Cal Football: Cam Bynum on 2020 - 'I Don't Think We Should Lose a Game'
Camryn Bynum returned for his senior year at Cal primarily because the Pac-12 Conference reinstated the fall season.
But the veteran cornerback also expects the Bears to make the most of the 2020 campaign.
“My expectation for the season is I don’t think we should lose a game,” Bynum said during a Zoom call with reporters on Monday afternoon while confirming his plan to rejoin the Golden Bears.
“We’ve got way too much experience coming in. We’ve prepared and we know we have what it takes to win every single game.”
He believes the Bears can be at full-speed-ahead mode from the start. Cal opens its six-game schedule on Nov. 7 at home against Washington.
“It’s a short season so everybody will be healthy and we’ve had so much time to prepare on the front end,” he said. “So my expectation is to win every game. If the Rose Bowl or whatever bowl game . . . we expect to be in it.”
Even the Pac-12 champion this season isn’t guaranteed a berth in the Rose Bowl because the Jan. 1 game at Pasadena is earmarked as one of the two semifinal games in the College Football Playoff.
Cal was 8-5 last season, including a 4-5 mark in conference play that was good for a there-way tie for second place in the Pac-12 North. The Bears have never won the North since the conference went to a division format in 2011 and haven't won the league title since sharing the 2006 Pac-10 crown with USC.
The Bears have not assembled a perfect conference season since winning the Pacific Coast Conference with a 7-0 mark in 1949.
Cal and Washington have generally been projected as the lead contenders in the Pac-12 North behind favored Oregon. The Bears play both the Huskies and Ducks at home — without fans in Memorial Stadium — along with Stanford in the 123rd Big Game on the day before Thanksgiving.
Their most challenging road game likely will be their Nov. 14 cross-division matchup vs. Arizona State, which beat Cal a year ago and is considered the chief threat to USC in the Pac-12 South.
Bynum, who has started 38 consecutive games for Cal, originally announced his intention to leave school and turn pro on Sept. 6. The Pac-12 had postponed the fall season three weeks earlier, so Bynum decided it made sense for him to forego his final season and begin preparations for the 2021 NFL combine and draft.
When the Pac-12 made a U-turn and reinstated the fall season on Sept. 24, Bynum admits he almost immediately began to have a change of heart about his own plans.
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Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
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