‘It’s a reward for the players’: Bears to meet TCU in Arizona
As Cal head coach Justin Wilcox started to talk Sunday about Cal’s bowl invitation, an unidentified player walked down the hall next to the news conference and shouted: “Cheez-It Bowl, yeah!”
That pretty much summed up the afternoon for the Bears, who needed some good news after losing their ninth straight Big Game the day before and got it with the program’s second bowl berth in seven seasons.
The Bears will play TCU at 6 p.m. Dec. 26 in the Cheez-It Bowl at Chase Field, which is the home ballpark of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks in downtown Phoenix and will be morphed from a synthetic turf diamond into a natural grass gridiron.
“It’s important for the program, for the fans and for the university,” Wilcox said. “It’s a reward for the players, but it needs to become something that is part of the Cal football program to be competing every year for the best possible bowl.”
Cal (7-5) and TCU (6-6) have had similar seasons, with the Bears responding to a threegame midseason losing skid by earning bowl eligibility and the Frogs grinding through a rash of injuries to beat Baylor and Oklahoma State in their final two regular-season games.
Cheez-It is the fifth title sponsor in the Arizona bowl’s 30th year. It started as the Copper Bowl in 1989, and Cal beat Wyoming 17-15 there in 1990. The postseason game has also been called the Cactus Bowl, the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl and the Insight Bowl, which the Bears won 52-49 over Virginia Tech in 2003.
In some ways, this iteration of the bowl game will act as a preview. Cal is scheduled to host TCU in 2020, and the Bears will play at Fort Worth, Texas, in 2021 — matchups TCU head coach Gary Patterson said are the type of games that force him to take a lot of baby aspirin.
“We understand what kind of opponent we’re getting into,” said Patterson, who stayed up late to watch Cal several times this season as one of the voters in the Coaches’ Poll and as someone who hosted Wilcox years ago when a thenBoise State graduate assistant was just breaking into the business. “Coach Wilcox has traveled and has done well everywhere he’s been. I’ve been in this profession 36 years, and you always like watching guys who do it the right way, work at it and do what they have to do to be successful. He’s a guy who has been able to do that.”
Wilcox was Boise State’s defensive coordinator when the Broncos and TCU played in back-to-back seasons. No. 11 TCU beat No. 9 Boise State 17-16 in the 2008 Poinsettia Bowl, and Wilcox paid back Patterson with No. 6 Boise State’s 17-10 victory over No. 3 TCU in the next season’s Fiesta Bowl.
“Coach Patterson has won a ton of games for a long, long time,” Wilcox said. “… We’re going to get a chance to see them again in a couple of years, but from being a football guy, especially a defensive guy, I’ve always had a lot of respect for and have enjoyed watching his teams play.”
Wilcox penciled out a schedule as Saturday night turned into Sunday morning, with Cal returning to practice Friday and using this and next weekend as developmental sessions. The team will turn its attention to game prep about a week before the game.
“Everyone was a little anxious over there. It kind of took a little longer than we expected,” senior center Addison Ooms said of the team’s pizza party that turned into a waiting game. “Finally, hearing Coach Wilcox say: ‘We’re going to the Cheez-It Bowl,’ everyone was so happy. The standard has been set, and it’s exciting for this game and the future of Cal football.”