Cal’s roller-coaster season will end in Honolulu on Christmas Eve.
The Golden Bears will face Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl on Dec. 24, the Atlantic Coast Conference and ESPN Events announced Thursday. The game will kick off at 5 p.m. on ESPN.
This is the third straight bowl game for the Bears (7-5), although it has been a wild ride and more major changes are on the way.
In the wake of a 31-10 loss to arch-rival Stanford in the penultimate game of the regular season, coach Justin Wilcox was fired after nine seasons. General manager Ron Rivera promoted Nick Rolovich as interim head coach, and the Bears upset No. 25-ranked SMU 38-35 to conclude the program’s winningest regular season since 2019. Those Bears also won seven regular-season games, but finished 8-5 after winning the Redbox Bowl.
Rolovich is expected to coach Cal in the Hawaii Bowl, but the Bears appear poised to hire Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi, multiple sources told the Wilner Hotline earlier this week. Lupoi, a Walnut Creek native and former De La Salle standout, was a defensive lineman in Berkeley from 2000-2005 and coached the Bears line from 2008-11.
The bowl game against the Warriors (8-4) will be a homecoming for Cal star freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, who is from Ewa Beach. Rolovich was Hawaii’s head coach from 2016–19, leading the Rainbow Warriors to three bowl appearances before he took over the head coaching job at Washington State. Rolovich joined Wilcox’s staff this season.
“We are excited to accept an invitation from the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl and continue our season in Honolulu,” Rivera said in a statement issued by Cal. “This is a reward for the hard work our student-athletes put in during the season, and we are looking forward to competing against an excellent Hawaii team in front of a nationally televised audience.”
Cal opened the season with three straight wins and was 5-2 after defeating Bill Belichick and North Carolina on Oct. 17 at Memorial Stadium. But the Bears lost three of their next four — the win was a 29-26 upset at then-No. 14 Louisville — before the faceplant at Stanford that cost Wilcox his job.
Still, before his dismissal, Wilcox had secured the six wins needed to extend the program’s longest bowl streak since it went to seven straight bowl games from 2003-09.
Although Cal played in the LA Bowl last season and the Independence Bowl in 2024, the Bears haven’t won a bowl game since routing Illinois 35-20 in the 2019 Redbox Bowl, Wilcox’s third season.
This will be Cal’s first appearance in the Hawaii Bowl and its 27th bowl game overall. The Bears’ postseason record is 12-13-1.
Cal is one of the ACC’s 11 bowl-eligible teams. The remainder of the league’s bowl lineup will be announced Sunday.
Hawaii (8-4) will be playing a third game against a Bay Area team after beating Stanford 23-20 in Honolulu in the season opener and losing 45-38 on the road to San Jose State last month.
The priority access window for football season ticket holders to purchase tickets to the Hawaii Bowl is open on CalBears.com. Tickets for the general public will be available starting Monday at 10 a.m.