Road to Berkeley went through Madison
Wilcox gained invaluable experience in year at Wisconsin
Justin Wilcox’s background seemed ideal for the position:
• Played for, and graduated from, Oregon.
• Three years as a Cal assistant coach.
• Experience as a defensive coordinator for three of the top programs in the west (USC, Boise State andWash- ington).
• Recruiting connections throughout the Bay Area and California.
As Cal took a deep dive into Wilcox’s candidacy to replace ousted coach Sonny Dykes, it was difficult to imagine a line on his resume of equal or greater relevance than those four.
Except it existed: One year as the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin.
Madison and Berkeley, Badgers and Bears, admissions bars and offensive lines — the parallels were unmistakable.
“We were talking to Justin as we developed a pro- file of what we were looking for,’’ said Cal senior associate athletic director Chris Pezman, who ran the search to replace Sonny Dykes.
“He had a sense of what we can and can’t be. It was a combination of him having been at Cal and his Wisconsin experience.”
It might seem odd that 50 weeks as a defensive coordinator in the Big Ten — and not at Michigan or Ohio State, by the way — would have done more to prepare Wilcox for the task in Berkeley than all the years spent at Washington, USC and, to a lesser extent, Boise State.
Those experiences allowed him to forge recruiting connections with high schools up and down the West Coast. But Cal officials saw in Wisconsin a fraternal twin in foundational matters, from style of play and recruiting philosophy to academic demands and admissions standards.
One particular situation made a deep impression on Pezman.
In the summer of 2015, the Badgers denied admission to the top prospect in their freshman class, running back Jordan Stevenson. The reported reason: He didn’t meet Wisconsin’s admissions requirements.
“It resonated with me,” Pezman said. “With our admissions, certain kids are not going to be successful here.”
Nor was Stevenson an isolated case for the Badgers. In the deeply-wired world of college football administration— Pezman’s world — it was well known that Wisconsin periodically denied admission to pros- pects who would clear the bar at many powerhouse programs.
The parallel: 80 percent of Cal freshmen must have a high school grade-point average of 3.0 or better.
“A lot of places sell their soul; Wisconsin doesn’t do that,’’ Pezman said. “There was a correlation for some of the things we face here.’’
Wilcox hadn’t yet joined Wisconsin’s staff when the Stevenson situation unfolded. But the year spent in Madison, combined with his prior experience in Berkeley under Jeff Ted- ford (2003-05), allowed him to articulate to Cal officials a vision for recruiting — for identifying players who could thrive on the field and in the classroom.
“We’re not going to recruit everybody that’s a really good player,’’ Wilcox said. “Most high school players say they want a great academic institution, and then you look at the transcript and think, ‘ Do you?’
“It’s about what you’re looking for as a program. For us, I think it’s an advantage because this is such a great institution. The guys that matters to who are good players, that’s who we want.
“Do you scratch people off the list because of the academic environment here? Yeah, but we’re good with it.”
There are other similarities.
Just as Wisconsin has found its place in a conference dominated by Michigan and Ohio State, so must Cal navigate a world with programs that have richer traditions, larger fan bases and more fertile local recruiting grounds.
Just as Wisconsin has developed an on-field identity designed to take maximum advantage of its recruiting pool (think: offensive linemen built like farmhouses), so must Cal create a schematic model suited to the players it can best attract.
Pezman and Wilcox have a framework inmind, and it looks nothing like the Bear Raid.
The roster built by Dykes leaned too heavily on recruits from other regions and was overly reliant on receivers at the expense of other positions: Offensive line, for instance.
With the exception of quarterbacks, offensive linemen are typically the smartest players on the roster; they need the processing power to work cohesively while making splitsecond adjustments.
Wilcox, 40, doesn’t plan to turn the Bears into the Badgers (or into Stanford, which plays a similar style). But he believes there’s a middle ground. And it looks much like the ground Cal staked out under Tedford.
“It’s the pro style attack that utilizes guys who can make decisions quick and handle more than one thing— making that an advantage to us,’’ said Wilcox, whose team is a surprising 3- 0 and hosts USC on Saturday.
“My experience with Coach Tedford was invaluable in terms of looking at what the best teams looked like, who did we lean on, and where did those guys come from.’’
If the Tedford years provided a schematic model for Wilcox, his season under Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst was a lesson in program management.
“I’ve worked with some great people and learned from all of them’’ — Wilcox noted his years with Chris Petersen at Boise State — “but I identify with (Chryst) so much.
“You hire people to do a job, define the job, then let them do their job. The amount of communication between the coaches and the support staff at Wisconsin was exceptional because nobody was afraid to communicate.
“In terms of a great person and a coach, I’m not sure there’s a better combination.”
Wilcox, laughing, said Chryst offered no parting advice — there hasn’t been a parting: The communication is ongoing, he noted, just as the experience was invaluable.
“I always thought a lot of my time here,’’ Wilcox said of the Berkeley years. “It’s a really good school with good kids and a great area.
“Then, going there and seeing that it’s an academic institution, maybe not to this caliber, but it’s very academic — and they can both win.
“And it’s important that they do. The last thing I want to do here is devalue the degree.”