Cal's Tosh Lupoi Begging for a Sellout in the Opener -- He Might Get it

Cal officials are expecting the September 5 night game against UCLA to be a sellout

Cal coach Tosh Lupoi | Photo by Jake Curtis

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New Cal head coach Tosh Lupoi is begging for a sellout for the Bears’ September 5 season opener against UCLA.

And he might get it.

Cal officials are expecting ticket-holders to fill all 52,428 available seats at California Memorial Stadium for the Saturday night game on September 5 against the Bruins.

If it is a sellout as expected, it would be Cal’s first since it drew 52,428 fans for the October 5, 2024, game against eighth-ranked Miami when ESPN televised GameDay on the Cal campus earlier that day. (Cal lost a heartbreaker 39-38.)

And it would be Cal’s largest home crowd for a season opener since the Bears drew 60,606 fans for their 2015 game against Grambling State, whose band was a bigger attraction than the two teams, causing Cal to remove the tarp in the south end zone to expand the seating capacity.

Cal is considering removing the tarp for home games this season, which would provide more than 10,000 additional seats, but the capacity number for the Cal opener is still set at 52,428.

The game against UCLA will be Lupoi’s first as a head coach at any level and he made his impassioned pitch for a big crowd in his media availability session on Monday.

“September 5th, bring everybody with you,” he said. “Let’s get some buses loaded up, that’s middle schools, that’s of course high schools, team-bonding events of all sports, men and women.

“We want to pack this thing and make this an unbelievable environment, a tough environment on our opponent coming in, where we can really lock these gates in here and cause some chaos for them. So [I] want everybody here in the entire Bay Area, 7:30, see you there, go Bears.”

Lupoi finished by slapping the table and exiting the press conference. Coaches typically plead for big home crowds, but Lupoi seemed particularly focused on the idea.

Lupoi is familiar with big crowds and their influence, since his last two college jobs were at Alabama and Oregon, places that routinely fill their stadiums and seldom lose at home.

Sold-out home games have not been commonplace at Cal, but Cal announced in early July that more than half the tickets for the 2026 opener have been sold by way of season tickets and mini-plans alone.

It’s not a stretch to believe the remaining tickets will be gone by the time the 7:30 p.m. game kicks off.

So what is the appeal?

Is it the level of excitement and hope that the hiring of Lupoi has stoked?

Is it the hype surrounding sophomore Cal quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele that makes Cal games appealing?

Have the investment in Cal football and the higher expectations placed on the program initiated by Cal chancellor Rich Lyons and general manager Ron Rivera sparking increased interest?

Are a lot of UCLA fans planning to travel north for the Bruins' first game under head coach Bob Chesney?

Is the fact that Cal is reviving its long-time rivalry with its University of California sister school drawing fans.

Cal’s home games against UCLA typically drew some of the largest crowds in a Cal season. Buit the last time Cal hosted the Bruins in 2022 the game drew 36,221 fans, and no Cal home game against the Bruins drew more than 50,000 since 2012, when capacity was reduced from 63,000 to its current size.

Maybe it’s a combination of all of those things.

In any case, the game against UCLA won’t feature the largest Cal crowd ever for an opener.  Going back to the glory days of the Jeff Tedford era, Cal drew more than 60,000 for several season openers, topped by the 2007 opener, which drew a crowd of 72,516 to see 12th-ranked Cal beat 15th-ranked Tennessee 45-31.

But such fan support didn’t start out that way for Tedford. In his first season as Cal’s head coach, the Bears drew just 27,185 for the 2002 opener against Baylor. Cal had to start winning to get folks in the stadium.

That produced some big crowds before the Memorial Stadium retrofit project from 2010 to 2012 reduced capacity to a little more than 63,000. For the past several years, Cal has typically reduced capacity further to the 52,428 number by putting tarps over a section in the south end zone.

If happen to be interested, the largest crowd ever to see a Cal game at Memorial Stadium was a 1947 contest against Navy that drew an estimated crowd of up to 83,000.

The crowd size was aided the presence of sailors from the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which was in port that weekend. The fact that the game was only broadcast on radio and not television probably had something to do with it too.  By the way, Cal won that game 14-7 as part of a 9-1 season in Pappy Waldorf’s first season as the Bears’  head coach.

Perhaps a better indication of the level of interest in the 2026 Cal football program will come in the Bears’ second home game against Wagner on September 19 and the third home game against Clemson, on Friday night, September 25.

For the next two weeks the focus is the UCLA game, which is a virtual tossup and will reveal the first hint of what the Lupoi era will show. Cal is currently a 1.5-point favorite, according to FanDuel, and that spread could rise if Cal announces a sellout.