A Bitter Gilbertson Waits For Job Offers Fired California Coach Wants Another Shot, But Unlisted Number May Not Be Helping Him

One week after being fired as California football coach, a bitter Keith Gilbertson sits by his telephone with the unlisted number at his home in Moraga.

“Do I want to coach some more?” Gilbertson said after picking up the receiver on the first ring. “Yeah. But no one has called me about coaching jobs. I just hope the phone rings sometime.

“I don’t have any plans. There’s nothing happening. How do I know what’s going to happen? I’ve got to wait for the phone to ring. I may be out of football for all I know. I may not have anything to do for a year.”

His boyhood chum, Dennis Erickson, said there always would be a spot available on his Seattle Seahawks staff for Gilbertson, but there have been no concrete offers. Gilbertson is trying to put his phone to good use while waiting.

“I’m trying to get some of my (assistant) coaches jobs,” Gilbertson said. “I’ve been on the phones.”

On one hand, Gilbertson seemed to understand why he was fired for the first time in his coaching career and seemed to understand why athletic director John Kasser canned him Nov. 20. On the other hand, bitterness seeped out about how he was treated by the San Francisco newspapers and the lack of backing from his superiors.

“You go 3-8 and 4-7,” Gilbertson said about his record the past two seasons, “and beat up in the media the way I was getting beat up by the columnists, with those Gilby Must Go stuff. Those things add up.

“I don’t know what I did to tick those (newspaper) guys off, other than try hard. They just kill me. Once all that swirling starts there’s no way to stop it unless you win games or somebody comes out and says, ‘We’re not changing. You write whatever the hell you want to write.’ If people don’t do that, then the speculators just continue and continue. Pretty soon, you don’t have a leg to stand on.”

In the face of mounting criticism, losses and sagging attendance, Kasser decided to let Gilbertson go. There was a generous settlement of the coach’s contract that ran through 1998. A source in the athletic department said Gilbertson walked away with at least $350,000.

“I always got along well with John,” Gilbertson said. “I always thought he was a good guy. And he’s good for Cal.

“One of the things that was missing around there was there were so many changes in leadership (four athletic directors - one interim - in six years). John has given it a sense of direction and focus. He gets along with the alums, which is important because a lot of what you do at Cal is with outside money.”

Responding to one alum’s observation that Cal “is thought of as a graveyard for coaches,” Gilbertson said:

“If you take a look back to 1960, I think you would see a shocking statistic. Just look back and take a look at all the coaches and how they left.”

In those 35 years, Cal has employed seven football coaches and seven basketball coaches. Now Kasser and executive associate athletic director Bob Driscoll are touring the country looking for another football coach, one they hope to hire sometime around Christmas.

“I’m all right,” Gilbertson said when asked to evaluate his emotional condition. “You go though a time when you feel a sense of failure about getting fired. And you’ve been close to staff guys, people in the community, but particularly close to young players. Next year was going to be my first senior group; well the product of a two-week recruiting period (after being hired in January of 1992). In 1997, that would have been a senior group.

“This is the first time having this happen to me. It happened, it’s over, and I’ve got nothing else to say. What am I supposed to say? I got my butt fired? I want to apologize to everyone for being a horsemeat football coach? … Who’s going to do that?”