Rank the best Cal football games of the past decade!
You helped us choose the nominees, now decide the order!
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Now that you’ve made nominations, let’s start ranking it together.
Here are the host of nominees you chose, sprinkled in with some personal choices of our own! Fill in your ballot one of two ways:
1) Submitting your top 5 to 10 picks in this Google Form.
2) Providing your personal top 5 to 10 rankings in the comments.
We’ll combine it with our writer rankings to give you a “best of” rankings in the coming weeks.
Here are your obvious nominees. If we missed any feel free to add!
2012 UCLA: We thought Jeff Tedford had found a way to turn it around! Alas.
2014 Northwestern: Where a head coach credited the bloggers for the win.
2014 Colorado: The madness of #drop50 culture hit a fever pitch.
2014 Washington State: Two kickoff returns were returned for a TD in a row.
2015 Texas: “OH F—K. OH F—K. OH F—K"
2015 Arizona State: The send-off for the Jared Goff era.
2016 Texas: Sweeping Texas might be the program highlight.
2016 Utah: Arguably the most improbable finish in Cal history.
2016 Oregon: This lousy year sure had some memorable games.
2017 North Carolina: The Justin Wilcox debut was slamming!
2017 Washington State: The AQI Bowl.
2018 Washington: Cal didn’t score an offensive touchdown in this game.
2018 USC: Honestly the only game Cal has ever played against USC.
2018 Cheez-it Bowl: Sickos in the window, you all are.
2019 Washington: “Are you Cal, god of hammers?”
2019 Ole Miss: When Chase Garbers decided to level up.
2019 Big Game: Huh, it’s a mystery where this game will end up on our final list.
It's truly difficult for me to get excited about anything in the last decade of Cal football. The team compiled a woeful 27-58 record in conference during that period and did not have a winning record in conference in any of those seasons. That has to be the worst overall conference record in the Pac 12 over the past decade. Maybe Oregon State was worse?
So I cannot rank their five best wins because most of those wins meant nothing to their standing in the conference. But I will say that beating Washington and USC in 2018 felt pretty epic considering a Moped was powering their offense.
5th place: Cal over Utah in 2016, Looney stops Zach Moss as the goal line.
4th place: Cal over Texas in 2016, Davis Webb, Chad Hansen show
3rd place: Cal victory over Oregon in double OT at Memorial, Jordan Kunashyk gets interception to seal the win
2nd place: Cal victory over Stanford in 2019
1st place: Cal victory over USC in 2018. Patrick Laird seals the win with a 12 yard scamper on 4th-and-1.