Firing Squad For Coach? Looks Like All Gilbertson’s Missing Is A Blindfold And A Cigarette

Mike Price has a good friend who is in deep trouble.

From all indications, Keith Gilbertson will be fired as the head football coach at Cal by the end of the season, if not sooner.

“Only a miracle,” one Bay Area sports columnist wrote recently, could save Gilbertson’s job.

And at least a part of that “miracle” would involve beating Price’s Washington State Cougars when the two teams meet Saturday at 12:30 p.m. in Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, Calif.

Therefore, Price admitted, matching strategies with an old buddy won’t be quite as much fun as might have been.

“It used to be exciting to play your friends,” said Price, who grew up in Everett and played against Gilbertson, a Snohomish native, in high school. “But it’s lost a lot of its luster, considering the precarious positions we football coaches are in as far as job security is concerned.”

Price knows that by beating Cal Saturday, he will almost certainly send Gilbertson and his assistants - several of whom are also close friends - to the unemployment line.

But he insists that his sympathy will not influence the way he approaches the game.

“We certainly hope that the people at Berkeley see fit to continue on with the (Gilbertson) coaching staff, because I think it’s an excellent staff,” Price said. “And I think Keith Gilbertson is an excellent football coach.

“Obviously, he’s a personal and close friend of mine. We talk on a weekly basis and it’s hard, but this is kind of a shaky profession at times. We certainly hope that (the Bears) win all of their games after this one against the Cougars.”

California’s administrators thought Gilbertson was an excellent coach, too, when they hired him to replace Bruce Snyder four years ago. They figured his successful tenure as a head coach at Idaho, followed by a brilliant three seasons as an assistant under Don James at Washington, made him the perfect hire to build on the foundation Snyder had poured before leaving for Arizona State.

Their faith, however, seems unfounded at this point.

In his first season at Cal, Gilbertson let a senior-laden team that had gone 10-2 just a year before, slip to 4-7. His 1993 team finished 9-4 and thumped Iowa in the Alamo Bowl. But last year, the Bears stumbled again, finishing 4-7.

And this fall, they are a disappointing 2-6 with their only wins coming against lowly San Jose State and Oregon State.

Several local columnists have called for Gilbertson’s head and Cal’s student senate recently passed a proposal calling for Gilbertson’s dismissal.

Gilbertson, himself, seems resigned to his fate.

“I’m kind of in an indefensible position,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “The reality is that people aren’t going to go around saying what a great coach I am right now.

“I’ve got no interest in stating my case (in public). I don’t need to have my day in court. If I made excuses, you’d hear them say, ‘Listen to that whiner.’ I’m just going to let everything alone and see how it ends up.”

Denny Schuler, Gilbertson’s quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, seems to have some inside information on how it’s going to end up.

“It’s funny, a year ago you think you might have a chance at a head-coaching job somewhere,” said Shuler, who followed Gilbertson to Cal after a splendid run as Rich Brooks’ defensive coordinator at Oregon. “Now it’s a year later and you might wind up going to North Dakota State as a receivers coach and be happy about it.”

Cal’s players seem to be staying as neutral as possible on the issue. But if one reads between the lines, quarterback Pat Barne’s comments can hardly be considered a ringing endorsement.

“Essentially, it’s been pretty tough,” he said of the Bears’ disappointing season and all of the negative publicity surrounding the program. “We feel like we have a tremendous amount of talent.”

As for all of the media rantings about the future of his head coach, Barnes said he doesn’t read it or listen to it.

“It’s just some worldly advice my parent gave to me,” explained the 6-foot-4 junior, who was twice yanked off redshirt status by Gilbertson to throw a total of 75 passes in his first two seasons. “They told me just to take into account what people around you who really care about you have to say and go from there.

“Whatever happens with that situation is definitely out of my control and I think all my teammates feel the same way. We’re just trying to do what we’re coached to do and win games.”

Barnes, who has thrown for 1,892 yards and 10 touchdowns this fall, added, however, that his is not sure three wins down the stretch - including a victory over WSU on Saturday will be enough to cure all of the Golden Bears’ ills.

Or save Gilbertson’s job.

And when asked whether the team was rallying behind their coach during one of his darkest hours, he had this to say:

“For me, personally, Coach Shuler and I are very close, and I’m rallying around him and trying to implement what he’s trying to teach me.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo