Battle for the Valley
American college football rivalry
The Fresno State–San Jose State football rivalry, also known as the Battle for the Valley is a college football rivalry between the Fresno State Bulldogs football team of California State University, Fresno and the San Jose State Spartans football team of San José State University. From 2013 to 2025, the two teams played annual, contests as Mountain West Conference opponents. Starting in 2026, the rivalry will be played as a non-conference match-up.
The rivalry is rooted in the two schools' relatively close proximity to one another in the state of California. The city of Fresno is located approximately 150 miles southeast of San Jose. San Jose State is the founding campus of the California State University system, of which Fresno State is also a member.
Additionally, Fresno State and San Jose State are both located in geographical valleys. Fresno is located in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley while San Jose is located in the Santa Clara Valley, which is now more widely known as Silicon Valley. The locations of the two schools account for the names Valley Cup, Valley Bowl and the Battle for the Valley.
As of 2026, Fresno State leads the series 47–39–3.
“Battle for the Valley” enters the record as american college football rivalry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Battle, Valley and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5503203. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2025 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle for the Valley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.