Beau Baldwin is heading back to from whence he came.
Prior to joining Justin Wilcox‘s staff at Cal, Baldwin spent nine seasons as the head coach at FCS Eastern Washington. FootballScoop.com first reported late Monday morning that, "[b]arring a late-stage break down in talks, Beau Baldwin is expected to be the next head coach at Cal Poly.” ESPN.com subsequently reported that Baldwin will be the FCS school’s new head coach.
A press conference to officially introduce Baldwin is set for Wednesday, the latter website noted.
Baldwin left Eastern Washington with an 85-32 record, including six FCS playoffs appearances with four trips to the FCS semifinals and a national championship in 2010. He joined Wilcox in Berkeley in January of 2017 as the Golden Bears’ offensive coordinator and running backs coach, while also carrying the title of assistant head coach. In January of this year, he moved from running backs to quarterbacks as Wilcox looked to shake up the worst offense in the Pac-12.
The shuffling didn’t help much as the Bears were again dead-last in the conference in scoring at 20.1 points per game (they were at 21.5 ppg a year ago). Their yards per game dipped from 344 a year ago to 323 in 2019. They were last in the league in that category as well.
Interestingly, Baldwin hasn’t yet coached his last game at Memorial Stadium as Cal plays host to... Cal Poly on Sept. 12 next season. Cal will also play Illinois in the RedBox Bowl Dec. 30; it’s unclear if Baldwin will coach in that game.