Coming from Northwestern, Pappy Waldorf followed through on his vow to awaken a sleeping giant in Berkeley
As the Pac-12 Conference era comes to a close after more than a century, we count down the Top 50 moments involving Cal athletics.Cal was coming off a 2-7 season in 1946, after which the school drew sharp nationwide reaction when the student leadership on campus exercised rare authority to fire coach Frack Wickhorst. Well-regarded track coach Brutus Hamilton was assigned to serve as the school’s first athletic director, and Hamilton hired Northwestern’s Lynn O.
University president Robert Gordon Sproul responded by promoting track coach Brutus Hamilton to the new position of athletic director. Hamilton, an Olympian who came coach at Cal in 1932, reorganized the athletic department. He first offered the football job to Michigan’s Fritz Crisler, who turned it down.
Cal gave Waldorf a contract worth $13,500 per year and the authority to hire his own assistant coaches. At an introductory news conference at the Claremont Hotel, Waldorf said his intention was “to awaken a sleeping giant.”"Big, meaty Lynn O. "Pappy" Waldorf is the new head coach at the University of California,” Sullivan wrote. “We realize there is nothing particularly distinctive about that. California's always getting a new football coach.
Cal was 29-0-1 in the regular season over the next three years, winning three straight Pacific Coast Conference titles and earning three Rose Bowl bids. The Bears were close in all three, but came away empty handed.
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