Cal Owes the Crowd a Thank-You for Its Big Game Win
No, Cal’s 27-20 win over Stanford on Saturday didn’t save the Bears season. They will still have seven losses when they wake up this morning.
And, no, the firing of offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave earlier this week obviously did not solve the Bears’ offensive woes. The Cal offense scored just 20 points against a Stanford team that ranks 10th in the Pac-12 in scoring defense, yielding 31.9 points per game coming in. Simplicity was the major difference in Cal's offense. Cal quarterback Jack Plummer said the play list for this game was considerably shorter than past games, with the 50 plays on his card this week being about half the number he had for previous games this season. It did not create a scoring bonanza.
However, this year’s Big Game did show one thing: A full stadium packed with loud partisan fans can make a big difference.
Saturday’s crowd of 51,892 in Berkeley represented Cal’s first sellout since 2013 when the Bears hosted Ohio State. And unlike many Big Game crowds, when the number of Stanford and Cal fans in attendance is fairly even, this crowd was almost entirely Cal fans, with one tiny section of Stanford faithful.
And they were loud – just like you see at other major college football games. The partisan crowd clearly helped Cal rally from a 17-6 deficit in the fourth quarter by the force of its noise.
It added up to Cal’s first Big Game win at home since 2008.
Plummer suggested the Bears could not have won the game without the crowd.
“It definitely helped us win the game, for sure,” Plummer said.
He even said the excitement even made him fell more like a Cal student after transferring from Purdue in the offseason.
Cal safety Daniel Scott agreed the crowd was the difference.
“Probably the most people I’ve seen here since I’ve been here,” said Scott, a sixth-year senior.
Every Cal player noted the difference the crowd made.
When Cal head coach Justin Wilcox was asked about the impact of the crowd, you could almost see his head spinning with the possibilities.
“We want the Big Game obviously to look like that every year,” Wilcox said, “but we want the other games, we got to do our part to draw people here.”
This is the Bay Area, a pro-oriented region that pays attention to Cal or Stanford only if one is having a big season, and even then sellouts are rare. They won’t bother with a team that has lost six straight and was 3-7, as Cal was heading into Saturday’s contest.
The Bears hadn’t drawn more than 38,000 in any of its previous five home games this season. The Bears’ home game against Oregon, when the Ducks were ranked No. 8 and Cal was still a factor at 3-4, drew only 37,000.
Cal’s basketball team has not shown much by starting 0-4, and its Friday night loss to Southern drew just 1,364 to Haas Pavilion.
You need to win and win impressively to pull people in to college games in the Bay Area. Cal is just 4-7 now and won’t be expecting a postseason berth.
But Saturday’s Big Game for some reason struck a chord with Cal fans. Was it the 125th Big Game that made the difference? Was it the huge effort by the Cal public relations department that attracted people? Was it the 40th anniversary of The Play that caught people’s attention? Was it the unveiling of the statue commemorating The Play that got drew them? Was it the nice fall weather? Was it simply that this was the first “regular” home Big Game for the Bears, since the 2018 Big Game was postponed several weeks by the fires and the 2020 Big Game was affected by the pandemic?
Whatever the reason, the Cal fans made an appearance, they made a lot of noise and they made a difference.
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Cover photo by Darren Yamashita, USA TODAY Sports
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