OK, I give up…
(Written by kencraw)
I’m just not going to be able to catchup on the old game watching, particularly not with real Cal football starting in a couple weeks. But for *some* amount of completeness, here’s the full list for the full season I was planning on (minus strong arguments from others for the possible alternatives):
- Week 8: Substitution pick of week 5 2007 Oregon game
- Week 9: 2018 UW. The game where the Weaver pick-6 is deciding score in a 12-10 win.
- Week 10: 2008 Oregon – The rain bowl when the field was flooded. A game that showed the ‘Pain Train’ at his best.
- Week 11: 2018 USC – The losing streak is broken… first win over USC since 2003 and first win in the LA coliseum since the big bang (or something like that).
- Week 12: 2009 Big Game – Mohammed’s interception caps an upset victory.
- Week 13: 2002 Big Game – Another streak breaker, this time 7-in-a-row to Stanford. (note: Although the Big Game is always (with one exception) the Saturday before Thanksgiving, the Saturday before Thanksgiving is not always the same week of the season. It can be either the 12th or 13th depending on how early Labor Day is in September and how late Thanksgiving is in November.)
- Week 14/15: 2008 Washington. Washington at their worst. Jahvid Best at his… uhhh… best.
- Bowl game: 2006 Holiday Bowl against Texas A&M
So there you go. It’s impressive to me that despite being a couple of decades that didn’t have that many good years, just about every week of the season had one stand out game that will always put a smile on Bears fans faces.
October 30th, 2020 at 11:42 pm
These look reasonable to me. I’m also aware of the week of the season issue — my birthday is the 21st of November, so it can range from the Thursday before Thanksgiving to the Wednesday of Thanksgiving week. So, by this, if my birthday falls the week before Thanksgiving, it’s a week 12 game (eg, Big Game is on the 21st, 22nd, or 23rd). If my birthday is the week of Thanksgiving, then the Big Game has to happen before that, which is earlier in the calendar (17th, 18th, 19th, 20th.) Of course, in my opinion, the Saturday the 21st games are the best, even if we lose, which is why I’m ticked they moved rivalry week off the normal week because it’s a Saturday birthday this year. (Instead, I get Cal-OR State.)
Also, that Mikey Mo interception is the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten.
BTW, if we count the modern era as 1970 forward, (there’s a lot of games played on Thanksgiving week in the 1950s and 60s, the most famous being the delayed game due to the Kennedy assassination in 1963.) there’s five games that haven’t been played on the traditional rivalry week, and this year will make six. There’s some that have been played Thanksgiving week (1973, 1983), there’s the two December Big Games (2006, 2007), and the infamous 2012 October Big Game. (My thanks to California Historical Scores, which is a sub-branch of an entire database of historic college football schedules and scores.
(Sorry for my pedantic nature, Ken, it’s just this stuff actually is fun to research.)
-kat