The Bears celebrating after beating U$C in 1975
In the first 24 years after California’s permanent switch to football (1915) the Golden Bears had 20 winning seasons, two losing seasons and two seasons at .500. (I believe that would be called the “good old days.”)
In 1939 Cal opened the season by beating UC Davis by the unusual score of 32-14. They ended that season by winning the Big Game by the unusual score of 32-14. They had never before won a game by that score, nor have they since.
The Golden Bears 1958 Rose Bowl squad sticks out like a sore thumb among the seasons preceding and following it. The Bears won a combined six games in the three years before the ’58 season. They won just six in the four years after. They were thus a combined 12-46-3 in the seven seasons surrounding their January 1, 1959 trip to Pasadena. In fact, in the fifteen years from 1953-1967, 1958 represented California’s only winning season.
In his first eight seasons as head coach (2002-2009), Jeff Tedford’s Bears boasted winning conference records five times, a losing record only once (2007) while twice finishing at .500 (2002 and 2005). The Bears have not had a winning conference record since 2009.
Brick Morse — aka The Eternal Sophomore — played for California in the early 1890s. He was a founder of the Cal Glee Club and composed both “Sons of California” and “Hail to California.” As a sportswriter he coined the term Wonder Team for Andy Smith’s great sides of the early 1920s. Brick founded the Big City society and wrote the first history of Cal football which was published in 1938.
The 1975 California team led the nation in total offense with exactly 2,522 rushing and 2,522 passing. Joe Roth, Wesley Walker, Steve Rivera and Chuck Muncie led the attack as the Bears shared the Pac-8 title that year, finishing 8-3. Muncie finished second in the voting for the Heisman trophy that year that was won by Archie Griffin.
Nibs Price’s five-year tenure as California football’s head coach (1925-1930) finished and ended with losing seasons. But in the three years in between Cal went a combined 20-6-3 and earned a Rose Bowl berth in 1928. Pete Elliot (1957-1959) had a smilier tenure, starting and finishing with losing records but going to Rose Bowl in between. Price was later head men's basketball coach at Cal from 1924 to 1954, tallying a mark of 453–294. He led the 1946 basketball team to the Final Four. Elliot is one of three coaches to lead teams to the Rose Bowl AFTER leaving Berkeley (the other two are Mike White and Bruce Snyder).
In California’s 21-6 victory over Washington State in Pullman on September 17, 1966, the Golden Bears scored on a 71-yard interception return by Wayne Stewart, a 106-yard return of missed field goal (partially blocked) by Don Guest and a 73-yard punt return by Jerry Bradley. The Bears totaled 142 yards in total offense that day and completed zero passes in three attempts.
In Pappy Waldorf’s first six years as head coach at California (1947-1952), the Bears went 53-6-1 in regular season play boasting winning records over every opponent except U$C against whom they were 3-3. They were unbeaten in Big Games. (The regular season records, in order, were: 9-1, 10-0, 10-0, 9-0-1, 8-2 and 7-3. Sadly, they went 0-3 in Rose Bowls.)
California’s greatest comeback victory was against Oregon on October 2, 1993. The Golden Bears trailed 30-0 before storming back to win 42-41. The winning score came on a 26-yard pass from quarterback Dave Barr to Iheanyi Uwaezuoke with 1:17 remaining. Barr hit Mike Caldwell for the two-point conversation to provide the winning points. An Artis Houston interception with 29 seconds remaining sealed the victory. On the day Barr completed 21 of 31 passes for 368 yards and three touchdowns. At the time it was the second biggest comeback in college football history.
Between 1920-1923 Andy Smith’s Wonder Teams yielded a combined total of 88 points. They scored that much in one game alone (versus Mare Island in 1920) and 35 points more than that in a 127-0 victory over St. Mary’s that same season. The Bears outscored opponents that season 510-14. Between 1920 and 1924 Smith’s teams outscored opponents 1,564 to 139. That’s an average score of roughly 33-3, with an average margin of victory of 30 points. The Bears won-loss record in those five seasons was 44-0-4. Golden Bear historical fun fact is brought to you by Power Bar.
Ken Wiedemann (1967-69) is the California’s all-time leader in career interceptions with sixteen despite playing only three years (freshmen were not eligible at the time) and missing most of his senior campaign through injury. Playing on the freshmen team in 1966, Ken had five interceptions. He was all conference three times and was inducted into the Cal Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.
1941 is the only year in which California beat Stanfurd U$C and UCLA in the same season but didn’t go to the Rose Bowl. In fact they only won one other game that season, versus St. Mary’s on the day Oski made his debut (September 27). Despite the sub .500 record the Bears outscored their opponents. Their 16-6 win over Furd is considered one of the Big Game’s biggest upsets. This surely ranks as the greatest losing season in Golden Bear history, indeed I’d rank it ahead of many of Cals’ winning seasons.
This year California plays on Halloween. The Bears have had fourteen previous contests on October 31st, compiling a record of 9-5. In Memorial Stadium the Bears are 4-4 on Halloween and are an impressive 5 -1 on the road. One of those road wins was 27-0 against Cal Poly Pomona in 1925, the last of four games Cal played against the Mustangs, all Bear wins. The Sturdy Golden Ones also had a rare win at U$C on Halloween 1970, 13-10. The Trojans had gone into the game ranked 18th in the nation while California was sporting a 3-4 record. Randy Wersching’s 46-yard field goal with 4:36 left in the game providing the winning margin. It was the Bears’ first victory over SC since 1958.The Sturdy Golden Ones notched their first ever road win under Bruce Snyder on Halloween in 1987, 20-6 in Oregon. Jeff Tedford’s 2009 team won a thriller on Halloween at ASU, 23-21 with Giorgio Tavecchio converting a game-wining field goal twenty-one seconds before the final gun.This year’s Halloween contest is at NC State. Boo!
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In his first seven years as Cal head coach (1935-1941), Stub Allison went 15-6 against the Bears’ rivals (Furd, U$C and UCLA). Remarkably he had identical 5-2 records against all three. During that spell Allison had two one-loss teams (’35 and ’38) and one undefeated Rose Bowl champ (’37).
Jerry Drew’s 283 rushing yards against Oregon State on November 13, 1954 rank as the second-highest single-game total in California history. Drew, a backup who carried the ball only four times in the first half, needed just eleven carries to amass those 283 yards, an astonishing average of 25.7 yards per attempt. After halftime, he broke runs of 67, 59 and 55 yards as the Golden Bears routed OSU, 46-7. Drew surpassed the previous school record of 269 yards, set by Johnny Olszewski four years earlier, and finished just thirteen yards short of the conference record. His Cal record stood for more than half a century, until Jahvid Best broke it with 311 yards against Washington on December 6, 2008.
Ray Willsey (1964-1971) who was 40-42-1 and Justin Wilcox (1917-1925) who was 48-55, are the only two California head coaches to stay on the job for over five years but end their tenure with overall losing records. Both were masters of mediocrity. Wilsey led three teams to 5-5 records and, after college football added an eleventh game, had a pair of 6-5 marks. Wilcox finished with between five and seven wins in six of his eight non-Covid seasons in charge. Of the two, Wilsey had the best single season when the Golden Bears went 7-3-1 in 1968 and were ranked in the top twenty for several weeks. Wilcox’s best year was 2019 when the Bears finished 8-5 with their only bowl victory during his time in charge.
On October 30, 1965 the Golden Bears defeated Penn State, 21–17 in a thriller. Quarterback Jim Hunt connected on a 46-yard Hail Mary to wide receiver Jerry Bradley on the last play of the game for the winning score. The visitors had gone ahead 32 seconds earlier on a 13-yard touchdown pass. But Hunt, who had starred as a safety and back up to Craig Morton the previous season, led the Bears to the Lion 41. After a sack pushed Cal back five yards, only one second remained. Hunt scrambled around before flinging the pigskin toward the north end zone. The deflected pass found Bradley, the Bears leading receiver despite his 154-pound frame, who dove for the catch. Penn State was coached by Rip Engle, the following year he would be replaced by Joe Paterno who served as head man there for 47 years. (On a personal note I was in the first row of the north end zone about twenty yards from the catch. It was the first miracle finish I’d ever witnessed and Jerry Bradley went from hero to god for me.)
Here’s how many winning seasons versus losing or .500 seasons California has had in each decade. ‘20s: 9-1-0, ‘30s: 7-2-1, ‘40s: 3-6-1 ‘50s: 4-4-2, ‘60s: 1-6-3, ‘70s: 7-3-0, ‘80s: 1-7-2, ‘90s: 3-6-1, ‘00s: 8-2-0 ‘10s: 4-6 and so far in the 2020s 1-5. As you can see two of our best decades were before WWII and the three of the top four were over 46 years ago. Better times ahead. Am I right?
Son Kai-Kee (aka Sam), the son of Chinese immigrants, was California’s first Asian American football player. He played quarterback on the freshman team in 1915 and was a backup running back for the varsity for three years, though he didn’t see the field as either a sophomore or junior. Sam finally saw action in his senior year (1918) in games against St. Mary's, U$C & Stanfurd. The diminutive Kai-Kee made up for his lack of bulk with great speed. Among his teammates in 1918 was Walter Gordon, the first African-American to play for the Bears. That year Kai-Kee and Gordon were members of the first Cal team to win a Pacific Coast Conference championship. In the 1940s, another Asian-American back played for Cal, George Fong. George played for three different coaches, Buck Shaw, Frank Wickhorst and Pappy Waldorf. The first play from scrimmage in Pappy’s first game as a head coach was a 39-yard touchdown run by Fong at Memorial Stadium. Fong, a San Francisco native, started every game of the 1947 season, his senior year.
Prior to joining the ACC, California’s football relationship with Pittsburg consisted of five games played between 1955 and 1966 (the Bears winning two) but is most notable for a year in which they did not meet on the football field, 1937. The Golden Bears went unbeaten that season with only a tie against Washington marring their perfect record. Pitt also finished 9-0-1. However while Cal put their record on the line in the Rose Bowl against an undefeated Alabama team. The Panthers played it safe and stayed home that bowl season. The Bears made their case for voters with a resounding not-as-close-as-the-score-indicates 13-0 thumping of the Crimson Tide. Nonetheless East Coast bias reared its ugly head as Pitt finished number one in the final polls with the Bears in second. California’s Thunder Team had five All-Americans and six players who earned All-Pacific Coast honors. They outscored opponents 214-33.
On November 6, 1948 in Memorial Stadium California defeated UCLA 28-13 before 68,000 fans. The win raised the Golden Bear’s record to 8-0. They would finish the regular season as undefeated conference champions and play in their first Rose Bowl in eleven years. (Imagine having to wait eleven years between Rose Bowls!) The heavily-favored Bears were out-gained by their southern cousins, but an 85-yard pick six by Will Potter and a blocked punt were enough to make the hosts comfortable winners. Among the spectators that day was California Governor Earl Warren who would later be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Warren was an Old Blue and former member of the California marching band.
The first meeting between the Bears and UCLA was not until 1933 when the series began with a scoreless tie in Pasadena on November 4. The following year in Berkeley the “cousins” engaged in another low-scoring affair with the Golden Bears emerging victorious, 3-0. Cal kept the Bruins out of the end zone again in their third encounter in 1935, winning 14-2. The UCLANs finally hit pay dirt claiming a 17-6 win in 1936. Stub Allison (1935-1944) was a rare California head coach who had a winning record against the Southern California rivals, going 8-5 (the schools met twice a season during World War II). Jeff Tedford (2002-2012) also had a winning record in the rivalry, 7-4. Pappy Waldorf only managed four wins in ten tries against the Powder Blues. The last meeting between the two schools in November 2023 marked the end of Pac-12 regular season play. California won that game, 33-7.
Since 1915 and the permanent switch to football, no California team has failed to win a game. Only the 1957, 1961, 1962, 2001, 2013 and 2020 (in a pandemic-shortened season) teams have notched but one win. The ’61 squad managed a tie to go along with their lone victory. The first Bear team to win as few as two games did not come along until 1946 when Frank Wickhorst’s team went 2-7. Subsequently there have been five other two-win teams: ’55,’59, ’81, ’84 and ’86. The latter two under Joe Kapp. Both the ’59 and ’86 teams redeemed themselves by winning the Big Game, the only one or two-win Cal teams to do so.
St. Mary’s used to be a regular football opponent for California, the schools met 43 times from 1898 through 1950. The Bears won 33 of those contests and lost eight with two games ending in ties. The Bears outscored the Gaels over the course of the series, 945-265. California’s last defeat to St. Mary’s was in the opening game of the 1945 campaign. One notable Bear victory was on September 27, 1941 the day that Oski made his debut. Cal won 31-0. The Bears’ last game against St. Mary’s was a 40-25 victory on October 28, 1950. The game was never in doubt as the hosts raced out to a 28-0 halftime lead. California back Pete Schabarum rushed for the game’s first three TDs. According to the next day’s San Francisco Examiner, “perhaps the brightest thing about the game, from the Cal standpoint was the fact that the Bears finally made some yardage in the air.” California connected on ten passes in twenty-four attempts for 167 yards.
Nick Harris (’97-2000) is probably the most notable punter who has booted the ball for California. Part of the desultory Holmoe teams, the punter even inspired a tongue-in-cheek “Harris for Heisman” campaign for which tee-shirts were made. He averaged 42.3 yards per punt in his three years with the Bears. His 13,621 total yards is an NCAA record as are his 322 career punts. As a junior in 1999, he had a 44.7 yard average. As a senior in 2000, he earned consensus first-team All-American honors. In his senior year versus UCLA he punted seven times for 371 yards a 53.1 yard average. For his career Nick placed 56 punts inside the opponents’ 20 yard line. The longest punt of his career went for 70 yards. Harris went on to enjoy a twelve-year pro career, punting for five different teams, mostly the Detroit Lions who he was with for nine seasons.
