What Will Be Cal's Defining Game of the 2026 Football Season?

Occasionally one game can define a season for a college football team, and ESPN attempted to pick a season-defining game for 2026 for all Power 4 conference teams.

It’s a difficult chore. Even it retrospect it’s hard to pick a defining game of Cal’s 2025 season, but we’ll try later in this article.

First, we’ll look ahead to 2026.

While admitting that one game seldom defines a season, we believe ESPN chose the wrong game as the one that might define Cal’s first season under Tosh Lupoi.

ESPN selected the November 21 home game against archrival Stanford, with this comment:

Nov. 21 vs. Stanford. As the Tosh Lupoi era begins, in comes a fresh chance to change the narrative about what Cal football will be in the ACC. But with Stanford also having a first-year coach, this year could also be a race between rivals to see who can elevate their program faster. -- Kyle Bonagura

It’s true Cal fans focus on Big Game results, and Justin Wilcox got fired one day after the Bears’ poor performance in last year’s 31-10 loss against the Cardinal. But unless Cal plays as poorly in 2026’s Big Game as it did in 2025, a late-season game against a Stanford team that is expected to finish at or near the bottom of the ACC does not figure to define the Bears’ season.

We offer three other games that have better chances to define Cal’s 2026 season:

September 5 – UCLA at Cal

Expectations and curiosity will be sky-high for both teams in this season opener, as both teams have a new head coach (Bob Chesney at UCLA) and a quarterback poised to do big things (Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele at Cal, Nico Iamaleava at UCLA).

Observers will draw grand conclusions based on this first impression, but those impressions often unfold differently as the season progresses, and season-opening games seldom end up defining a season.

September 25 (Friday) – Clemson at Cal

The dominant team in the ACC for years, Clemson is not one of the favorites to win the conference title in 2026. A win by Cal over the Tigers might suggest Cal has elevated its program to the top tier of the ACC, into the space occupied by Clemson. A lopsided Cal loss would demonstrate something very different.

October 24 – Cal at SMU

This is my pick for the Bears’ defining game of 2026. SMU is expected to challenge Miami for the ACC title next season, and if Cal could somehow beat the Mustangs on SMU’s home field, it would flip the perception of Cal football. A one-sided Cal loss would indicate the Bears program still has a way to go.

The game against SMU is Cal’s eighth game of the season, the point at which teams are starting to get labeled as good, bad or irrelevant, and this game could settle that issue for Cal with four regular-season games to come afterward.

But what was the defining game of Cal’s 2025 season? We offer four possibilities:

August 30 at Corvallis, Oregon -- Cal 34, Oregon State 15

This was the first look at hyped freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele. And the reaction after his debut performance was a collective “Wow!.” It was the first indication that this talented lefty was capable of accomplishing great things. But as the first game of the season it might have been too early to say it defined Cal’s season.

November 8 at Louisville, Kentucky – Cal 29, Louisville 26 (OT)

This road win over 14th-ranked Louisville showed what Cal was capable of doing, and showcased the amazing talent of Sagapolutele in the clutch.

November 22 at Stanford: Stanford 31, Cal 10

This embarrassing outcome showed the shortcomings of Cal’s football program, limiting the plaudits the Bears could get for the 2025 season overall. It was such a devastating loss that Justin Wilcox was fired the next day despite Cal having a winning record (6-5) and having defeated Louisville in the previous game. And it was the Big Game.

November 29 at Berkeley – Cal 38, SMU 35

SMU was ranked No. 21 and needed a win to qualify for the ACC championship game for a second straight year. Meanwhile, Justin Wilcox, who was admired by his players, had been fired six days earlier, with Nick Rolovich being the interim head coach.

But Cal came up with one of its best performances in its final regular-season game, capped by the Sagapolutele-led 90-yard scoring drive for the game-winning touchdown in the final minute.

This one gets our nod for the Bears’ season-defining game, because it assured a winning season, demonstrated Sagapolutele’s skills, showed the character of a Cal team when it could have fallen apart, and, coupled with the win over Louisville, conveyed the Bears’ capabilities.