Holmoe Has a Blank Check

Before the college football season began, Tom Holmoe spoke bluntly about his future at California. The fifth-year coach knew that unless he won, he would be gone.

Three months later, Cal is winless in eight games and Holmoe has announced his resignation, effective at the end of the season.

“The reason I made the announcement now was to take some pressure off the players,” he said. “They knew the writing was on the wall. It was a formality.”

But several hundred miles south, USC Coach Pete Carroll sees another side to the resignation. While expressing sympathy for his friend and colleague, Carroll also noted that the Trojans, playing at Cal on Saturday, might feel the reaction to an emotional week for the Bears.

“He may have thought this will give his boys a charge to come after us,” Carroll said. “I’m sure they will rally and play a heck of a game for him.”

Carroll got to know Holmoe in 1995, when he served as a defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers and Holmoe was his secondary coach. Between practices and meetings, the men played basketball on a court in the parking lot.

“We’d battle it out,” Carroll said. “He is a fierce competitor.”

That quality made Holmoe a successful quarterback and safety at Crescenta Valley High in La Crescenta and an all-conference cornerback at Brigham Young in the early 1980s. Next came seven years with the 49ers, where he was the kind of player who had to scramble for a spot on the roster, earning his reputation on special teams.

His rise up the coaching ranks was swift, starting in 1990, taking him from BYU to Stanford and back to the 49ers. At 36, he was Cal’s surprise selection, promoted from defensive coordinator when Steve Mariucci left abruptly--for the 49ers--in January 1997.

Though the Bears had been to three bowl games in the previous seven years, they had also suffered through dreary seasons.

“I knew it was going to be a very difficult battle,” Holmoe recalled this week. “I knew there would be ups and downs.”

Boyish looking, he quickly became known as a “good guy,” which in the coaching business can be a plus if you win, the kiss of death if you lose. Perhaps he reached the critical point in 1998--his best season--when the Bears lost their final game to Stanford and finished 5-6, just missing a bowl invitation.

Cal’s record has grown progressively worse since then. And, all the while, rival Stanford was winning games across the bay.

This fall, though the Bears were picked to finish near the bottom of the Pacific 10 Conference, Holmoe felt the pressure to produce. Much as USC spent big money to attract offensive coordinator Norm Chow, Cal paid $175,000 to hire Al Borges away from UCLA.

But things quickly went south after a season-opening 44-17 loss to Illinois.

“A home game, a big game for us to show what this team was about,” Holmoe said. “We got blown out.”

His quarterback, Kyle Boller, added, “After that game, we got in a hole and couldn’t get out.”

As the losses mounted--his record now stands at 15-37--critics suggested that Holmoe leave the team at midseason. But, he says, the university chancellor and athletic director did not want to fire him and he refused to resign. He wanted to see things through. Finally, acting on instinct, he called his players to a hastily arranged meeting Sunday.

“It was emotional,” he said. “I poured out my feelings for them.”

Boller recalled that the players remained quiet, hating to see their coach have to quit.

“He cares a lot for us and that’s hard to find,” the junior said.

Later, players stopped by Holmoe’s office to speak privately with him.

The outgoing coach says he still isn’t sure he made the right decision by speaking up with three games remaining. His team is in a sort of limbo. At this point, Borges could be a candidate for the job, though Cal announced it will launch a search this week.

No matter what happens next, USC associate coach DeWayne Walker, who worked under Holmoe in 1997, knows the mood of the team right now.

“Those kids are feeling it,” he said.

So USC is especially wary of this weekend’s game against what quarterback Carson Palmer calls a team “with nothing to lose.”

Cal has won four of the last five games against USC. The Trojans are on a bit of a roll, though, having won three of their last four and, at 4-5, need a victory to get to the UCLA game with a shot at a winning record and a bowl invitation.

Cognizant that his players could be inclined to overlooking the Bears, Carroll has talked to them about the potential fallout from Holmoe’s resignation.

Holmoe senses it too.

“I think there is a different emotion involved,” he said. “Believe me, my guys are going to be fighting.”