Good news, Cal football fans! The annual Joe Roth Memorial Game is coming back!
Traditionally played at home against USC in odd years and UCLA in even years, it was collateral damage from the sudden collapse of the Pac-12 Conference, which resulted in the L.A. schools being in the Big Ten and Cal last year moving to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
It was too late to reschedule the game last year or this one, but the game will return next year when the Bears play UCLA at home on Sept. 5. Future plans are still being worked out, but the best guess is that it will be the first home game every season. Why is this game so important? It’s because Joe Roth, who played quarterback in the mid-’70s, is probably the most beloved football player in Cal history.
“The sky was the limit for him,” his head coach, Mike White, told me. “He definitely would have been the first quarterback taken in the NFL draft. He had all the skills, plus a great work ethic, but, most important, he had the temperament. The only other quarterbacks I’ve ever seen with a temperament like that were Joe Montana and Tom Brady.”
It wasn’t his football skills that made people love him, though; it was the kind of person he was. He was a devout Catholic who took his faith’s teachings seriously, so he treated everyone with kindness and respect.
Although he was the team’s star, he was always the first one to take newcomers under his wing and make them feel like they were part of the team. In that early post-Title IX era, when female athletes often were greeted with mockery by their male counterparts, they found a compassionate ally in Joe.
“We shared the weight room with the football team, and a lot of them were irked that girls were in the weight room,” remembered Teri Wilkinson, who played on Cal’s first women’s volleyball team. “There was a lot of verbal harassment.
“Joe was quietly doing his thing in one corner of the room, but when he saw how the guys were hassling us, he said, ‘Hey guys, cut it out. They wear blue and gold just like us.’ I won’t say they were ever nice to us, but they quit hassling us because of him.”
Unfortunately, what only Coach White and Joe’s closest friends knew was that he was hiding a secret: He was dying from melanoma, an especially cruel skin cancer; and the memory of his courage and grace still moves them to tears 50 years later.
“He really enjoyed school and worked hard at his studies,” said his then-girlfriend, Tracy Lagos. “Getting that degree meant so much to him. He was still turning in papers a week before he died.”
Joe passed away on Feb. 19, 1977, at the age of just 21. His funeral was held at Berkeley’s Newman Center, where he had attended Mass so many times. Everyone on the women’s volleyball team attended.
“We just sat there and bawled our eyes out like babies,” said Wilkinson.
Fifteen years ago, two Cal grads named Phil Schaaf and Bob Rider, who were just kids when Joe was playing, filmed a moving documentary about him titled “Don’t Quit: The Joe Roth Story.”
“The people we interviewed made it easy for us,” said Schaaf. “We’d leave messages on their voicemail, and they’d call us back in 90 seconds! In many cases, people had to put the phone down while they cried.”
“It wasn’t just the guys he played with,” said Rider. “It was also the people he played against. Gary Jeter, who played defensive end for USC, said, ‘I’ve been waiting 30 years for this phone call.’ ”
Cancer cheated Joe out of his dream to get his degree, but the university honored him posthumously with its highest honor, the Berkeley Citation, which is given only to “people whose attainments significantly exceed the standards for advancement in their fields and whose contributions to the university are manifestly above and beyond the call of duty.”
He was also inducted into Cal’s Athletic Hall of Fame, and his number 12 was retired. No other player before or since, not even Joe Kapp, Aaron Rogers or Jackie Jensen, has ever had his number retired.
If you’d like to know more about him, “Don’t Quit: The Joe Roth Story” can be seen online (joerothfilm.com). It’s worth your time; and since the Big Game is next weekend, I’ll just say it: Go Bears!
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.