Cal should win Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium. That much is pretty easy to see.
Wagner comes in as an FCS opponent fresh off an 87-3 loss, and the Bears have handled these kinds of matchups with no drama for a long time. Since Cal started regularly scheduling FCS teams in 2005, it is 17-0 against them, winning by an average of 44-15. Wagner’s history against Power 4 teams is even more lopsided: the Seahawks are 0-8 all-time and have been outscored by an average of 56-5.
That said, college football has a way of making people cautious. Five FCS teams have already beaten FBS opponents this season, and there were four such upsets in 2025 and six in 2024.
None of those involved a Power 4 team, but the sport has still seen a couple of eye-openers in recent years, including Stanford’s 30-23 loss to Sacramento State in 2023 and No. 20 Washington’s 13-7 defeat to Montana in 2021.
Wagner, a small private college on Staten Island in New York, looks like a long shot to add its name to that list. The Seahawks are 1-2, and their loss to James Madison on Saturday was brutal. JMU, which made the College Football Playoff a year ago, returned three punts for touchdowns to tie an NCAA record and finished with 588 yards of offense while holding the ball for barely 22 minutes.
First-year coach Tosh Lupoi said every practice and every game is a chance to show growth, and that’s the lens Cal is using here as well. The Bears will want the win, but they may also want a clean look at backup quarterbacks EJ Caminong and Jackson Brousseau, in whatever order Lupoi decides to use them.
A look back at Cal’s recent FCS games doesn’t offer much evidence that these matchups tell us anything useful about the rest of the season. The Bears beat Presbyterian 63-13 in 2011, Grambling 73-14 in 2014, and Sacramento State 35-28 in 2013, but none of those games really changed the arc of the season that followed.
Against Presbyterian, Cal led 28-0 early in the second quarter and rolled to a 581-48 edge in total yards. Zach Maynard threw three touchdown passes, while Presbyterian’s only touchdowns came on an interception return and a punt return. Cal improved to 3-0, then lost its next three to Washington, Oregon and USC before finishing 7-6.
The Sacramento State game was the closest Cal has ever come to losing to an FCS team. The Bears did not take the lead for good until freshman Jared Goff hit Richard Rodgers on a 75-yard touchdown with 7:58 left, finishing off a 485-yard passing day in Goff’s second college game. Even so, the result did nothing to change what became Cal’s worst season ever, a 1-11 finish that included nine games in which the Bears allowed at least 40 points.
By the time Grambling came to town in Goff’s junior season, Cal was on much firmer ground. The Bears were up 35-0 in the first quarter and 66-0 before the third quarter ended.
Goff and Kenny Lawler hooked up for three touchdowns, and Cal piled up 656 yards. That team started 5-0, beat Texas and Washington on the road, then faded late but still finished 8-5 after beating Air Force in the Armed Forces Bowl.
So the lesson from those games is pretty simple: the Bears usually win, usually by a lot, and the broader season tends to keep moving on its own terms.
That’s why Saturday’s main question is not whether Cal will win. It’s how soon the game turns into a showcase for the backups, and whether anything unusual happens along the way.
In Other News...
Cal Still Has Something To Prove In This FCS Mismatch
Cal is getting ready for a game that should, on paper, be about as lopsided as it gets, but the Bears are not approaching Wagner like a placeholder on the schedule. The Seahawks come in as an FCS opponent, and while the matchup has all the markings of a game Cal is expected to control, starting center Bastian Swinney said the message inside the locker room has been about respect and focus rather than scoreboard watching.
Head coach Tosh Lupoi has made the same point in his own way, steering the conversation away from Wagners last result and back toward what the Bears will actually have to handle on Saturday. For Cal, the test is less about surviving an upset scare than making sure it plays cleanly against a defense that brings pressure, executes its scheme and forces an offense to stay sharp from the opening series. [Read more 🡒]
Cals Fast Start Is Creating A New Debate Around Two Positions
Two games into the season, Cals early surge has already started to reshape the conversation on both sides of the ball. Kingston Lopas ball-hawking start has him leading the nation with four interceptions, and his PFF standing among safeties only strengthens the sense that the Bears may have found a defensive centerpiece. On the other side, Jaron-Keawe Sagapoluteles efficient showing in the 21-18 win over Syracuse gave Cal a needed lift in a tight game and helped underscore why the offense looks more stable than it did a year ago.
What makes the Bears fast start so interesting is how quickly it has created questions about where the best fit is at two key spots. PFFs weekly grades backed up the eye test around several Cal contributors, including Isaiah Crosby and Daniel Harris, while Michael Klisiewicz also turned in a strong performance up front. The larger issue now is whether this early success is a sign of roles settling in, or a situation still waiting to sort itself out as the schedule gets harder. [Read more 🡒]
Cals Bowl Path Already Looks Less Certain Than Bears Fans Expected
Two games into a 12-game college football season, Cals postseason picture already looks a little shakier than many Bears fans probably expected. Early bowl projections are no longer unanimous, with five of eight experts still sending the Bears to the postseason after all eight had done so before the year began, a reminder that the margin for error in a Pac-12 schedule can disappear quickly.
The good news is that the path is still there if Cal can reach bowl eligibility with six wins or more, which would push the Bears into the Pac-12s bowl lineup and the conferences established pecking order of destinations. For now, though, the most interesting part of the forecast is how thin the consensus has become, with one projected bowl drawing more than a single mention and the rest of the picture already starting to split. [Read more 🡒]