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Report: Some Bears Donors At Odds With Cal Over Role Of GM Ron Rivera

A report by SFGATE on April 3 indicated that two prominent board members of the Cal collective do not believe recently hired Golden Bears football general manager Ron Rivera has been given enough power in his role, and those donors have said they are withholding donations until Rivera's role is expanded.

Here is the first paragraph of the SFGATE report:

Two board members of California Legends Collective — the Golden Bears' only third-party name, image and likeness collective — have announced that they will no longer personally donate to the organization they oversee until the school meets their singular demand: Put newly hired general manager, and former NFL head coach, Ron Rivera fully in charge of Cal football.

Rivera, an All-American linebacker at Cal before becoming a linebacker with the Chicago Bears and later twice being named NFL coach of the year, was named Cal's football general manager last month.  The newly created job of general manager is a hiring many colleges have made recently amid the more complicated role facing college football coaches these days. Football programs must now deal with the increased use of the transfer portal as well as financial considerations with NIL (name, image and likeness) payments to athletes as well as the revenue sharing with athletes that is expected to begin later this year. Most of those new issues focus on the football program.

However, in contrast to the role of Stanford general manager Andrew Luck, Rivera does not have direct and complete control of the Cal football program. Specifically, Rivera reports to Cal chancellor Rich Lyons, while head coach Justin Wilcox will continue to report to athletic director Jim Knowlton.

At Stanford, the head football coach reports to the general manager, and Luck demonstrated his authority last month when he announced the dismissal of Cardinal football coach (and former Cal quarterback) Troy Taylor following reports of an investigation that found that Taylor had bullied staff members.

The SFGATE report said California Legends Collective president Kevin Kennedy was one of two board members to state they will stop making personal donations to the Cal collective until Rivera is given the same power that Luck has at Stanford.

Kennedy provided this comment to California Golden Bears on SI via email on Friday, April 4.

"I would just argue that this isn't really about Stanford. Stanford is just a useful data point because they seem to have fully adopted the model we are pushing here. But the fact that they are our rival does not make us more inclined to push. The point is that college football is now a very big business and it needs to have professional management. We have someone on staff who could not be more ideally suited to the task. We need to allow him to come in and do whatever it takes to re-organize our program so we can start consistently winning and make it through the next round of realignment.

"Same old, same old is not going to cut it."

The SFGATE report also cited an article that appeared on the Bear Insider site. The SFGate report said that article was written by Greg Richardson, also a board member of the California Legends Collective.

Here is the SFGATE's excerpt summarizing that Bears Insider article:

Despite the somewhat conciliatory headline, the article was much more combative, calling Knowlton "wholly unqualified," crediting the success of Berkeley's basketball and football teams to donor pressure and accusing the athletic department of fostering "a culture of 'No.'" After boasting that "almost 90% of the dollars contributed to the Legends Collective [is] coming from the Bear Insider populace," it concluded with a call to action.

"For now, we will be refraining from donating to the program and further will not encourage any of you to do so," the article read. "Instead, regardless of your feelings, we strongly suggest you reach out to Chancellor Lyons and share how you feel about the state of Cal Athletics, Jim Knowlton as your Athletic Director and how you believe he can best support Ron Rivera as the Cal Football General Manager."

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