The news so many Cal football fans longed for finally broke early Monday as athletic director Jim Knowlton announced his retirement, effective July 1.
In many ways, Knowlton’s tenure ended months ago.
The moment the Bears hired Ron Rivera on March 20 and handed him oversight of the football program — with a direct reporting line to chancellor Rich Lyons — Knowlton became the Zombie AD in Berkeley.
His role greatly diminished, it became a matter of when, not if, Knowlton would step down.
Naturally, there was a financial piece to resolve. Knowlton was handed an eight-year contract extension in 2021 by former chancellor Carol Christ — an astonishing decision on her part — that paid Knowlton approximately $1 million annually.
Exactly how the Bears covered the remaining amount ($4 million) is not known at this point. But according to the terms of his contract, Knowlton would be owed his full salary for the remaining years if terminated without cause.
His departure tracks closely with the fate of Knowlton’s former colleague across the bay.
Bernard Muir announced his pending resignation as Stanford’s athletic director in February, months after Andrew Luck was hired as general manager of the Cardinal’s football program and given a direct line to president Jonathan Levin.
In both cases, the changes came from the top: Lyons and Levin, alums of their respective schools, realized the football programs needed new leadership in these unprecedented times.
The Bears and Cardinal are navigating life in the ACC with immense competitive and financial challenges that require expert leadership, not only for football specifically but athletics in general.
Knowlton’s work over the course of seven years has been spotty, at best.
He whiffed on a basketball coaching hire (Mark Fox) and was roundly criticized for his lack of leadership in the scandal that led to the ouster of swimming coach Teri McKeever. The budget has been a mess, with massive shortfalls on a regular basis. And his perceived lack of support for the football program, both during and after COVID, generated deep frustration with constituents.
Lyons, an ardent supporter of football, took charge of the university last summer and came to realize a change was needed atop the org chart. The decision to hire Rivera, a Cal legend, was a clear indictment of Knowlton’s leadership.
The Bears appointed two of Knowlton’s deputies, Jay Larson and Jenny Simon-O’Neill, to lead the department. Notably, they were described in a university news release as the “new co-directors of Cal Athletics” — there was no reference to them serving in interim roles or to a search for Knowlton’s permanent replacement.
(In an odd arrangement, Rivera had oversight of football but coach Justin Wilcox continued to report to Knowlton. Moving forward, Wilcox will report to Rivera according to a source close to the athletic department.)
The change comes during a moment of sweeping industry change. Approval of the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit settlement earlier this month propelled college sports into the revenue-sharing era, with schools allowed to share up to $20.5 million with athletes in the upcoming fiscal year.
In the major conferences, including the ACC, roughly $15 million is expected to be allocated to football, with about $3 million to men’s basketball and the remainder to Olympic sports.
That massive line-item expense will place additional pressure on the Bears, who reported a $29.7 million shortfall in the 2023-24 fiscal year despite receiving $34.9 million in direct support from central campus.
To mitigate the budgetary squeeze, the Bears must ramp up fundraising — a process that could become easier with the change in athletic directors. Among the flaws in Knowlton’s game: As neither a Cal alumnus nor a football junkie, he did not connect well with many donors.
As an example: The Bears booked $13.7 million in donations to athletics last year, a markedly lower total than they collected ($20 million) in 2017, the year before Knowlton was hired.
(For many of Cal’s public school peers that previously inhabited the Pac-12, fundraising dollars have increased markedly over that time, based on financial data reported to the NCAA.)
Add the competitive difficulties posed by life in the ACC and the presence of NIL in the roster-building process — not to mention the continuing chaos caused by the transfer portal — and the Bears are facing a treacherous road.
So, too, is Stanford. More than ever before, the process of acquiring and retaining talent stands in conflict with the mission of many schools with strong academic reputations.
The search for a replacement — if there is one — could be tricky. In theory, the Bears need an athletic director who understands the shifting landscape of college athletics and recognizes the primacy of football. But qualified candidates could be hesitant to accept the position without the oversight that currently belongs to Rivera.
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Will the Cal legend take a reduced role? Nothing about his words or actions thus far suggests Rivera’s involvement will be short-lived. He isn’t qualified to run the entire department and likely has no interest in that role.
Or does Lyons envision an unconventional approach? In their news release, the Bears said Lyons “will use this period of transition to put in place a new leadership structure.” Perhaps Larson and Simon-O’Neill will run every aspect of Cal athletics, except football, on a permanent basis.
In many ways, Lyons is Cal’s athletic director.
Clearly, he’s committed to winning and understands how success on the field can engage the broader Cal community. As an alumnus who also served as the dean of the Haas School of Business, Lyons has more than enough credibility with the faculty to justify a focus on football that his predecessors were unwilling, or unable, to apply.
“A lot of people view it as a two-dimensional problem: ‘If you’re spending on sports, you aren’t spending on other things,’” he told the Hotline earlier this year.
“But this is actually three-dimensional. What is the principal device for driving alumni engagement? When you invest in athletics, you are investing in alumni engagement, and when you invest in alumni engagement, you advance your mission.”
Clarity on the athletic department’s leadership structure should emerge over time. For now, many Cal fans are undoubtedly relieved that Knowlton is stepping down, Rivera is running football and Lyons is walking the walk.
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