I think an important question to ask is, why is Cal competitive? While I don't follow college football much except to know who the winners and losers are, I know that they were in the top 10 quite a bit recently. Now, granted, there's not as much competition for them in the Bay Area excet for the very prestigious Stanford Unviesity, but Cal is still part of the Unviersity of California system, if I'm not mistaken.
So, while I don't know a lot, I do know that Cal is a key.
Also, looking at their record on Wikipedia, they had sporadic success in the 1970-2000 era you ment5ion, mostly due to Troy Aikman I'm sure

. Was there an AD change that might have made a difference? could we get Joe Paterno to take a pro job (which I recall he almost did) in 1970 and then return to college to replace Dick Vermeil? Or have Vermeil stay? (The advantage of Paterno, of course, is that we can butterfly away, well, that whole mess. And if you don't know what I mean, you're better off that way.

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