California vs. Iowa

California and Iowa have 4 meetings on file, the first in 1958; Iowa leads the series 3–⁠1 in the games on file. Over the last 4 meetings it’s Iowa 3–⁠1.

California wins
1
Iowa wins
3
Ties
0
Earliest on file
1958
Longest streak
3 Iowa
Current streak
1 California
Last 10 meetings
Iowa 3–⁠1
Most recent
1993

The series at a glance

Every meeting by decade, colored by the winner
’0’1’2’3’4’5’6’7’8’9W–L
1950s0–⁠2
1960s0–⁠1
1990s1–⁠0
Both ranked
1 meeting: California 0, Iowa 1
Average margin
27.8 points; 0 decided by one score (8 or fewer)
At California
0–⁠1 California’s record at home
At Iowa
1–⁠0 Iowa’s record at home
Neutral sites
1–⁠1 California first

Every meeting on file, as played. Ranks are the AP poll’s going in.

Both programs through the years

End-of-season Elo ratings of California and Iowa, 1958 on1300150017001960197019801990200020102020

Our Elo rating at the end of each season, a measure of how strong a team was, not a forecast; 1500 is an average FBS team.

Stars of the series

Named most valuable

Bob Jeter Iowa1958

Most valuable: as the games’ Wikipedia articles name them (CC BY-SA).

From the newspapers

  • The Evening star's story of the 1961 game

    1961 · Evening star, Washington, D.C., Oct 6, 1961

Public-domain newspapers from the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America, found through the American Stories dataset (Dell and Harvard, CC BY 4.0). The earliest meetings with a story on file; each game’s page has the full text.

Every game

Dec 31, 1993California 37, Iowa 3Neutral siteAlamo Bowl
Sep 30, 1961Iowa 28, California 7at Iowa
Sep 26, 195913Iowa 42, California 12at California
Jan 1, 19594Iowa 38, 17California 12Neutral siteRose Bowl

Every game is listed as played on the field.