Analytics Have a Surprising Prediction for Cal-Stanford Game

Betting sites will begin posting their initial point spreads for the November 22 Cal-Stanford game late Saturday evening or Sunday, but while we wait for those betting lines with bated breath, we will take a glance at what the analytics say about the 128th Big Game.

And what the ESPN analytics tell us is rather surprising. In fact it’s counterintuitive.

As of today, Friday, November 14, 2025, ESPN analytics indicate that Stanford has a 51.6% chance to win the Big Game, leaving Cal with a 48.5% chance to walk away with the Axe for a fifth straight year.

Granted, that suggests the game is a virtual tossup, but the fact that Stanford is a slight favorite, according to the ESPN analytics, does not seem to make sense.

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---On Sunday betting sites make Cal a slight favorite over Stanford---

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Stanford is 3-7 overall and 2-5 in the ACC, while Cal is 6-4 overall and 3-3 in the conference.

Cal is coming off an upset of then-No. 15 Louisville on the road while the Cardinal is coming off a road loss to North Carolina.

Cal freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele had an outstanding game against Louisville and has a 6-4 record in his starts. Stanford gave redshirt freshman quarterback Elijah Brown his first start of the season last week against North Carolina, and he is 0-1 in starts this season and 0-2 in his career starts for the Cardinal.

Cal and Stanford have faced three common opponents this season – Boston College, Virginia and North Carolina. Stanford is 1-2 in those games, beating only Boston College, while Cal is 2-1 against those opponents, with wins over Boston College and North Carolina.

How did the ESPN analytics arrive at its prediction?

Well, its analytics measure a team’s past success on offense, defense and special teams. Things such as yards, turnovers, red zone efficiency and other factors are used to determine how many points a team is likely to score after comparing those numbers with the strengths of the opposing units.

It then uses a Bayesian regression to further define its prediction. You don’t want to know what a Bayesian regression is, except to say that it is a type of conditioning modeling meant to determine posterior probability of the regression coefficients. Essentially it uses a theorem devised by a guy named Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century mathematician, that seeks to determine future outcomes based on past data.

ESPN analytics also considers days of rest, site of the game and distance traveled by the visiting team.

Cal and Stanford both have byes this week, so the days of rest are equal. But the site of the game is Stanford Stadium, so presumably the fact that this year’s Big Game is a home game for Stanford plays into why the Cardinal is a slight favorite.

We are assuming that the ESPN analytics do not consider the record of the home team in past Big Games, especially recent Big Games, because that would blow that factor out of the water.

The home team has a 2-5 record in the past seven Big Games and a 6-10 mark in the past 16 Cal-Stanford contests. Cal has a 24-29-6 record in all home games against Stanford and a 23-31-1 mark in all road games against the Cardinal. So Cal has won 41.8% of its road games against Stanford and 40.7% of its home games against the Cardinal

Suffice to say, the home team seems to have little or no advantage in this rivalry.

Yet ESPN analytics suggests Stanford has a slightly better chance to win the game.

Two things to remember:

---ESPN analytics gave Louisville better than a 90% chance to beat Cal.

---The analytics’ prediction of the Cal-Stanford game could change based on results this weekend even though neither Cal nor Stanford plays.

We will wait until Sunday to see what the betting sites say as far as a point spread. People laying their money down trust what they see, not what the numbers suggest.

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