Which games were worse?
(Written by kencraw)
I’ve been thinking about when the last time the Bears lost such a heartbreaking game. Here are the candidates I came up with:
- 2010 Washington: This is the last time I truly felt punched in the gut the way I did Saturday night. Bears were leading most of the game, but lost on 4th and goal from the 1 yard line (after having stopped the prior couple plays at the goal line).
- 2007 Oregon State: The most iconic low moment of all the Tedford years. Riley goes down with no timeouts, Tedford throws down his headset and Cal was never the same again under Tedford.
- 1990 Big Game: The Bears were one roughing the passer penalty from victory in the most painful Big Game loss of my lifetime. (update @ 11:45a – It was the 1990 game I was thinking of, not 1991)
There are some others out there that were painful in a number of different ways, but those sit on top for me. However, one caveat for the future leads me to believe this one may fade with time. As I reviewed the games I disqualified a number of bad losses for various reasons:
- Cal had a shot to come-back after the disaster (2006 Arizona, etc.)
- Games where Cal got close in the end after getting way behind early, but couldn’t get over the hump (2008 Maryland, etc.)
- Games where Cal was the underdog (2004 USC, 2000 Big Game, etc.)
And that last one suggests there’s reason to believe this painful loss may fade with time. Cal was the underdog coming into this one. However, they weren’t a huge underdog and by the time things fell apart, I think we all felt Cal was the better team. So maybe not. Only time will tell.
Any other candidates for heartbreaking losses?
September 22nd, 2014 at 10:59 am
2006 Arizona is the one that hurts. An unbelievable comeback, strange occurrences (phantom tripping), and in hindsight, winning the game would’ve meant a Rose Bowl berth.
September 22nd, 2014 at 11:12 am
Yeah, that was a tough one to take.
For me though, there’s something about the “one play to end it all” that makes it so much worse. 2006 UA didn’t have that, although it’s overall impact to the program could very well be argued to be worse.
September 22nd, 2014 at 11:41 am
Not saying these were worse, but these are the ones that have stuck with me over the years.
’90 Big Game (Penalty on a kickoff, followed by a bad roughing penalty, and a long field goal to steal it. Felt a bit like a payback for ’82)
’91 Big Game (If we win this, how long would Snyder have stuck around? The great what might have been.)
’91 Washington (This Wash. team was one of the more dominant teams in the history of the conference, and we were a play away from beating them.)
‘04 USC (What if Hawkins hadn’t tripped?)
‘92 USC (Drove down for this game. My buddy smashed his watch into a 1,000 pieces in disgust.)
’06 Arizona (Get DeSean a smaller pair of shoes)
’07 Oregon State (Oh-oh-oh Riley)
’07 UCLA (Even after the OSU game we still had a chance for a Rose Bowl if we could right the ship. Longshore killed us with those telegraphed outs to sideline.)
’12 Ohio State (Go for it Tedford!)
September 22nd, 2014 at 12:03 pm
Yeah, I considered all of those, minus 92 USC, which I didn’t see. Ohio State… sticks in my craw more than it should.
Since we’re going down this road, here are some more I considered:
2010 Oregon – Held that offense to 15 and couldn’t win
2009 UW – Still in the running for a good bowl and then laid a stinker (plus I threw up after the game in my hotel room)
2008 Maryland – Too early in the morning to not be painful
2005 Oregon – Booya sinks us and can’t convert the last second field goal
2005 UCLA – Jones-Drew again!?!
2003 Oregon – Turn out the lights… even though the game is not over
2002 USC – Robbed by the refs
1993 UW – Sorta like 1991 UW but not quite as close (still only lost by 1)
I really should remember more from the 90’s than I do.
September 22nd, 2014 at 12:04 pm
But since we’re gong down this road, let’s let it all out. Let all those soul-crushing defeats come back and torture you again and put it in the comments!
September 22nd, 2014 at 2:07 pm
1996 WSU. That’s the one that cemented my life as a Cal fan. Down 21-0, clawed our way back in it, were driving, and a botched handoff when we were going in for the game winning score, fumble, WSU recovers game over.
There’s been others, but that one has the most potency for me still.
September 22nd, 2014 at 3:04 pm
Forgot about the ’05 UCLA game. Rough one. Might have been the signature win of Dorrell’s HC coaching career. Didn’t realize until now that they finished 10-2 that year.
And one more that I’m surprised hasn’t been mentioned–Texas Tech.
Also getting drubbed up in Oregon in ’09 was humiliating. I knew it was going to be a particularly tough environment, especially after what we did our previous trip to Eugene in ’07, but I still had high hopes for us. We could be disappointing during the Tedford years, but until that point, I don’t recall us ever getting undressed to such a degree. Not necessarily the beginning of the end, since that came earlier, but the middle of the end in retrospect.
September 22nd, 2014 at 3:16 pm
I traveled to the ’09 Oregon game with some Oregon fans who I had also traveled to the ’07 Oregon game. When they picked me up after I had finished up in the press box, I got in the car and said, “You know what I’m thankful for? That two years ago I was gracious in victory.”
Yeah, that one hurt and I didn’t need anyone rubbing it in. 🙂
September 25th, 2014 at 9:42 am
That ’90 Big Game still haunts me. I watched the last few minutes standing on the sidelines. Every time I see a roughing the passer foul in a game it makes me think back to that horrible moment. It really taught me what being a Cal fan is all about: even when times are relatively good you are still going to experience soul crushing losses. That loss created a burning hatred of Stanford (and everything that elitist institution was built on and stands for) that has yet to abate 24 years later. Even though I went to Cal 3 years later and watched the ‘furd beat us 7 years in a row, I really doubt I’d hate them as much as I do without experiencing that game at the age that I did.
November 20th, 2014 at 4:02 pm
The 1990 was searing. I was there (was attending my final year at Boalt). First of all, don’t EVER run onto the field until there are zeroes on the clock. That was on our fans. But then, there were two horrible calls. First, the Stanford guy recovered the onside kick out of bounds. He even admitted it in an LA Times article from November 18, 1990:
“Scott admitted later that he was out of bounds when he recovered the kick.
“‘My feet were out of bounds, but my knees were in bounds,” Scott said. “But it’s too late to give it back. There’s no instant replay in college football.'”
As if that weren’t horrible enough, the roughing the passer penalty was complete horseshit. John Belli hit Paumbus just a split second after he released the ball, and didn’t even smack him particularly hard. There was no helmet to helmet contact or any kind of targeting (not that they had that penalty then) or anything that would have drawn a flag today. Incredible that a ref would turn a game like that. I should get over it one of these decades.