The history of California Golden Bears football began in 1886, the team has won five NCAA recognized national titles - 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, and 1937 and 15 conference championships, the last one in 2006.
Overview Early history (1886–1981) Football was first played on Berkeley campus in 1882, albeit in a form that resembled rugby. It was not until 1886 under coach Oscar S. Howard that the University of California began to play American football. Aside from the first season's matches against Hastings Law College, Cal primarily played against local clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1886 until 1903 California home games were held at West Field, at the current campus location of the Valley Life Sciences Building. Eventually bleachers were added allowing seating up to 5,000 people. In 1892, the school played against rival Stanford University for the first time – an annual matchup now known as The Big Game. The first match was organized in San Francisco by Cal's student manager Herbert Lang, and Stanford's student manager and future president of the United States Herbert Hoover. Cal lost 14–10. Their coach was Lee McClung. Another Yale alum was their coach in 1893, Pudge Heffelfinger; and again in 1895, Frank Butterworth. Cal's first win against Stanford came in 1898, while coached by newly hired Garrett Cochran, a Princeton alumnus who was recruited immediately after his graduation. Cochran successfully implemented the tactics of his alma mater, finishing the season with eight wins, zero losses and two ties; all opponents were outscored 221–5. That season also included Cal's first out of state football game - when it traveled to Portland, Oregon to defeat Multnomah Athletic Club. In 1899, Cal added the University of Oregon and San Jose State to its schedule. No team was able to score against Cal during that season with Stanford being defeated 22–0. In 1899, Cochran made a bold claim that his undefeated Bears were as good as any team on the east coast. The future legendary coach Pop Warner decided to take on Cochran's challenge, and brought his Pennsylvania team - the Carlisle Indian Industrial School Indians to take on Cal. Even though it was Warner's first year at Carlisle, his team was considered to be an overwhelming favorite. It upset Penn and handed a crushing defeat to Columbia. The game took place on Christmas Day in San Francisco. It was Carlisle that emerged as the winner, however Warner's offense that scored 45 points against Columbia was unable to put up any against Cal. Cal lost 0–2, due to a safety given up in the second half. Despite the loss, the game signaled Cal's ability to compete with the eastern schools.
Prior to the 1898 season, Berkeley alumnus and San Francisco Mayor James D. Phelan offered Douglas Tilden's sculpture The Football Players, as a prize to the school that could win the Big Game two consecutive seasons years. Because of Cal's 1898 and 1899 wins, in May 1900 the sculpture was installed on the Berkeley campus. It was placed atop a stone pedestal engraved with the names of the California players during those two years. From the moment of its installation, the Football Players has been considered to be one of the landmarks on campus.
Following the 1899 season, Cochran left to coach at the Naval Academy and was replaced by another Princeton alumnus - Addison Kelly, who served for only one season in 1900, posting a 4–2–1 record. That year's Big Game was played on Thanksgiving Day at the Recreation Park stadium in the industrial section of San Francisco. The game was sold out with 19,000 spectators packing the seats. In addition somewhere between 500 and 1,000 men, were watching the match from the corrugated rooftop of the operating S.F. and Pacific Glass Works factory. During the game the rooftop collapsed, resulting in well over 100 fans falling on to the factory's floor with more than 60 directly on to the factory's massive, operational furnace. In total 22 men, mostly boys, were killed with more than 100 severely injured. This incident became known as the Thanksgiving Day Disaster and remains the deadliest accident to kill spectators at a U.S. sporting event. Stanford won the game 5–0. In 1904, Cal began playing its home games at California Field. It held approximately 20,000 people and was located near the center of the campus, the current location of the Hearst Gymnasium.
Beginning in the 1890s, American football was becoming increasingly violent - the ball carrier would often be pushed and pulled up the field by his own players in massive formations that often resulted in serious injuries. In 1905, 18 deaths and 159 injuries were reported in various football competitions. That year President Theodore Roosevelt lobbied the elite private schools to alter the game in order to eliminate or at least reduce its prevalent injuries. Soon after, numerous rule changes were agreed upon by the majority of American schools. One of the changes was allowing for a forward pass to open up the game and reduce the role of the dangerous mass formations. Cal, Stanford and other West Coast universities, took a different path - eliminating football completely and instead changing their sport to Rugby. A sport thought to be less barbaric. Amongst others, Nevada, St. Mary's, Santa Clara, and USC (in 1911) also made this alteration. During the rugby years - from 1906 to 1914, California wielded dominant teams, however Bears were able to beat Stanford only three times. Due to various causes, including students frustration with those results, the Associated Students of the University of California voted to leave the agreement, and along with other universities, return to American football. Beginning in 1915 Cal returned to the original sport and has fielded a football team ever since. During the initial season Cal was coached by its former rugby coach Jimmy Schaeffer. In 1916, Andy Smith, then coach at Purdue, was recruited to become Cal's next football coach. That year was the first year of the Pacific Coast Conference. The original PCC consisted of Cal, Washington, Oregon and Oregon Agricultural (which would later become Oregon State). The 1916 team had a winning season however it failed to win any games in the conference. The first truly successful season was in 1918, the team went 7–2, won the conference and defeated Stanford 67–0. The teams agreed not to count it as a Big Game match as it was Stanford's first season after switching back from Rugby. Smith came to be known for the "kick and wait for the breaks" strategy and utilizing the short punt formation. Under his system, the ball was mainly moved upfield not through offensive plays, but through punting. Upon the other team receiving the ball, the defense was relied upon to push it back up the field and cause fumbles. At the end of 1918, lineman Walter Gordon, Cal's first African-American player, became the second black All-American in the country. The same year Smith hired former Cal rugby player and San Diego high school football coach Nibs Price. Price was essential to recruiting southern California's Brick Muller, Albert "Pesky" Sprott, Crip Toomey and Stanley Barnes, who became the key players of Smith's dominating squads that became known as Wonder Teams. With the emergence of the talented squads, Smith also became known for trick plays such as the classic lateral to the halfback, followed by a long forward pass. Brick Muller, both an offensive and defensive star, became known for completing 50-yard passes that were previously thought impossible - at the time the game was played with a plump, rugby-like ball.
From 1920 to 1925, The Wonder Teams went 50 straight games without defeat, made three trips to the Rose Bowl, and won four national titles as determined by various selectors - 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923. Prior to the start of the 1920 season Brick Muller and Albert Sprott competed as track and field athletes in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Belgium, where Muller won the silver medal in high jump. The 1920 team went 9–0, winning the PCC title (which now included Washington State and Stanford), out-scoring its opponents 510–14; at the Rose Bowl it shut out undefeated Big Ten champion Ohio State 28–0. During that game Muller threw a 53-yard touchdown pass, caught two passes, made several vital tackles, as well as recovered three fumbles. Even though the two would never meet, Smith's Wonder Teams are thought to rival Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne and his Four Horsemen. In 1960, when the Helms Athletic Foundation considered both the Wonder Teams and the Four Horsemen, it crowned the 1920 Cal Bears as the greatest football team in American history. The 1921 Golden Bears finished undefeated and were again invited to play in the Rose Bowl. The Big Ten declined to send its champion Iowa, and a little known team from Pennsylvania, named the Washington and Jefferson Presidents were invited. Smith was at first hesitant as Presidents had players older than the average college age, and at the same time had scholarship requirements well below California's. Eventually Smith agreed to the match. With California being the overwhelming favorite, the match went nothing like it was expected. Because of the heavy rain the night before, it was played in a virtual mud pit. The game finished in a 0–0 tie. The 1922 team was also undefeated and won the PCC. At this time University of California began considering the Rose Bowl as being "too commercialized" and declined that year's invitation. Like the previous two years, the majority of national selectors determined Cal to be the national champion. During Big Games the California Field consistently exceeded its seating limits by several thousand fans. Because of Cal's continuous success it became evident that a larger stadium was needed. In 1919 Stanford Stadium opened, holding more than 60,000 fans, and during the next several years the Rose Bowl stadium was constructed as well as the Los Angeles Coliseum which became the host of USC. In 1922 work began on California Memorial Stadium, which was to be located the mouth of Strawberry Canyon immediately east of campus. Because it would be directly atop the Hayward Fault, it consisted of two halves, with the eastern side built into the canyon's hills, while the western side contained the main structure built in the neo-classical style of the Roman Coliseum. Expansion joints were placed where the two sides connected, allowing them to separately move during an earthquake. During the construction 2,500 pine trees were planted on the hill behind the stadium, which became known as the Tightwad Hill.