The Mystery: Who Voted for Cal in the Preseason Coaches Poll?

Cal received one voting point in the coaches preseason college football poll

Did former Cal head coach Sonny Dykes put the Golden Bears on his top-25 ballot? | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

It's a classic Whodunit: Cal received one voting point in the coaches preseason college football poll released Monday, so an unavoidable question follows: Which FBS head coach put the Golden Bears on his ballot?

Cal was picked to finish 12th in the preseason ACC media poll, so the Golden Bears did not expect to get any respect from the 72 FBS head coaches who vote in the coaches preseason top-25 poll.

Each of the 72 coaches (more than half the 138 FBS head coaches) submits a top-25 ballot for the coaches poll, with the No. 1 selection getting 25 points and the No. 25 pick getting one vote. And one coach put Cal No. 25 on his ballot, making the Bears one of 55 teams to receive voting points and one of three teams, along with Kansas State and Jacksonville State, to be ranked No. 25 on a ballot.

So which head coach put Cal No. 25 on his ballot? How the coaches vote is not revealed until the final poll of the season, so it's a guessing game.

But there are plenty of suspects.

We know Cal head coach Tosh Lupoi is not the coach who voted for Cal, because he is not one of the 72 coaches on the poll panel. He's focusing more on the Bears' preseason training camp, which began Wednesday.

Ten ACC coaches are on the panel, so it could be one of them. It might even be new Stanford coach and former Stanford quarterback Tavita Pritchard, who is one of the voters and may have thrown his rival a bone.

Or it could be one of the other five voting ACC coaches that face Cal this season, having done a little preliminary work on the Golden Bears.  Those five are Fran Brown of Syracuse (which faces Cal in both teams' ACC opener on September 12), Wake Forest's Jake Dickeert (who comes to Berkeley on October 17), Virginia's Tony Elliott (who hosts the Bears on November 14), SMU's Rhett Lashlee (who faces Cal in Dallas on October 24) and Pitt's Pat Narduzzi (who plays its final regular-season game against Cal on November 28).

Or maybe it was TCU’s Sonny Dykes, who is on the voting panel and might still have a soft spot for the team he coached for four years, from 2013 to 2016 with limited success (19-30 four-year record at Cal).

Perhaps it was Indiana’s Curt Cignetti, a voter who feels he owes Cal something after acquiring Fernando Mendoza from Cal by way of the transfer portal prior to the 2025 season.

It could have been one of the coaches Cal faced when it was in the Pac-12, such as Kyle Whittingham, now at Michigan, or Kalen DeBoer, now at Alabama, or Jedd Fisch, now at Washington, or Clay Helton, now at Georgia Southern. They might remember how good Cal’s defenses were or how impressive Lupoi was as a Cal player and assistant coach at Cal, Washington and Oregon.

Maybe it was UNLV coach Dan Mullen, who has to face Cal on October 3 and has taken a peek at the Bears’ offensive capabilities.

Or maybe it was someone else who has the utmost respect for Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele and his ability to lift a program.

We know it wasn't UCLA head coach Bob Chesney, who faces Cal in Berkeley in the September 5 opener but is not one of the 72 coaches who vote in the coaches poll.

In any case, it would certainly be interesting to find out which coach put Cal on his preseason ballot and his reasoning for placing the Bears at No. 25.

The question now is this: Will Cal get any votes in the preseason Associated Press media poll, which will be released August 17?