Former California football head coach Mike White passed away Sunday at the age of 89 in Newport Beach. The Cal Athletics Hall of Famer was the national Coach of the Year in 1975 when he led the Golden Bears to the program's first conference football title in 17 seasons since the 1958 squad won a Pacific Coast Conference crown. Cal finished the 1975 season 8-3 overall and posted a 6-1 league record to share the Pac-8 title with UCLA before ending the season No. 14 in the Associated Press Top 25.

Cal's 1975 team led the nation in total offense at 485.5 yards per game with a balanced rushing and passing attack that featured a pair of consensus first-team All-Americans in running back Chuck Muncie and wide receiver Steve Rivera, as well as prolific quarterback Joe Roth. Muncie was also the runner-up in the 1975 Heisman Trophy voting and the Pac-8 Player of the Year. In addition, White coached quarterback Steve Bartkowski, who was a consensus All-American in 1974 before being selected as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1975 NFL Draft by the Atlanta Falcons.

White registered a 35-30-1 overall mark and a 21-19-1 Pac-8 record during six campaigns as Cal's head coach from 1972-77. His 1975 and 1977 teams both finished 8-3 overall, while his 1974 squad was 7-3-1. His final four Cal teams combined for a 28-15-1 mark.

"Mike was special," said Burl Toler Jr., a linebacker who played at Cal under White from 1974-77. "He treated us like men and with a lot of respect. Mike was a very gifted and smart coach who loved Cal and loved being a coach, and he surrounded himself with a lot of like minds who instilled in us a will to succeed."

White was a four-sport student-athlete for the Bears in the mid-1950s and a three-year varsity letterwinner in each of three seasons on the gridiron (1955-57) as a wide receiver and punter. He also added varsity letters in rugby and track and field, in which he was the winner of both the high hurdles and high jump in the 1957 Big Meet against Stanford. In addition, White earned two letters for his participation in junior varsity basketball.

After graduating from Cal, White began a coaching career that would eventually span six decades. He spent his first six seasons (1958-63) as a coach at Cal tutoring the defensive line before eight campaigns (1964-71) at Bay Area and conference rival Stanford as an offensive line coach and offensive coordinator. He returned to Berkeley as Cal's head coach in 1972.

White left Cal for the NFL after the 1977 season to become the offensive line coach for two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers (1978-79) before returning to the college game in 1980 as the head coach at Illinois for an eight-year tenure (1980-87). White led the Illini to a 7-4 overall record in his second season in 1981. Two years later he posted his signature season with Illinois and earned 1983 national and Big Ten Coach of the Year honors by leading the Illini to a 10-1 overall mark to equal a school record in wins, as well as both Illinois' first Big Ten title and Rose Bowl appearance in 20 years. In addition, the 1983 Illini are the only Big Ten unit ever to defeat every other football team in the conference in a single season with a 9-0 mark. White would serve four more seasons as the head coach at Illinois before finishing his eight-year tenure with a 47-41-3 overall record, while his Big Ten mark was 40-26-2.

In 14 seasons as a collegiate head coach, White posted an overall record of 75-56-3 (.571).

White took a one-year hiatus from coaching after the 1987 season at Illinois before returning for one campaign as an offensive assistant at Newport Harbor High School in 1989.

White then moved back to the NFL in 1990 to begin the final chapter of his coaching career. He was the Los Angeles Raiders' offensive line coach for the first four seasons (1990-93) before becoming the team's quarterbacks coach in 1994. White was then promoted to the lone NFL head coaching job of his career with the Raiders for the first two seasons of their return to Oakland (1995-96). White's final coaching gig was a three-year stint as an offensive assistant with the St. Louis Rams (1997-99) that he capped with a Super Bowl XXXIV victory. 

White later served as the Director of Football Administration for the Kansas City Chiefs before retiring from football.

After retirement, he returned to his alma mater and worked for the California Alumni Association for many summers as the Director of Camp Blue at the Lair of the Golden Bear, where he had been employed in the summers as an undergraduate. In 2013, he was awarded with UC Berkeley's Glenn T. Seaborg Award presented annually in honor of Cal's nationally renowned scientist to a former Cal football player for his career accomplishments who represents "the honored Cal principles and traditions of excellence in academics, athletics, leadership and attitude."