Despite the struggles of the California Golden Bears to be ranked or relevant in college football, we’ve had a puzzlingly rich history of success in the NFL. For instance, for the 21 NFL seasons from 1999–2019, 14 of those Super Bowls featured a Golden Bear on the winning team (two-thirds!). In that same timespan (which should be very generous for California as it features Jeff Tedford’s tenure as our all-time winningest head coach and cuts off Justin Wilcox at his peak performance in the Ripblix Bowl), we’re a perfectly bland 129–130 (which actually includes four wins from Tom Holmoe in the 1999 season that were vacated).
California goes back-to-back without Super Bowl appearances for the first time in over 50 years
