks to. That’s why we’re held to a certain standard. I don’t think we’ve been held to a certain standard athletically, and that’s a mistake. … I’d love to be held to a higher standard, as far as football’s concerned.”
Rivera has big aspirations, not just on the gridiron but for campus’s entire athletic department.
He envisions Cal football becoming a perennial top-20 program, Cal men’s and women’s basketball as habitual NCAA tournament teams and the entire athletic department as bigger and stronger with routine top-five finishes for the Learfield Directors’ Cup.
“That’s one of the questions people ask me: ‘What does success look like to you?’ Well, to me, it’s having a sustainable winning culture,” Rivera said.
Cal football lies at the forefront of what hasn’t been a winning culture — with the exception of Olympic sports — for far too long in Berkeley. The Bears haven’t won a national title since 1937, haven’t won a conference title outright since 1958 and haven’t won eight regular season games in a single campaign since 2009.
Rivera is well aware of the program’s history and how it’s even more dismaying when compared to campus’s academic prowess that has occurred across the street from Memorial Stadium for more than a century.
Fortunately for him and UC Berkeley, second-year Chancellor Rich Lyons, who hired Rivera in March, is just as hungry for a higher caliber between the sidelines.
“We just won two Nobel Prizes,” Lyons told the Daily Cal. “Look, there’s some excellence at this university and we need to deliver that kind of excellence out on the field. I mean, that’s what Berkeley’s used to. And that’s a high bar. It’s hard. This is really hard. But everybody feels like this is our moment. We can make that transition to that level of excellence, even in football.”
Rivera, who reports directly to Lyons, said he speaks regularly with his fellow proud Cal alum, sharing the same immense goals.
Most of their in-season conversations are about engaging with donors, students and faculty, maximizing opportunities and simply utilizing resources campus already has, such as data, technology and geniuses.
Their other conversations are about football. Literally.
“There was one game (where) I was talking to (Rivera) at halftime, and he didn’t just say, ‘We’re going to make some adjustments.’ He said, ‘We’re going to run the trap play more often. … (I’m) like, ‘Oh my gosh, you see so much more deeply into the game than I ever could,’” Lyons said. “That’s not a surprise. But it’s one thing to say we’re going to make some adjustments. It’s another to say, bang, bang, bang.”
Whether he’s talking ball or attending meetings, Lyons wants Cal Athletics to flourish as much as anybody, just like Rivera; the proof is in his resume.
Despite starting his first academic year as chancellor in 2024-25 with UC Berkeley having zero endowed sports, Lyons ended with five. He has a goal to get three sports fully endowed each year over the next three years, and takes pride in noticing a shift among the faculty’s buy-in to his vision of committing resources to athletics.
That’s why Lyons gladly trusts “a culture builder” decorated with NFL experience in Rivera to hold the keys to the football program, knowing that the general manager shares the same understanding that academic and athletic success “aren’t two separate chambers in our hearts, our body or what Berkeley is.”
“That was one of the things that my conversation with the chancellor was (about) after ESPN’s College Gameday,” Rivera said. “He recognized that as well — that athletics help raise the profile of the university.”
And that brings fans to the 2025 edition of the blue and gold.
Led by nine-year head coach Justin Wilcox, the Bears enter Friday night’s home game against Bill Belichick and the tumbling North Carolina Tar Heels with an unexceptional 4-2 record.
Some perceive Cal’s first-half results as positive because they might be an indicator that a long-awaited eight-win season is still within reach with at least six games left. Others believe the Bears, who have had a lighter schedule compared to recent years, will be in trouble as ACC play continues, with the Homecoming loss to Duke serving as a worrisome prognostication.
All are curious about what Rivera thinks — is Cal currently raising its profile?
“They’ve been on the precipice for the last few years of being able to take the next big step,” Rivera said of his program. “The things that have been missing have been resources and an identity … What they’ve done has been admirable for the last few years to be at .500. We don’t want to be at .500; we want to be beyond that. That’s where this team can be. This team can be beyond 4-2 … I’m looking to see us take the next big step.”
Rivera and Lyons agree that a 6-6 season with a Big Game win over Stanford isn’t satisfactory in this new era, nor is just accepting grains of relevance; they have at least eight or nine wins in mind.
So, while some anticipate Cal is bound for another finish in purgatory, Rivera wants to see his first season as general manager unfold entirely before making a program-altering decision such as firing Wilcox.
“One of the most distasteful things I got recently was a letter telling me I need to fire the head coach,” Rivera said. “(Wilcox)’s arms have been tied behind his back. One arm’s been tied behind his back because we haven’t gotten the resources. We finally got the resources. So I want to tell everybody, let’s slow down (and) let’s focus on the rest of the year. We’re 4-2, OK? Sure, something bad happened last week (vs. Duke); I get it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t bounce back. That doesn’t mean we can’t be better. I want to judge it on the whole picture, not half a picture.”
Over nine seasons as Cal’s head coach, Wilcox has posted a 46-52 record.
But as the general manager hinted at, this is the first year Wilcox has Rivera and Lyons, who are undoubtedly the most Cal football-savvy partners he has worked with thus far at UC Berkeley.
Wilcox, for sure, is certainly glad to have Rivera in the building, as Rivera has earned two Coach of the Year nods and reached multiple Super Bowls over four decades as an NFL player and coach.
“It’s been awesome,” Wilcox said. “Coach Rivera is a Cal guy through and through … With where college football is trending, there’s a lot of insight that he can give. And also, the organizational alignment with the university and having direct contact with the chancellor, I think that’s critical.”
Rivera isn’t pulling the plug on the Wilcox Era just yet.
Instead, he’s adamant about the program’s need for donors and fans, particularly those with a defeatist outlook, to step up rather than back down.
“To be told, ‘Well, you know, if things don’t happen, I’m going to withhold.’ Well, you know what? That’s part of the f—ing problem,” Rivera said. “People withhold. Why? If you really want to make a change, you make a change no matter what the circumstances are. If we withheld, we (wouldn’t) find the things that we find on campus … we (wouldn’t) have 63 Nobel laureates. … This is about giving when you’re needed the most — ‘We’re only giving to a sport.’ Well, sports raise the profile. It’s what draws and attracts.”
Cal is already No. 1 among public schools, but Rivera bears a “Why not?” attitude when it comes to raising the university’s athletic ceiling.
Indiana’s recent emergence as an elite football school, driven by enthusiastic donor engagement, is an example Rivera pointed to regarding what he is trying to achieve with his alma mater.
The Hoosiers went 3-9 in 2023 before hiring head coach Curt Cignetti, who has gone 17-2 since taking over in 2024. Their success has come largely due to fundraising, which sparked Cignetti’s ability to craft a well-rounded roster through the transfer portal.
Rivera added that his NFL experience has taught him that football is a quarterback-driven game and that building a well-rounded team around an elite signal-caller breeds victories. He explained how something promising is brewing in Strawberry Canyon with standout freshman Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele under center.
“When you have a player of that ability, players want to come, they want to be part of something, they want to gravitate towards you,” Rivera said. “As a freshman to do what he’s doing — and if we can work it out, get it done, retain him for the next few years, which is what we plan to do — they’ll want to come here. They’ll want to be part of this.”
Rivera is emphatic about eliciting more investments to make more big-time moves possible.
Nevertheless, he shared that overall donor engagement toward Cal football has improved compared to past seasons. Now, creating consistency is the task at hand, as is attracting external marketing deals to circumvent the $14 million football spending cap, as emanated from the House v. NCAA settlement, which allows schools to allot $20.5 million per year to sports.
Generating excitement for and improving Cal football are Rivera’s fundamental duties on paper. But don’t get it twisted: he came home to give back after what was a life-changing Cal student-athlete experience.
Rivera met his wife and former Cal basketball player, Stephanie, at Yogurt Park. He enjoyed a “real-world” education, where protests echoed outside of class on Sproul Plaza. He learned how to work with people, leading to his coaching career.
The once up-and-coming star got to learn humbling lessons from late legend and coach Joe Kapp, “The Toughest Chicano,” whose pride for his roots and blue and gold blood made Rivera feel at home.
Being a Son of California has given Rivera so much. But as another Bear — this one from Chicago’s NFL team — once told him, taking and not giving will only get you so far.
“‘Ronnie, I’m going to tell you something,’” Rivera recalled from a conversation with his old Chicago coach, NFL legend Mike Ditka. “‘When you’re a player, you have this window of opportunity … how big that window is and how long that window stays open after you play is up to you. If you give back to the people — if you treat the people well and treat them with respect — they’ll respect you.’ I tell my players that it’s important to give back to the community … That’s why I give back to Cal. It’s been great to me, and I just want to be able to give back.”
Rivera turned down seven-figure opportunities from the NFL to return to Strawberry Canyon.
From playing in Big Games to coaching Super Bowls, everything has led him to this opportunity.
“I wanted to come back, share, give back and be part of something I think could be pretty special if we do it right,” Rivera said.
