Cal football is back in the top 25: 24th in AP & Coaches Poll, 22nd in ESPN rankings

The California Golden Bears are one of 29 undefeated teams left in college football, and after two impressive road wins in Texas and Washington, their 4-0 start has earned them a place in the top 25.

Cal made the biggest leap in the Coaches Poll, jumping from 35th last week to 24th this week. Cal is now tied with Oregon at 24th, which is a sentence I'm sure you were all thinking about a year ago. Cal is tied for 5th overall in the Pac-12 rankings in the Coaches Poll, behind UCLA (10), Utah (12), USC (16), Stanford (20). Cal will have to play all five of these teams in the span of seven weeks.  Arizona comes in at 27th.

The AP Poll also gave Cal a much slighter bump from 26th to 24th and dropped Oregon out entirely. UCLA is 7th, Utah 10th, USC 17th, Stanford 18th.

Cal is not yet ranked by the advanced metrics, but they did move up in the S&P+ from 46th to 36th from last week. They're about where they were offensively last year (30th in 2014, 31st currently in 2015), but the defense has made the big leap (in the 100s in 2014, up to 57th in 2015). Read more about S&P+ in Piotr's column.

This is the first time Cal has been ranked since 2010. Since 2007, Cal does have a history of not doing so well recently when they get back into the top 25, so be on your guard. But it's nice to be back!

ESPN also ranked Cal in their top 25 power rankings at 22nd or whatever this is.

Just the start #GoBears pic.twitter.com/17TQbdT1fI

— Michael Barton (@michaelbarton08) September 27, 2015