Cal Bowl Projections: Independence Bowl? LA Bowl? First Responder Bowl?

Cal (5-2) needs one more win in its final five regular-season games to become bowl-eligible, and the Bears hope to get it in Friday's road game against Virginia Tech (2-5).

All nine college football experts we cited that project bowl games have the Bears in a bowl game, and the ESPN Football Power Index gives Cal a 78.6% chance of getting the six wins needed to be eligible for a bowl.

But which one?

The LA Bowl, Independence Bowl and First Responder Bowl are the Bears' most likely destinations based on the matchups predicted by the experts we cited.

Three of the sites project Cal to be in the LA Bowl, which is the same postseason game the Bears played in last season. In all three cases the predicted LA Bowl opponent for Cal is Boise State, which is 5-2 and sits atop the Mountain West standings with a 3-0 conference mark. On Saturday, the Broncos handed UNLV its first loss of the season by a score of 56-31.

Two of our experts predict Cal will play in the Independence Bowl against Kansas, which is 4-3 overall and 2-2 in the Big 12, and two others project the Golden Bears to wind up in the First Responder Bowl in Dallas, against either Kansas or North Texas.

It should be noted that teams that were members of the Pac-12 in 2023, such as Cal, have tie-ins to the six Pac-12 bowls, which are listed at the end of this report.

Here are the nine bowl projections for Cal:

ESPN (Kyle Bonagura)

LA Bowl -- Cal vs. Boise State

Saturday, December 13

SoFi Stadium (Inglewood, California)

6 p.m., ESPN

ESPN (Mark Schlabach)

Las Vegas Bowl -- Cal vs. Nebraska

Wednesday, December 31

Allegiant Stadium (Las Vegas)

12:30 p.m., ESPN

CBS Sports (Brad Cawford)