Two Cal Games Ranked Among the Top 100 Games of 2024
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Cal’s football team had just a 6-7 record in 2024, but the Bears played some exciting games. Or at least that’s the opinion ESPN, which ranked the 100 best football games of 2024 season. Cal was involved in two of those top 100 games – one the Golden Bears won and one Cal lost.
If you’re interested the No. 1 game was Vanderbilt’s 40-35 victory over No. 1 Alabama back on October 5
But Cal played a game that was ranked as the sixth-best game of the college football season, and that list includes games involving FCS, Division II and Division III schools.
The other Cal game in the top 100 is ranked No. 90, and it’s probably not difficult to guess which one was No. 90 (a Cal win) and which one was No. 6 (a Cal loss).
But here are the top honored Cal games, with the comments from ESPN:
90. Nov. 23: Cal 24, Stanford 21
Cal became one of college football's main characters after a 3-0 start, but the Golden Bears were 5-5 and still needing one more win for bowl eligibility when Stanford visited for the first ACC edition of the Big Game. Stanford promptly took a 14-0 lead and still led 21-10 heading into the fourth quarter. But a pair of Fernando Mendoza-to-Jonathan Brady touchdowns gave the Bears their first lead with just 2:40 left, and a late stop sealed a thrilling win.
Of course, to Cal fans the most memorable part of the game came afterward, in Mendoza’s crazed postgame TV interview:.
That memory became less pleasing when Mendoza transferred to Indiana following the season.
And here is the Cal game ranked No. 6, a game that was thrilling to everyone in the country except to Cal fans. A Cal upset win seemed to be in hand and would have climaxed perhaps the best day in Cal football history since it came several hours after Cal’s highly successful ESPN GameDay showing that morning. Marshawn Lynch and Chancellor Richard Lyons attended GameDay, and a huge crowd of loud and clever students showed up in the darkness to be on TV. ESPN later dubbed it the best ESPN GameDay of the season.
The game in Berkeley that evening attracted a sellout crowd of 52,428, the first Cal sellout since the 2022 Big Game against Stanford.
The stars seemed aligned, and for three quarters they were, but . . . .
6. Oct. 5: No. 8 Miami 39, California 38
Miami's decision to basically stop playing defense was eventually costly, but it created a pair of otherworldly track meets early in the season.
On a Friday night in Week 5, quarterback cousins Cam Ward (Miami) and Kyron Drones (Virginia Tech) combined for six passing touchdowns, and Tech held a 10-point lead with nine minutes left. Miami scored one touchdown, then scored another thanks in part to a pair of shocking plays: Xavier Restrepo made a desperate fourth-down catch while having slipped onto his back, then Ward, under pressure, chest-passed a ball to Riley Williams for a big gain. Down four, Virginia Tech got a shot at the end zone on the final play and initially seemed to have completed a Hail Mary before replay reversed the call. Whew.
The very next week, after a wild Berkeley crowd had welcomed College GameDay to town for the first time, Miami and Cal somehow gave us an even better game with an even wilder comeback. Thanks to scorching defensive play and a pair of Jaydn Ott touchdowns, the host Golden Bears took a 35-10 lead midway through the third quarter, and it was still 38-18 with about 10 minutes left. But Ward engineered drives of 75, 70 and 90 yards, the last drive starting with just 1:42 left after a controversial targeting no-call that could have prolonged a Cal drive. Ward and Elijah Arroyo connected for a 5-yard score with 26 seconds left, and somehow Miami prevailed.
Relive it f you dare:
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