UCLA's Cal transfers prepared for season opener against former team

As soon as the UCLA football team’s 2026 schedule came out, Jaivian Thomas circled week 1 on his calendar. The Bruins’ first game against Cal stood out like no other.

For the senior running back, a Bay Area native and Cal transfer, opening the season in Berkeley means a little more. Athletes and coaches constantly talk about treating every game the same, that each contest needs to be viewed the same way, so as to not get too overhyped or avoid not taking an opponent seriously enough. In this particular circumstance, Thomas admitted that isn’t the case.

“Once we found out we [were] playing Cal, I marked that,” he said during Media Day on Aug. 19. “I get to go back home, and that’s where I started my journey. It’s a lot of love for the people that I know there at Cal, but it’s something that I’m really looking forward to.”

“That game’s significant for me, a little bit extra, you know?” senior kicker Mateen Bhaghani, who played one season at Cal, told reporters at the same event. “Yeah, a little personal.”

Thomas and Bhaghani are not the only Bruins who will be visiting familiar ground when they step into Memorial Stadium. UCLA’s roster has five Cal transfers, the most from any school they play this season and their second-most overall. Several of those players are expected to be major contributors to the Bruins this season.

“It’s a full circle moment, just being able to go back, playing at Memorial Stadium,” said wide receiver Mikey Matthews, who played for the Golden Bears in 2024. “I know it's going to be a loud environment. So I’m very excited. That’s all I can say.”

Three of the five transfers — Thomas, Bhaghani and senior linebacker Ryan McCulloch — were on Cal’s roster the last time these two teams played in 2023. Of the three, only Bhaghani registered any stats in that game, making four field goals and three extra points. Cal won 33-7 at the Rose Bowl in the final regular season matchup for the previous iteration of the Pac-12.

Although much has changed in college football over the last three years, that game happened recently enough that many participants from it are still in the NCAA.

“I still got some guys that came in with me my freshman year at Cal up there, some guys that transferred in over time,” Thomas said on Monday. “I was talking mess to one of my friends up there yesterday. It’s just friendly trash talk and stuff like that, but man, I'm excited.”

The connections between Cal and this year’s Bruins are not even limited to the players, as linebackers coach Vic So’oto coached in Berkeley from 2022 to 2025.

“He knows a lot of the players on that team,” head coach Bob Chesney said of So’oto. “[He] feels confident about even the ones that are now on the team from somewhere else that he's recruited and has a good understanding of.”

These two teams have much in common. They both have first-year head coaches — UCLA with Chesney and Cal with Tosh Lupoi, who was the defensive coordinator at Oregon when Chesney’s James Madison team faced the Ducks in the College Football Playoff last season. They both have hyped, returning quarterbacks in Nico Iamaleava and Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele respectively. And they’re former conference foes who both hope to use this season to begin turning their fortunes around after years of struggling to emerge as serious contenders in the college football landscape.

Adding in the former Golden Bears now playing in Southern California only adds even more buildup to an already anticipated showdown.

“I try to just think about how I’ve been there before, and I’ve played a lot of games [there], especially young,” Bhaghani told reporters. “I had my first ever field goal in that stadium, so it will be a surreal feeling, obviously, going back. But I think as soon as I get into my steps, take my three steps back, everything else in the world just goes away.”

“It will definitely be a comfortable, nostalgic feeling playing there.”