Together Again

A special group of former Cal football players will be together again in Berkeley on Saturday when the 1975 team hosts its 50-year reunion during Cal's homecoming festivities.

"I can't believe it's been that long," said Burl Toler Jr. "I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone, especially some of the guys that I haven't seen in 50 years."

Toler, along with several of his former Cal teammates, including Greg Cummings, Donnie Miller and Greg Peters, were a driving force in getting the squad back together at the reunion.

Toler expects about 120 people including former players and their family to be in attendance for the two-day event that starts Friday night with a dinner at the Fratellanza Club in Oakland, followed by a pre-game tailgate on Maxwell Field before watching the current Cal team take on Duke in Saturday night's homecoming game, where they will be honored during an on-field presentation.

The alumni will have plenty of stories to tell and lots to celebrate when they gather to reminisce about a 1975 squad that was arguably one of the best in school history as co-champ of the Pac-8 and producer of an 8-3 overall record despite dropping its first two games of the season. The Golden Bears finished 6-1 in conference play that season with their lone loss to fellow Pac-8 co-champ UCLA at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The team rebounded from its loss to the Bruins with a convincing 28-14 home win over then No. 4 USC and was even more dominant in a 48-15 Big Game victory at Stanford in its final game together.

The 1975 Bears, who finished No. 14 in the final AP Top 25 rankings, featured six players who would later be inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame in Ted Albrecht, Jim Breech, Chuck Muncie, Steve Rivera, Joe Roth and Wesley Walker, as well as two others who have made Cal's esteemed Hall in head coach Mike White and then first-year radio announcer Joe Starkey.

The late great Muncie was one of the top players in the country and the Heisman runner-up as a 1975 senior. Muncie also earned consensus All-American honors, while winning Pac-8 Player of the Year and Pop Warner Trophy awards as the top player on the West Coast. He finished third in the nation in rushing with 1,460 yards on the ground and ended his career with a then school-record 3,052 rushing yards before being selected No. 3 overall by the New Orleans Saints in the 1976 NFL Draft.

"Chuck should have won the Heisman Trophy that year," Toler said and the "Muncie for Heisman" sentiment was echoed by Rivera, who also earned consensus All-America honors.

Not only did the 1975 team have talent, but it would also have felt comfortable in today's modern age of football by playing for a coaching staff led by a head coach in White and featuring a who's who of future NFL and college head coaches, including Roger Theder and Paul Hackett, who was far ahead of its time.

"I felt sorry for teams that tried to defend us because we had so many weapons to take advantage of, and we definitely used them all," said Rivera, who is also planning to attend the reunion festivities.

"The game they coached was more cerebral," Toler added. "It wasn't just three yards and a cloud of dust. They thought outside the box, they conveyed that to us as players and we performed admirably."

Starkey, who retired after 48 seasons following the 2022 season and is also looking forward to rekindling connections with the players from his first team as Cal's radio announcer, had his own fond memories of that team.

"There was a warmth to everybody that really jumped out at me," Starkey said. "They were all in it together."

And on Saturday, they will be once again.