Ron Rivera knows exactly when his love affair began with the Big Game.
He was a senior at Seaside High School in Monterey County being recruited by both Cal and Stanford in the fall of 1979 when he attended the annual rivalry game for the first time.
After the Bears secured a 21-14 victory on Ron Coccimiglio’s pass deflection in the end zone on the game’s final play, Rivera was swallowed up by the intense reaction on both sides.
“Really seeing the depths of despair when you lose and the excitement and thrill when you win was amazing. I did get caught up in that euphoria,” he recalled this week in advance of the 128th Big Game at Stanford on Saturday.
“It’s funny because when I walked out of the Cal locker room, the winner’s locker room, I had this look on my face and my mother just looked at me and said, ‘I know where you’re going to go to school.’”
Now 63 and Cal football’s first-year general manager, the former NFL player and head coach is of two minds regarding this year’s Big Game. He surveys the changing football college landscape, where decades-old traditions are being discarded, and all the more embraces an event first held in 1892.
Referring to the breakup of the Pac-12 Conference and the end of rivalry games across the country, Rivera lamented, “That to me, that’s a crime as far as I’m concerned, for college athletics to let something like that happen.”
But Rivera’s primary objective is to oversee and help boost his alma mater’s program, which hasn’t had a winning season since 2019. He wants to make the Bears relevant beyond the borders of the Bay Area.
Coach Justin Wilcox’s squad is 6-4 and bowl eligible after its 29-26 overtime win at then-No. 15 Louisville in its most recent game two weeks ago. At 3-3 in the ACC, the Bears are positioned to achieve their first winning conference record since 2009.
But the bar is high. Rivera has said he wants to see an eight- or nine-win season. Cal chancellor Rich Lyons has devoted increased resources to the football program and has given Rivera the authority to make a coaching change, if necessary.
Asked this week if he has made a decision about Wilcox, who is in his ninth season and has a 48-54 win-loss record, Rivera quickly ended the exchange. “I’m here to talk about the Big Game,” he said, “so I’m not even going to address that.”
But Rivera pulled no punches about the importance of Saturday’s matchup.
“What we’re trying to do is create a culture and atmosphere of sustaining winning,” he said. “So this game’s very pivotal for us. It speaks a lot to where we can go going forward.
“If we can win this football game and get ready next week and pull one off (at home against SMU on Nov. 29), it elevates our opportunity to go to a super high-quality bowl.”
With so many first-year players and coaches on his roster, Wilcox said it was important to educate the neophytes on Big Game history. But that did come at the expense of preparing for Stanford (3-7, 2-5), even after what Wilcox called his team’s best performance of the season at Louisville.
“There’s still meat on the bone. But I was pleased with the progress we made in a number of areas.” he said. “Now we’ve got to continue to get better. We know it’ll be a challenge because Stanford’s a tough team.”