The Cal 100: No. 22 -- Stanley Barnes

A standout on Cal football's 'Wonder Teams' a century ago, Barnes became U.S. assistant attorney general and a lauded judge

We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.

No. 22: Stanley Barnes

Cal Sports Connection: Barnes was a four-year letterman in Cal football (1918, 1919, 120, 1921) as a center and guard.

Claim to Fame: Barnes was a member of Cal’s 1920 national champion team and its unbeaten 1921 squad, and was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. He was an assistant general attorney of the United States and a circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

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Stanley Barnes might not be the best football player in Cal history, but you’d be hard pressed to find one who had a bigger impact in American legal matters.

Barnes was a key member of Andy Smith’s powerful Cal "Wonder Teams" for four years. He played center and guard for the Bears' 1920 national champion squad that went 9-0 and beat Ohio State 28-0 in the Rose Bowl and the 1921 team that finished 9-0-1, including a 0-0 tie against Washington & Jefferson in a Rose Bowl played the mud.

He was good enough to be elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954, but his influence was greater off the football field.

Stanley Barnes, @Cal B.A. 1922, LL.B. 1925, was born May 1, 1900. He was a center & tackle on Andy Smith's Wonder Teams. A key advisor to his college friend Gov. Earl Warren, Barnes later served as Asst. US Attorney General for Antitrust & a Ninth Circuit federal appellate judge. pic.twitter.com/Y7XhAhvhcI

— Cal Bears History (@CalBearsHistory) May 1, 2021

Barnes served in the Navy during World War I, graduated from the Cal law school, lectured on forensic medicine at the USC Law and Medical School, was a power broker for the Republican party, and advised Earl Warren, who became governor of California and a Supreme Court Justice.

Barnes became the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles, and was United States Assistant Attorney General from 1953 to 1956, overseeing antitrust issues.

Barnes was named to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1956, received senior status in 1970, and served in that capacity until his death in 1990 at the age of 89.

Along the way, he was national president of the Federal Bar Assn., chairman of the Judicial Administration of the American Bar Assn., a member of President's Conference Administrative Proceedings, and a trustee of the Los Angeles Bar Assn., which gave him the group’s highest honor, the Price-Shattuck Award.

He was Cal's alumnus of the year in 1966.

The opening paragraph of his obituary in the Los Angeles Times reads as follows:

Stanley N. Barnes, an athlete-scholar who was an All-Pacific Coast lineman on UC Berkeley’s “Wonder Teams” of seven decades ago and then undertook what proved to be a lengthy and distinguished career in law, died Monday at his home in Palm Springs of the complications of age.

All this after knocking heads for four seasons as a lineman at Cal.

The Cal 100: No. 23 -- Leigh Steinberg

Cover photo of Stanley Barnes courtesy of Cal Athletics

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