Tosh Lupoi arrives at Cal with a shot at a debut season that no Bears coach has ever put together. If the new head coach can guide his team to a winning record, beat Stanford in the Big Game and reach a bowl game, he’ll do something none of the 20 Cal predecessors before him managed in their first year.
That’s a pretty exclusive club - and, in this case, an empty one. Only seven of Cal’s previous 20 coaches finished their first season above .500, and none have done it since Jeff Tedford in 2002.
Only five won the Big Game in their first try, with Tedford again the most recent to pull it off. Just one coach, Steve Mariucci in 1996, took the Bears to a bowl in year one.
Nobody has ever checked all three boxes at once.
There’s reason to think Lupoi has a real path to at least two of them. Cal opens Sept. 5 at home against UCLA, and the return of budding star quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, along with an influx of talent and a somewhat favorable schedule, gives the Bears a route to a winning season.
The Big Game is always its own beast, but Stanford is also in transition under first-year, home-grown coach Tavita Pritchard. A year after Cal’s 31-10 loss at Stanford helped lead to Justin Wilcox’s firing the next day, the Cardinal is widely expected to land near the bottom of the ACC.
If Cal gets to those first two goals, the bowl piece should follow. With 35 traditional bowl games and a 12-team college football playoff format, 82 of 138 DBS teams will earn a postseason berth this year.
The Bears, though, are not likely to touch the kind of debut seasons that stand out in program history. Pappy Waldorf’s 1947 team and Stub Allison’s 1935 squad both went 9-1, though neither won the Pacific Coast Conference, which was the only path to a bowl at the time.
Waldorf’s teams were even better after that. His next three regular seasons were undefeated, and Cal won three straight PCC titles before falling in each Rose Bowl appearance.
Allison’s 1935 team piled up seven shutouts before a 13-0 loss to Stanford. Two years later, that same program beat Stanford by 13-0 and then blanked Alabama 13-0 in what remains Cal’s most recent Jan. 1 Rose Bowl win.
A few other first-year Cal coaches left their own marks, even if they didn’t clear all three hurdles Lupoi now has in front of him. Tedford’s 2002 team opened with a 70-0 rout of Baylor and dropped two-point games to Air Force and USC, but sanctions from previous NCAA violations made the Bears ineligible for a bowl.
Mariucci’s 1996 squad started 5-0, including a road upset of USC, which helped put him on the NFL’s radar. The 49ers hired him after the season to replace George Seifert, but Cal faded badly down the stretch, losing six of its final seven and falling 42-38 to Navy in the Aloha Bowl.
Joe Kapp’s 1982 team reached its peak with The Play and a 25-20 Big Game win, though the 7-4 record hid some rough edges; the Bears’ four losses came by a combined 154-38.
Mike White’s 1972 group had its own grind, with losses to No. 1 USC, No.
2 Colorado and No. 3 Ohio State.
Still, Cal came back from 17 down to beat Stanford when Vince Ferragamo hit Steve Sweeney with an 8-yard touchdown pass on the final play.
Buck Shaw in 1945 and Andy Smith in 1916 never got a Big Game in their debut seasons because Stanford didn’t field a team either year - in 1945 because of World War II and in 1916 while still playing rugby before returning to football two years later.
In Other News...
Cal Is Betting Big On A Transfer Who Needs Time
Jake Wilkins is the latest transfer addition for Cal, a long-limbed forward with plenty of intrigue and a timeline that fits what Mark Madsen has been trying to build. The former Georgia freshman is headed to Berkeley for the 2026-27 season, giving the Bears a chance to add a player whose athleticism and versatility have already stood out even in a limited college role.
At Georgia, Wilkins saw the floor in 32 games as a freshman and flashed enough to keep evaluators interested, even if the production was still in the early stages. For Cal, the appeal is less about what he is right now than what he could become with time, development and a bigger role on both ends of the floor, which is exactly the kind of upside gamble Madsen has been willing to make. [Read more 🡒]