Fresno State is our 2021 Mythical California Cup winner:
$ python3 ./mcc_schedule.py -v San José State 7 at USC 30 on Sep 04, 2021 Stanford 42 at USC 28 on Sep 11, 2021 Fresno State 40 at UCLA 37 on Sep 18, 2021 UCLA 35 at Stanford 24 on Sep 25, 2021 San Diego State 19 at San José State 13 on Oct 15, 2021 Fresno State 30 at San Diego State 20 on Oct 30, 2021 UCLA 62 at USC 33 on Nov 20, 2021 California 41 at Stanford 11 on Nov 20, 2021 Fresno State 40 at San José State 9 on Nov 25, 2021 California 14 at UCLA 42 on Nov 27, 2021 USC at California on Dec 03, 2021 Full Enumeration Simulation: Fresno State 2 [100%] Monte Carlo [Sampled Home Margin Predictor] Simulation: Fresno State 10000 [100%] Monte Carlo [Elo Predictor] Simulation: Fresno State 10000 [100%] Fresno State 3-0 UCLA 3-1 San Diego State 1-1 California 1-1 Stanford 1-2 USC 1-2 San José State 0-3 2021, 11, ,
The season is not technically over, but as you can see Cal’s rescheduled game with USC next week is meaningless. After they both lost yesterday there is nothing at stake: not for this, not for the Pac-12, not for bowl eligibility. Will they still play it? Will anyone go? No one has tried harder than me to eke relevance out of California college football but sometimes you just have tip your cap to the vast unfeeling entropic universe. [*]
But hey, congratulations Fresno State! It’s a clean title: undefeated, no tie-breakers and they beat the second place team. The full details of the Cup award ceremony are still being hammered out.
[*]Update: an hour after I published this, the news appeared that Lincoln Riley is leaving Oklahoma to coach USC. It’s not clear yet if he will actually be there at their Cal game (he definitely won’t coach OU’s bowl game) but at the very least the game is relevant in the sense that USC has put themselves into the center of college football news this week. Everything matters. (Nothing matters.)