Oski Archives Game Preview Week #1, The Bears Opener vs. Nevada

Hopefully more fans will be on hand than for this contest in the '50s.

I’m like a child awaiting Christmas morning; positively giddy in anticipation of the start of another Cal football season. True, I always salivate for opening day, but after a season lost to Covid the feeling is especially acute this year. The band! The canon! Strawberry Canyon! Memorial Stadium! The friends! The cheers! The chants! Oski! Oh yes and the football!

Cal has a long history against the University of Nevada dating back to their first encounter, a 24-0 Bear victory in 1899. The two schools met consistently (thirty-five clashes) from then through 1934. Since then the Bears and Wolfpack have played only four times. One in 1945, another in 1996, with the last two in 2010 and 2012. The Bears hold a 32-6-1 advantage in the series, but Nevada boasts a two-game winning streak, the latter of which ruined the debut of the refurbished Memorial Stadium in what turned out to be Jeff Tedford’s final season.

Andy Smith’s Wonder Teams faced Nevada six times winning five by scores of 88-0, 79-7, 51-6, 80-0, 61-13, 27-0 and — oddly — tying once, 0-0. 

Cal has outscored the Wolfpack 1,270-221.

Only four of thirty-nine games have been played in Reno, including the 2010 contest in which a quarterback named Colin Kaepernick ran and passed the beleaguered Bears ragged.

Focus on a game: (Each week I will focus on one game in Cal’s series against their upcoming opponent.) November 3, 1923, final score Bears 0 Wolfpack 0. What the hell? Cal had beaten Nevada five years in a row by a combined score of  359-26. That’s an average score of 71-5. Moreover the Bears had won fifteen straight overall without a tie. Plus the Bears had scored151in their last six games — an average of twenty-five points. So what happened? Hubris. For starters there were the starters, Cal didn’t use any. Head coach Andy Smith elected to play his reserves to spare the Wolfpuppies another in a string of embarrassing pummelings. Smith also asked officials — and such was his influence that they agreed — to play ten-minute quarters to limit how high Cal could run up the score against their hapless foes. Finally, Smith didn’t even stick around for the game, choosing instead to scout Stanfurd. All of this served to fire up Nevada who held the Bears to a draw, the only one in the series.

The Bears are 17-4 in home openers this century. Two of those losses came in seasons in which the Bears won only one game (2001 and 2013) one was last year with no fans (2020) and the other was against Nevada.

The Bears have a streak on the line: they have only played four previous games on September 4 and have won them all.

(College football seasons have only relatively recently begun in early September, or late August.)

I feel it incumbent on me to provide a prediction and my goals for the coming Golden Bear season. Simple enough, the Bears will finish the regular season 8-4. I think them more likely to win nine games than seven though seven is more likely than ten.

My six goals for the season in order of importance:

1. Reclaim the Axe.
2. Be bowl eligible
3. Beat U$C
4. Beat UC, Los Angeles
5. Go unbeaten at home
6. Win their bowl game

My prediction for tomorrow is a 45-17 Cal victory.

Hope to see you at the game tomorrow. I’ll be perched atop section E in the last row, wearing a script Cal hat and cheering on the Bears.

And oh by the way, Go Bears!