Golden Nuggets: Ranking the 2017 Cal Football roster

Athlon Sports compiled the football recruiting rankings for the past five years and averaged them out to determine how good the rosters for the FBS programs will be in 2017. And unlike me, their findings for the California Golden Bears weren’t pretty...

Nationally, the Bears were tied for 46th with the Vanderbilt Commodores. Our score was heavily affected by an unsurprisingly poorly ranked 2017 class for Justin Wilcox’s first year. If we throw out that 70th-ranked class, then our average rises from 47.2 to 41.5.

But to be more of a realist, it would take a lot of miracles for Cal to become a national player in 2017, so maybe we should look at something a little more relevant in the short-term—how we stack up in the Pac-12.

The table above kind of ruins the surprise—Cal’s recruiting over the past five years ranks 9th in our conference, with only WSU, OSU, and Colorado ranking worse than us. But that right there is the most important point—despite having the worst recruiting class in the Pac-12, Colorado rose to be the Pac-12 South Champions.

Men’s Gymnastics

Head coach Brett McClure will step down after the 2017 season in order to become the high performance director of USA Gymnastics

Softball

A win over Illinois was a great finish to their trip to Puerto Rico

Baseball

Pitcher Erik Martinez’s prowess as a reliever has him named to the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association’s watchlist for the Stopper of the Year

Women’s Golf

The Golden Bears finished the Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge tied for 11th

Men’s Golf

With the John A. Burns Intercollegiate currently in progress, Cal is tied for 9th

Men’s Tennis

Fourth-ranked Cal is 4–0 after a win over Pepperdine

Women’s Tennis

A loss to no.-5 Oklahoma State ended our run in the ITA National Women’s Team Indoor Championship for our 8th-ranked team

Maya Jansen’s play in the Indoor Championship netted the Pac-12 Player of the Week honor for her

Women’s Water Polo

Emma Wright is our Muscle Milk Student-Athlete of the Week and the MPSF Newcomer of the Week

Lacrosse

Alumna Ghillie Little reflects on her time at Cal and how she learned that the struggles as a student-athlete can often lead to success

Football

In more “the media’s down on Cal” news, the Pac-12 Blog has declared that Wilcox is the conference’s worst coach... for which coach has led the best team in his career. Because he has yet to lead his own team.