Two rivals, one mission: Andrew Luck and Ron Rivera fight to make Cal and Stanford matter again

One of college football’s oldest and proudest rivalries hasn’t felt like itself in a while. Cal and Stanford still play The Game, still trade The Axe, still occupy opposite sides of one of the sport’s great divides — but the matchup has lost much of the shine it carried for more than a century.

Two program legends want to change that.

In the span of a month, CBS Sports sat down with Cal general manager Ron Rivera and Stanford general manager Andrew Luck, who both returned last offseason to their alma maters in newly minted roles — tasked with rebuilding proud academic powers in the middle of a football-first, revenue-share era neither school was designed for. Stanford needs a new head coach. Cal needs to hang on to its star freshman quarterback. Both need to navigate NIL, the portal, roster churn and resource allocation without compromising the academic identities that define them. And, of course, both now play in the ACC, a league their alumni could reach faster by plane than by car — an odd reality that underscores the sport’s rapid realignment.

Different situations, same uphill climb.

Rivera, the former Chicago Bears linebacker and longtime NFL head coach, is trying to stabilize Cal’s roster and infrastructure as a first-time college administrator. Cal is 6-4 and 3-3 in the ACC. Luck, the most decorated quarterback in Stanford history, is rebuilding a program that drifted from national relevance and now requires a modern blueprint to compete again. Stanford is 3-7, 2-5 in the ACC. 

Rivera and Luck are rivals on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, ACCN) but in many ways share a mission: restore edge, pride and relevance to a rivalry that once defined Bay Area football.

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Rivera’s NFL experience perfect for his new role

BERKELEY, Calif. — In November 2015, Ron Rivera led the Carolina Panthers to the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. A few months later, he was coaching in Super Bowl 50 — in the Bay Area, no less.

Ten years later, he’s back in the Bay, this time as the general manager at his alma mater, California.

That magical Panthers season, powered by league MVP Cam Newton, ended just 13 miles from where Rivera will be Saturday when Cal meets rival Stanford. And a decade later, another big-bodied, big-armed quarterback sits at the center of Rivera’s program: lefty Jaron Keawe Sagapolutele.

When Newton won MVP, Rivera didn’t have to worry about him bolting for another team the following spring. But the college game Rivera returned to looks nothing like the one he left — or the one he once played in. Every week, he hears people speculate about Sagapolutele’s next stop.

This is the landscape Rivera willingly re-entered after his four-year run as Washington Commanders head coach ended. It’s also the reason he chose Cal.

“I feel like I’ve never been more prepared to go into the collegiate game,” Rivera told CBS Sports in a sit-down last month. “I had to go through another NFL hiring cycle. But my wife said something, and she was right. She said, ‘You know, Ron, the NFL wants you back, but Cal needs you.’”

Rivera had long remained close to Cal, informally assisting with previous coaching searches and advising administrators. But as college football became more like the NFL — in structure, staffing, and roster management — Cal turned to Rivera to guide the program through unprecedented change.

When his playing career ended in 1983, Cal was in the Pac-10. Since then, expansion reshaped the Pac-12, only for the league to effectively dissolve after the 2023 season. Cal now plays in the ACC, a conference rooted largely on the East Coast. Bringing back a program legend with decades of NFL credibility made sense.

“They needed somebody to re-energize and reinvigorate,” Rivera said. “Someone to be a new set of eyes, to be blunt and point some things out. There are a lot of things that need to be looked at and done the right way. And that’s what I’m learning — things don’t move like they do in the NFL. The NFL is a private entity. When something needed to be done, you did it. Here, you go through the process.”

Rivera laughs at that word — process — a nod to Nick Saban’s famous mantra. But Rivera knows the process has changed dramatically: coaching turnover, NIL, the transfer portal, roster caps, conference realignment.

“I’ll be honest, I spend more time in meetings not related to football than I do in meetings related to football,” he said. “A lot of it is about resource development — gathering, dispersing, how you spend. Trying to figure out the right way.”

Much like the NFL, it all starts with the quarterback.

“You learn very quickly this is a quarterback-driven sport,” Rivera said. “When we drafted Cam, we knew you had to find your quarterback, protect your quarterback, surround him with playmakers and have a complementary defense. Here, we found a quarterback in Jaron. Now we’re working on protecting him, building around him, figuring out how to allocate financial resources. In the NFL, you draft maybe 10 guys. Here, you’re trying to take 25 from high school and 15 to 20 from the portal — and they’re not locked in long term.”

Cal’s journey to Sagapolutele reflected the turbulence of the modern model. He originally committed to the Bears last July, flipped to Oregon on the first day of the early signing period, then entered the portal after the Ducks lost in the Rose Bowl. Days later, he transferred to Cal — a move Rivera believes speaks volumes.

“Remember, he chose to come back to Cal,” Rivera said. “He realized what a great situation he had here, and now he’s thriving. He has ups and downs like any true freshman, but he makes plays that show how special he is. And he wants to get better.”

Sagapolutele told CBS Sports last week he hopes to stay another 2–3 years before pursuing the NFL.

Rivera sees the culture as the difference.

“I was from California and went to North Carolina, and I had to assimilate,” Rivera said. “Carolina was different, so my wife and I made ourselves part of the community. I see that with Jaron. He gets to know people, spends time with players and students. He wants to be here.”

Rivera praises Cal’s support staff, including director of player personnel Marshall Cherrington.

“He could do my job,” Rivera said. “In a few years, he will be doing my job. Our personnel department identifies players who fit what we do schematically and academically. We recruit a different type of player to Cal.”

Rivera embraces the academic standard. Cal consistently ranks among the nation’s top public universities.

“We preach that you don’t come to Cal unless you’re serious about the academic track,” Rivera said. “Some of our greatest players were great students. There’s more here than football.”

And while Cal and Stanford are still bitter rivals, their alignment has never been stronger. Both are adjusting to ACC life. Both now operate under a modern “general manager” model — a trend Stanford accelerated when it hired Andrew Luck with full program oversight.

That move caught Rivera’s eye. It also led to early phone calls.

“When I was thinking about this job, I talked to Andrew quite a bit,” Rivera said. “He told me, ‘Ron, you’re drinking from a fire hose, but there’s so much that’s great about it.’ We’ve talked about how Cal and Stanford need the Bay Area. This area used to have two NFL teams. Now it has one. And the 49ers have always captured attention. Now Cal and Stanford need to do their part.”

This weekend, Rivera would love nothing more than to capture that attention.

In 1982, he helped Cal stun John Elway’s Stanford in the iconic “The Play” game. A year later, he helped the Bears win again at Stanford Stadium. 

The rivalry swung heavily Cardinal for nearly a decade beginning with Luck’s junior season, but Cal has won four straight and five of the last six — including the last three in Palo Alto.

For Rivera, who owns a Super Bowl ring with the 1985 Bears and coached in another with Carolina, the goal now is simple: keep The Axe. Then build.

“We had 15,000 hits on our admissions website after hosting ESPN GameDay,” Rivera said. “People want to see Cal football win. If Cal wins, the whole athletic department thrives. My job is to make sure Cal football is successful.”

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Luck has seen the blueprint work before. Can it again?

PALO ALTO, Calif — Andrew Luck still remembers his lowest moment in a Stanford uniform.

“The worst, the lowest memory I have was throwing a pick to end the Big Game in 2009 when Toby Gerhart was steamrolling everybody,” Luck told CBS Sports. “I should’ve thrown it away, but I was intercepted. I felt like I cost him the Heisman Trophy.”

Luck beat Cal each of the next two years, including his final Pac-12 home game in 2011 — a 31–28 win at Stanford Stadium. This Saturday, the Cardinal host the Bears again, marking Luck’s first Big Game as Stanford’s general manager.

Luck’s résumé as Stanford’s quarterback remains unmatched. Twice he finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting — first to Cam Newton in 2010, then to Robert Griffin III in 2011. The Cardinal won the Orange Bowl during his junior season and reached the Fiesta Bowl the next year. And after Luck became the No. 1 pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, Stanford appeared in three Rose Bowls in four years. 

But the program he returned to looked very different.

Luck re-enrolled as a graduate student and saw firsthand that Stanford — once “intellectually brutal” on the field — had been lapped in a rapidly evolving sport. During his stint as a volunteer assistant at Palo Alto High School, he watched the Pac-12 he once dominated slip into disarray.

His hiring as Stanford’s general manager in November 2024 came at the end of the school’s first season in the ACC, a byproduct of conference realignment. That instability was part of what drew him back.

College football had seen general managers before, but none with the scope Stanford created for Luck: full operational control of the football program, with the head coach reporting to him rather than the other way around. Luck would sit on the same organizational tier as the athletic director, a structure modeled more on the NFL than on college athletics.

And it fit him. The architecture graduate approached the job the way he approached design: blueprint first, then build.

It wasn’t the first time he bet on Stanford. He committed in 2007 to Jim Harbaugh, then a first-year coach who hadn’t yet coached a game for the Cardinal. Luck believed in what Stanford could become. He still does.

“Not in a million years did I ever envision myself in this role,” Luck said. “I liked the idea of it, and it made sense when the president offered it to me. But I never envisioned this for myself.”

Still, he dove in the only way he knows how.

“At times it’s like drinking out of a firehose, but I’m constantly learning on the job,” he said. “But how could you not be passionate about this university and this opportunity?”

The modern landscape presents challenges: the transfer portal, NIL, revenue sharing, roster churn. The “40-year decision” Stanford long marketed is harder to sell in a world where players can transfer freely.

The 36-year-old Luck doesn’t buy that narrative.

“Stanford still has more to offer than just about any football-playing university in the country,” he said. “You come here to play high-level football and to push yourself academically and socially. And we will still sign a full class of players who want to do both.”

Recruiting to Stanford requires a different model.

“It’s about learned relationships,” Luck said. “That’s why I’ve invested so much time into recruiting. You build relationships where other things aren’t the priority. Will we ever bring in 10 to 15 guys — let alone 30 to 40 — from the portal? No. That’s not how we operate. But can we bring in a few who slipped through the cracks academically or physically in high school? Yes.”

As for NIL?

“You look at Stanford alums — their salaries, their net worth — the degree matters,” Luck said. “The long-term value is there. We embrace that.”

The biggest short-term hurdle: recruiting without a permanent head coach.

Stanford fired coach Troy Taylor in early spring due to off-field issues (Taylor has taken issue with the investigation). Luck turned to an old friend — Frank Reich, his head coach with the Colts — to serve as interim coach. But Luck is still searching for a permanent hire, targeting the end of the regular season, which wraps after next weekend’s matchup with Notre Dame.

Since Taylor’s dismissal in March, Luck has become the face of the program — in recruiting, fundraising, operations, everything. He’s had to recruit nearly an entire cycle while offering no clarity on who will coach the players he’s persuading to come.

So he chose transparency.

“I knew being transparent about an interim was the right thing,” Luck said. “I also knew there would be consequences. But I’ve been intellectually honest with myself and with every player. Whether it’s something about football, their family, academics — I’m honest.”

He jokes about the challenge.

“We’re in a new conference, I’m in a new position and I’m trying to find a new coach. So apparently I like to make things more of a challenge,” he said.

But that mindset is part of the Stanford experience.

“We were taught to challenge ourselves — challenge the way things have always been done,” Luck said. “Why are you doing what you do? That’s the why. It motivates me every day.”

He draws motivation from Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw, his offensive coordinator and later head coach.

“Coach Harbaugh profoundly affected me. David Shaw profoundly affected me,” Luck said. “Harbaugh had such conviction that we were going to do it our way. My personality is different, but I know we can do this. Shaw’s authenticity — when he was rolling — I’m not sure there was a better coach to sit in a living room. That authenticity is how I recruit.”

That passion fuels him now. Stanford is 3–7 and won’t reach a bowl this fall, though a home win over Florida State included one of the season’s most memorable defensive stops.

Harbaugh’s first Stanford team also missed a bowl. So did his second. Then came a decade of dominance.

Luck believes Stanford can recapture that despite the sport’s upheaval.

“The transfer portal, NIL, revenue sharing — individually and combined — have profoundly affected college football,” Luck said. “We were slow to adapt. We fell on hard times. But the rising tide I feel? All the young men we talk to are saying, ‘Stanford’s back and serious about football.’ We’re fully participating in revenue share. We’re unique. If you want to play in the NFL and you have that ability, this is a place to do it. We’re a serious player. And I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t believe that.”