Cal prepares to open 1st spring practice under new coach Tosh Lupoi

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — The first few months on the job for new California football coach Tosh Lupoi have been a bit of a whirlwind as he has worked on putting together a staff, retaining and adding players to the roster and building a culture he hopes will turn the Golden Bears into a winner.

Now Lupoi gets the chance to get on the field with his team for the first time since being hired in December with Cal set to open what he described as a physical spring practice period on Wednesday.

“The honeymoon is a little bit over now," Lupoi said Tuesday. "We've done our best as far as taxing the guys. ... Now we’re in true physical combat here. I think we find out a lot about each other. As we progress to getting pads on, we’re going to truly find out who our real football players are.”

The return to Cal is a homecoming for Lupoi, who was born and raised in the Bay Area and played defensive line at Cal from 2000-05. He then spent four years as defensive line coach for the Bears under coach Jeff Tedford before leaving to take an assistant job at Washington in 2012.

Lupoi later went to Alabama where he was on Nick Saban’s staff for two national championships, spent three years in the NFL and was defensive coordinator under Dan Lanning at Oregon the last four seasons before coming back to Cal.

Lupoi inherits a program that has struggled to compete at a high level in recent years with the Bears going 48-56 the past nine seasons with Justin Wilcox in charge. Cal hasn't finished a season ranked in the AP poll since 2006 and won more than seven games only once in nine seasons under Wilcox.

But there are reasons for optimism as the program has made a bigger investment in football since general manager Ron Rivera took over before last season. The Bears are looking to get back to the level they were at when Lupoi was a player. Cal's best season in that span came in 2004 when the Bears went 10-2 with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback and got as high as fourth in the nation that season.

The biggest move Lupoi made came in the first 24 hours he was on the job when he flew to Hawaii to persuade star quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele to return for a second season.

Sagapolutele threw for 3,454 yards and 18 touchdowns as a freshman and is one of the top returning quarterbacks in the country. Cal has worked with Sagapolutele on increasing his NIL value and he just launched a new clothing line this week as part of that.

“There’s been some really cool deals for these guys that they can take advantage of,” Lupoi said. “Love to support them, but we’re not really focused on individual attention. It’s more all about the team and celebrating our pillars of our culture, which Jaren is first and foremost does an elite job at, celebrating team and leading by action thus far.”

Lupoi begins his first head coaching job with first-time coordinators on both sides of the ball with Jordan Somerville running the offense and Michael Hutchings in charge of the defense.

Both have NFL experience, which Lupoi wanted in those roles. Hutchings spent the past three seasons with the Minnesota Vikings and Somerville worked as assistant quarterbacks coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the last three seasons.

Those two can lean heavily on Lupoi, who has experience as a defensive coordinator at a high level, and Nick Rolovich, who remained on the staff after serving as interim coach for the bowl game and has served as an offensive coordinator and head coach for years.

"Don’t be naive to the fact I haven't done this before," Somerville said. “We can talk about just the organizational piece that bringing in the wealth of knowledge, but at the end of the day, I haven’t sat in this chair. So to surround myself in an entire unit with wisdom, so to speak, and guys with a lot of experience, is key and critical to our future going forward.”

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FILE - Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi, center, signals in the first half of an NCAA college football game, Nov. 5, 2022, in Boulder, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

The World Anti-Doping Agency on Tuesday put off a decision about barring government officials from major sporting events if their countries voluntarily withhold dues, pushing a potential conflict with President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials until at least after this summer's World Cup.

The WADA executive committee met and said it would consider the new rule in September, two months after the end of the World Cup, which the U.S. is hosting along with Canada and Mexico.

If such a rule is adopted later this year, it would presumably go into effect before the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

The U.S. hasn't paid its dues since 2023. If that continues, the new rule could place Trump and U.S. lawmakers on a banned list for Games in their own country, though there are doubts about whether an anti-doping regulator could keep any of them from attending the Olympics.

Conflict with WADA has not been a particularly partisan issue in the U.S., which withheld the payments in 2024 and 2025 — once during Trump's presidency and once during Joe Biden's.

The U.S. has withheld $7.3 million over the two years in protest of WADA’s handling of a case involving Chinese swimmers and other issues.

WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald previously told The Associated Press the proposed rule would “not (be) applied retroactively so World Cup, LA and SLC Games would not be covered.”

However, the proposal, a copy of which was obtained by AP, did not include language to that effect and Fitzgerald did not respond to multiple emails seeking clarification about his use of the word “retroactively.”

After the meeting Tuesday, WADA director general Olivier Niggli said “the withholding of contributions by governments for political or other voluntary reasons remains a serious topic of concern for all WADA’s stakeholders.”

“Funding instability has a direct effect on the functioning and development of the World Anti-Doping Program,” Niggli said. “Ultimately, those who are most directly and most negatively impacted are athletes around the world.”

WADA started exploring the issue in 2020, around the time the U.S. began threatening to withhold money. But it says the issue of penalizing governments for not paying is not directly related to the United States.

A U.S. representative on the executive committee during the Biden administration — drug czar Rahul Gupta — led the effort to reject the proposal in 2024.

The U.S. has since lost its spot on the committee. The proposal emerged again earlier this year, and in correspondence with European decision-makers, a copy of which was obtained by AP, WADA told them such a measure could be adopted “without undue delay.”

The Europeans also asked WADA why the executive committee was taking up the issue again before a working group had finished its analysis.

A decision by the executive committee would have to be ratified by the WADA foundation board. Its next meeting is in November, though in the February letter to the Europeans, WADA said that board could meet sooner.

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FILE - President Donald Trump stands on stage next to the FIFA World Cup after receiving the FIFA Peace Prize during the draw for the 2026 soccer World Cup at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)