Good News for Cal: Bears Are an Underdog Against Duke

Cal has been made a slight underdog for its ACC home game against Duke on Saturday night. And that is just the way Cal likes it this season.

FanDuel lists Duke as a 3.5-point favorite on Sunday morning, and DraftKings makes the Blue Devils 3-point favorites for that game. The Action Network site lists Cal as a 3-point underdog and notes that the point spread has increased after opening at 1.5 points on Saturday night.

UPDATE -- The point spread changed Sunday afternoon. FanDuel and DraftKings now have Duke as a 2.5-point favorite, and Circa Sports makes Duke a 2-point favorite.

But Cal seems to like the underdog role this season. Cal is 3-0 in games in which it was the underdog this season – beating Oregon State 34-15 (Beavers were favored by 1 point), defeating Minnesota 27-14 (Minnesota was favored by 2.5 points), then pulling out a 28-24 victory over Boston College (Boston College was favored by 6.5 points).

In the only game in which Cal was favored, the Bears played their worst game of the season, losing to San Diego State 34-0 when the Bears were favored by 14 points.

Few betting services posted a point spread for Cal’s game against Texas Southern, and one that did listed Cal as a 46.5-point favorite. Cal won that game, but failed to cover the spread, winning that game 35-3.

So the short history of Cal’s 2025 season suggests the Bears are better off being underdogs.

Cal (4-1, 1-0 ACC) pulled out its road win over Boston College when Bears linebacker Luke Ferrelli intercepted a Dylan Lonergan pass in the end zone with 15 seconds left after the Eagles had a first down at the Cal 5-yard line in the closing seconds.

Meanwhile, Duke (3-2, 2-0 ACC) was impressive in its 38-3 road victory over Syracuse on Saturday.

But while Cal had to travel cross country to play Boston College this week, Duke will make its first cross-country journey this week when it comes to Berkeley for a 7:30 p.m. game.

The travel across three time zones will be a new experience for the Blue Devils, who played no games on the West Coast last season. They made three trips to the Central time zone in 2024, going 2-1 in those trips -- beating Northwestern in overtime, topping Middle Tennessee 45-17, and losing at SMU 28-27 in overtime.

The Blue Devils’ longest trip in 2024 was less than 1,100 miles, when it went to Dallas to face SMU. Duke’s longest trip this year so far was against Tulane in New Orleans, a journey of 675 miles, and Duke lost that game.

For this week’s game against Cal, Duke will travel nearly 2,400 miles. Will that make any difference?

It will be interesting to see how the point spread changes between now and game time on Saturday.