Cal Football: Think You Know Your Bears? Try Our Celebrity Golf Game

Guess the ages of these 18 former Cal football standouts

Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

We stray from our usual mission of reporting, entertaining and analyzing with a detour intended to distract.

And these days, distraction seems like a good place to visit now and then.

Our game is called Celebrity Golf, and it involves taking your best guess at the ages of 18 celebrities — in this case former Cal football players. Your scores for each one — determined by how many years you miss the actual age — are added up to get your 18-hole golf score.

In other words, if you guess 45 and the player is actually 49, you get 4 for that one. And so on.

To the best of my knowledge, Celebrity Golf was created by the late Ray Orrock, former long-time humor columnist for the Hayward Daily Review and the Alameda Newspaper Group.

He published a version of the game a couple times a year, involving celebrities of every ilk, and the feature was a hit with readers.

Ray would establish a “par” score by asking a handful of folks in the news room to take their best shot. Then he’d average their scores and provide a target score for readers.

I had three people undertake the task of helping me generate a par score, and the results were spread across the spectrum.

I gave the quiz to my Cal Sports Report co-publisher Jake Curtis, who scored a 109, thanks in part to posting a hideous 26 for Brick Muller.

Trace Travers, our pal from Rivals,com and a Cal grad, was impressive, putting together a score of 44 that included nailing the ages of seven players exactly.

And Kyle McRae, Cal’s football sports information director, surprised even himself by posting a 35 that included scoring a 0, 1 or 2 on 13 of 18 players.

And get this, none of them cheated. They all came up with answers off the top of their head. 

That’s the key to making this (hopefully) a fun endeavor.

The average score of my three quiz takers was 63, so that’s par for this course.

Note: In the case of former players who are deceased, you must guess the age they would be if still alive today.

Have at it, good luck and let us know how you did.

Craig Morton / Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

Cal Celebrity Golf — Football Edition

Front Nine

1. Craig Morton

2. Keenan Allen

3. Deltha O’Neal

4. Vic Bottari

5. Rich Campbell

6. Ron Rivera

7. Russell White

8. Troy Taylor

9. Jahvid Best

Back Nine

10. Sean Dawkins

11. Tony Gonzalez

12. Dave Barr

13. Les Richter

14. Marshawn Lynch

15. Wesley Walker

16. Brick Muller

17. Hardy Nickerson

18. Jared Goff 

*** Answers are below

Marshawn Lynch / Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

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Answers: Front Nine: Morton 77, Allen 28, O’Neal 43, Bottari 103, Campbell 61, Rivera 58, White 49, Taylor 52, Best 31; Back Nine: Dawkins 49, Gonzalez 44, Barr 48, Richter 89, Lynch 34, Walker 65, Muller 119, Nickerson 54, Goff 25.

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Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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