When I have felt the worst after a Cal loss:

1990 Big Game -- was about to rush the field, instead walked back to the dorm in a sea of silence

The Hail Mary play @ Arizona. It wasn't just the Hail Mary, it was how inexplicable how things were unraveling in the 4th quarter.

The 2006 game @ Tennessee got me super upset for some reason. I expected us to be a national title contender, and we did wind up having one of our best seasons under Tedford (Pac-10 co-champs), but getting smoked in Knoxville in where all eyes were on us, was sad and embarrassing. I think Cyberbears (dot org) shut down due to the hate and frustration spewing on the board lol. Later on that season we had the nightmare in Tucson where we were up 17-0 at half time, and a whole mess of things happened against a very bad AZ team, including Longshore's debut as a pick six machine. Also, Desean's shoe size was a half size too long that called back a TD, Lavelle Hawkins tripped over blades of grass where we did not score a TD and then was intercepted on the same drive, and our star DB Dante Hughes got called for a phantom PI that helped them win. I have to say that stadium might be haunted. Yah those were nightmare games.

KoreAmBear said:

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mbBear said:

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heartofthebear said:

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The worst loss Cal ever suffered was the loss of Bruce Snyder

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well said...Younger Cal fans have no clue how holding onto him would have changed Cal football for a long time...

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We would have had Jake the Snake and Rashaan Salaam?

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Even if we had just promoted OC Mooch

That '75 SC UCLA game, and Joe Roth's death only a little over a year later, would have to top my personal list.

I was 16 and really REALLY thought we were going to the Rose Bowl!! (Had been wearing buttons to school and everything .) And we *all* thought that surely the next year, with him coming back, we would!!

66-0 to Alabama a few years before that was pretty excruciating too.

But worst of all time? Try 74-0 to SC in 1930!! That has to at least be in the conversation.

That loss was so bad it led to the founding of a whole new booster group - the Southern Cs - started by Stan Barnes and some of the other SoCal Wonder Team guys after we embarrassed them so terribly that day in the Colloseum. They were determined to DO something about it. And they did.

In only a few years we were back near the top of college football world. Beating Alabama in the Rose Bowl, the works.

But a generation later, in the mid 50s, it was revelations about some of that group's questionable recruiting tactics that helped lead to the Ronnie Knox scandal, the end of the Waldorf era, and the sustained efforts to do away with football at the newly christened entity called "Berkeley" - which have dogged us ever since.

(And BTW - present for that Rose Bowl loss to us was one Paul "Bear" Bryant, 'Bama grad assistant, who all the surviving Wonder and Thunder team era guys (and there were still a bunch of them around in the 1970s) swore up and down hated us as much for that loss as for our by then much more notorious antiwar stuff, which was why he insisted on playing us in Birmingham (where Alabama played their most important games then) and why he kept his foot on the gas from one end to the other of that 66-0 stomping.)

The "best" loss but the most painful was the 2004 loss to USC, where we outplayed the #1 team and eventual National Champion in front of more than 100,000 fans in LA with Aaron Rodgers setting an NCAA record against the #1 defense, but losing on special teams errors, missed FGs, m not enough use of our 2nd string RB Marshawn vs Carrol's use of his 2nd string Reggie Bush., and then a slip on the route on the end zone….

USC went undefeated. We win that game and we go undefeated, either we are in the National Champoonship Game or the Rose Bowl….. the two best teams in the country, but we ended up not even being considered as being in the top 4 with a dirty coaches poll and missed the Rose Bowl. Just a brutal loss.

The losses at Arizona and USC in 2006 we're similar.

Not as consequential but similar was the loss at Ohio State in 2012, a game we should have won.

calumnus said:

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The "best" loss but the most painful was the 2004 loss to USC, where we outplayed the #1 team and eventual National Champion in front of more than 100,000 fans in LA with Aaron Rodgers setting an NCAA record against the #1 defense, but losing on special teams errors, missed FGs, m not enough use of our 2nd string RB Marshawn vs Carrol's use of his 2nd string Reggie Bush., and then a slip on the route on the end zone….

USC went undefeated. We win that game and we go undefeated, either we are in the National Champoonship Game or the Rose Bowl….. the two best teams in the country, but we ended up not even being considered as being in the top 4 with a dirty coaches poll and missed the Rose Bowl. Just a brutal loss.

The losses at Arizona and USC in 2006 we're similar.

Not as consequential but similar was the loss at Ohio State in 2012, a game we should have won.

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Bigelow was on fire, but Tedford refused to put him in for more than 4 plays. He deserved at least a few more touches, or being included as a decoy as OSU was scared of him.

LunchTime said:

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Stanfurd was barely top 10 (11 coaches). Whipped us 63-13. A week after losing to Colorado 42-24 to give them their conference win.

Before that was 2007 Stanfurd. Sure they beat USC in possibly the luckiest game ever played. But they came in with three wins, and Cal was good, but thanks to coaching completely collapsed.

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I made good money off that game. As I recall Stanford were 14 point dogs and we had lost 5 of our previous 6 and had looked completely lost while doing it. It was an easy bet.

As an aside, it's wild to look at attendance figures for that season and see that the home game against USC, with a 5 pm kickoff, drew over 72,000 people! And I'm pretty sure it was cold and drizzling too. Amazing.

HearstMining said:

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Two of those games stand out in my mind:

• 1973 0-66 against Alabama. I listened to that game as I was assembling a Dynaco amplifier kit. Fortunately, there was little that happened on the broadcast to divert me from my project..

EDIT - Personally, Cal's worst loss was when USC lost to UCLA in 1975 because it kept Cal out of the Rose Bowl.

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In the Alabama game, Wesley Walker set a Cal record by returning 11 kickoffs. This is not the kind of record you want to hold.

1975: Yet another reason to hate USC. After beginning the season 0-2, the Bears named Joe Roth the starting QB and went on a 8-1 run, with the only loss being to UCLA.

On Nov 1, #4 USC came to town, matching up USCs Ricky Bell and Cal's Chuck Muncie. The Bears won -- in one of my favorite Cal victories of all time. It was glorious.

The Bears went on to win all remaining games, including an epic beat-down of Stanford. USC pretty much tanked, including the above-mentioned loss to UCLA, keeping the Bears out of the Rose Bowl. However, this was the wild west era of bowl game selections, where bowls were competing with each other to land their participants. USC got a bowl bid in November, despite their choke job. The Bears got shut out -- it was Rose Bowl or bust -- despite a #13 ranking and leading the nation in total offense.

And then Muncie came in 2nd in the Heisman to Archie Griffin (for the 2nd time) despite having better stats in every category.

HearstMining said:

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run2win said:

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Here are a few unpleasant Saturdays:

1961 - 7-53 loss to Kansas in Memorial
1973 - 0-66 loss to Alabama
1978 - 0-45 loss to UCLA in Memorial
1980 - 7-60 loss ot USC
1982 - 7-50 loss to UW
1986 - 0-49 loss to ASU
1994 - 0-61 loss to USC
1999 - 0-45 loss to Nebraska
2012 - 14-62 loss to Oregon State

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Two of those games stand out in my mind:

• 1973 0-66 against Alabama. I listened to that game as I was assembling a Dynaco amplifier kit. Fortunately, there was little that happened on the broadcast to divert me from my project.
• 1978 0-45 loss to UCLA. I was in grad school at UM and a friend invited several of us over. I'd talked up Rich Campbell all week . . .

I'll add one more:

• 1966 0-24 loss TO SAN JOSE STATE!!!!!!!

EDIT - Personally, Cal's worst loss was when USC lost to UCLA in 1975 because it kept Cal out of the Rose Bowl.

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I was there wearing my "Cal Rose Bowl" shirt..

the entire 2001 season was pretty miserable. Home blowout loss to Illinois was among them.

bluehenbear said:

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the entire 2001 season was pretty miserable. Home blowout loss to Illinois was among them.

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The 2001 USC game may have been the worst overall game experience ever. We "only" lost 55-14 so there have been worst blowouts; but there were only 33,000 in the stands; it rained; and by the 4th quarter there were more seagulls than Cal fans.

JSC 76 said:

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bluehenbear said:

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the entire 2001 season was pretty miserable. Home blowout loss to Illinois was among them.

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The 2001 USC game may have been the worst overall game experience ever. We "only" lost 55-14 so there have been worst blowouts; but there were only 33,000 in the stands; it rained; and by the 4th quarter there were more seagulls than Cal fans.

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Illinois won the Big Ten in 2001 (wild right) but SC in Pete Carroll's first year was nothing special, still good enough to paste us though.

Worst loss: Bruce Snyder to ASU

Nofado said:

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Worst loss: Bruce Snyder to ASU

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Bockrath was worse than Knowlton, he chased Snyder off.

This almost became the worst loss.

Cal88 said:

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Nofado said:

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Worst loss: Bruce Snyder to ASU

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Bockrath was worse than Knowlton, he chased Snyder off.

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An error of opportunity. We did not get the Rose Bowl, but we survived Bockrath. Almost went undefeated under Tedford.

Knowlton's incompetence has lead to our worst stretch in the revenue sports, historically bad in basketball. He ignored reports of racism and abuse in our swim program and threw away $5 million to McKeever in spite of it plus $millliobs in investigations. $50 million for Wilcox. $12 million for Mark Fox…We almost did not survive Knowlton as there was talk of ending our program if we did not get into the ACC. We still might not survive Knowlton.

too many to list......but most painful were losses to OSU where a win would make us number 1 in the country and the loss to $c with a trip to the Rose Bowl or national championship game on the line. if our receiver doesn't slip we get the go ahead touchdown with very little time on the clock. unfortunately i saw both those games in person.

2013 Big Game: 13-63

okaydo said:

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But without Snyder and whoever followed him, we wouldn't have gotten that magical season in 1996 when Cal had on its staff the future head coaches of 4 NFL teams.

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Steve Mariucci, Hue Jackson, and who else?

ninetyfourbear said:

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okaydo said:

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But without Snyder and whoever followed him, we wouldn't have gotten that magical season in 1996 when Cal had on its staff the future head coaches of 4 NFL teams.

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Steve Mariucci, Hue Jackson, and who else?

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Mariucci and Jackson were the future head coaches of a combined 4 NFL teams.