Can Cal Handle 100-Degree Heat in Saturday Opener at North Texas?
The temperature in Denton, Texas, may reach 100 degrees during Cal’s opener at North Texas Saturday afternoon, and Bears offensive coordinator Jake Spavital has the perfect anecdote to illustrate what Cal will face.
“It’s a different kind of heat, just being in it the last four years,” said Spavital, who was Texas State’s head coach from 2019 to 2022. “When I was at Texas State I had my director of football operations, she was sitting on the sidelines watching a scrimmage and her flip flops melted to the turf.”
Lesson No. 1: Don’t wear flip-flops at North Texas.
Lesson No. 2: Cal will have to use a lot players, especially with its no-huddle up-tempo offense.
“The heat and the tempo we play with, we’re going to need everybody,” Spavital said.
North Texas head coach Eric Morris said the oppressive weather may provide an edge for his team.
"It's something that we need to use to our advantage, as far as we've had the opportunity to practice in this heat for the last four weeks," Morris said this week.
He noted that temperatures in Denton this week reached 103 degrees.
Cal tried to prepare for the hot weather by spending one practice day this past weekend at UC Davis, where the temperature was about 95 degrees.
“The weather matters; we have no control over it,” Cal head coach Justin Wilcox said. “We’re going to play the game, we’re kicking off at 3 o’clock [Central time]. We’ve got to hydrate. It’s going to be hot, we all know it’s going to be hot, we’ve acknowledged that. We played in the heat last weekend.
“We’ve got to do a great job this week of preparing with hydration and fuel and all those things. So we’ll rotate a bunch of guys. Do we practice every day in 100-degree heat? No, we don’t. But we’ve played in hot games before and if we do a good job preparing, there’ll be no excuse from us regarding the weather.”
Cal played an early September game in Texas two years ago when the Bears lost to TCU 34-32. The temperature that day in Fort Worth was 90 degrees, and the Bears let an early 19-7 lead slip away. Cal did not practice in hot weather leading up to that game because it was the second game of the season.
Thirteen players on the Cal roster are from Texas, and starting quarterback Sam Jackson V played his past two seasons at TCU. So some Bears players have experience with Texas weather. And Cal coaches claim the Bears have much better depth at nearly every position this season, which will be a factor on Saturday. The Bears are especially deep at wide receiver and defensive back, so expect a lot of players to get playing time at those positions, particularly on long drives.
“Right now we’re scheduled to play a lot [of players],” Cal defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon said, “and it wouldn’t really matter now, in my opinion, if we were going to play in 72 degrees or whatever the temperature is going to be down there.”
But don’t forget lesson No. 1: No flip flops.
Cover photo by Chris Pietsch, The Register-Guard, USA TODAY NETWORK
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