Golden Nuggets: Cal-Nevada Score Predictions + Opening Day Thread

It looks like we will have no shortage of score predictions throughout the year as we welcome several newcomers to the fray. This week the nearly unanimous opinion is that the Bears will win and win big.

• ESPN's Pac-12 blog now has two predictions as Kevin Gemmell joins our perennial sunshine pumper Uncle Ted. First up is Ted's prediction.

California 35, Nevada 20: The Bears should be fired up for their first game in renovated Memorial Stadium. And many of them remember what happened in 2010 at Nevada. Good news is Colin Kaepernick is playing across the Bay now with the San Francisco 49ers.

Meanwhile Kevin Gemmell is less optimistic, though still in favor of a Bears victory.

Cal 31, Nevada 24: The Wolfpack whupped the Bears the last time they met, but that was a very different Nevada team and a very different Cal team. The Bears' defense gets the job done and the offense will be efficient.

• Wilner takes the Bears and the points.

NEVADA (plus-9.5) at CAL: For all their problems in recent years, the Bears have aced their openers. Meanwhile, Nevada has never won a road opener against an AQ-conference school. Pick: Cal.

• Athlon's writers each pick a Cal win.

Cal, 30-20

Cal, 30-23

Cal, 31-27

Cal, 28-21

• Faraudo's even hopping aboard the predictions train this season. He has the Bears notching a comfortable win.

Nevada at Cal, noon (Pac-12 Network): Too much riding on this for the Bears to experience a hiccup. They remember the one-sided loss at Reno two years ago, and they will be fired up to please fans in renovated Memorial Stadium, bright and shiny all over again at age 89. Cal 34, Nevada 20.

• Vegas seems to have settled on Cal as 11-point favorites and 55.5 as the over. This roughly translates to a 33-22 Bears victory over Nevada.

Now let us all celebrate the return of college football with the first open thread of the year! The highlight of the night should be some cougar-on-cougar action as Cap'n Leach makes his debut against BYU.

Football

• Do you have $5.35 million burning a hole in your pocket? Tedford put his awesome house up for sale.
• CaliberMag.org sounds very happy to have interviewed Keenan Allen. It's a lengthy article, but well worth the read.
• The Nevada game has not yet sold out--the ATO says the number of tickets sold is in the high 50,000s right now.
• Faraudo has some trivia from the opening day for Memorial Stadium in 1923.
• Center Edwin Horrell scored the first touchdown on opening day in 1923. That has inspired Brian Schwenke to follow in his footsteps.
• Several players express excitement about finally moving into the new facilities.
• Matt Summers-Gavin is the only Cal player on Uncle Ted's Pac-12 Preseason All-Conference Team. Is Marquess Wilson really a better receiver than Keenan Allen?
• ESPN ranks Cal's schedule as the 10th toughest in the nation.
• Uncle Ted has some comments on each Pac-12 team's depth chart as we head into the first weekend of the season.
• Josh Hill and Kendrick Payne talk about what went wrong when the Bears faced the Nevada pistol in 2010 and the UCLA pistol last year.
• The university announced that Cecil Whiteside is academically ineligible. Apparently Tedford and the coaches knew this and distributed reps accordingly.
• Wilner runs through Cal's schedule and predicts wins and losses. He predicts 7-5 and, most importantly, a Big Game win. The Bears lose to their four toughest opponents (tOSU, USC, Utah, Oregon) and are upset by Wazzu.
• Wilner predicts the final Pac-12 standings and has Cal in third in the North. Reading between the lines, it looks like Cal and Stanford go 5-4 based on his game-by-game predictions. Somehow Washington finishes with a record equal to or worse than 5-4, as the Huskies are fourth.