Our Sturdy Golden Bear

Dennis Dodd can't count

2007-09-24T15:10:00.001-07:00

"We'll have, at best, only one undefeated team in the SEC this season".

That's how Dodd starts his September 23rd column, titled, Family feuds might cost SEC in national picture.

What the hell kind of a conference would ever have more than two undefeated teams in it? How do you decide who wins the conference? And even if there are two undefeated teams in the SEC come the first weekend in December, wouldn't one of them end up losing on that day anyway?

At least in the Pac-10, we play a round-robin so a team has to prove itself against every single other team in the conference. We don't expect undefeated teams, because we know how tough the Pac-10 is.

The comments to the column (bar the first one from an SEC fan, who later apologizes for not knowing anything about football outside the SEC) are pretty intelligent, though, because Everyone agrees that Dennis Dodd can't count.

Cal-Tennessee film study, Arizona value-added

2007-09-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

The California Golden Blogs posted film study of the offensive genius that is Jeff Tedford last week.

On Saturday, we show Arizona the same formation and run yet another play. This time, the bunch is on the right, a split end (I couldn't see who it was at the time) is on the weak side, and Morrah is in on the strong side.

This time, Morrah doesn't move.

On the three plays Hydrotech posted about, Morrah shifts over to the weak side before the snap. On Saturday, Morrah didn't shift, and the play was a pitch to Forsett to the overloaded strong side. (We got whistled for a falst start, so the play didn't actually go anywhere.)

That's four different plays that Tedford has run out of the same formation. The man really is a genius.

And now, I'm going to have to start really paying attention to see how many more plays he's got from that same formation.

Bears win, play awful.

2007-09-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

No, 38-35 was not the score of our game, that's the score of the Syracuse-Louisville game. See, Syracuse sucks -- 0-3, 5-21 over the last three+ years -- and Louisville is supposed to be pretty good -- 2006 Big East champions and also a winner in the Orange Bowl last year. The game was played at Louisville. And that score? Louisville was on the wrong side of it.

I guess Louisville is starting to realize you're supposed to play defense in this game, too.

In our game, the halftime show was ska.

Yes, our game was once again boring, although we kind of let them score a lot more than I would have liked: final, 45-27. (At the end of the first quarter, the score was 28-3.)

Tuitama was 42-61 for 309 yards. Sixty-one pass attempts. They also ran 20 times. That's 81 plays in a single game. The first quarter alone took 55 minutes. It was a long game.

In other news, the 2006 National Champion California Men's Water Polo team has some guys who can catch, too:

(Jordan was well out of bounds on that catch; Best scored the TD three plays later.)

Weis, Demetrius Jones, and transferring

2007-09-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

Kevin Riley (second year freshman) beat out Kyle Reed (third year sophomore) for the #2 spot on the Cal QB depth chart a few weeks ago (behind third-year junior Nate Longshore); Reed took a few days to think about it, and then he transfered to San Jose State. Because San Jose State started classes almost three weeks after Cal, Reed had the luxury of transferring and sitting out this year to put himself in position to compete for the starting position at San Jose State next year.

At Notre Dame, Demetrius Jones took the first few snaps for the Irish against Georgia Tech three weeks ago, and then was summarily displaced, first by Evan Sharpley, and then, as everyone expected, by all-everything recruit (and true freshman) Jimmy Clausen. Jones, doing what Reed had done a few weeks earlier, decided to transfer, this time to Northern Illinois. DeKalb is a lot closer to Jones' hometown of Chicago than South Bend, and the second-year player will probably be immediately in the mix to start for the Huskies next year.

However, while Jeff Tedford gave Kyle Reed his immediate release, and wished him the best of luck with the Spartans, Charlie Weis has refused to grant Demetrius Jones a release from his scholarship. Jones is still on the books at Notre Dame, and cannot receive a scholarship from Northern Illinois until next year, even though he has withdrawn from school at Notre Dame and is attending class at Northern Illinois.

(I'll ignore whether transferring like this is a good idea. I think it's stupid. But I never played scholarship football.)

Jones' transfer was poorly planned; he left Notre Dame without talking to his coach, and he evidently enrolled at Northern Illinois without talking to their coach. But the Notre Dame Athletic department's response is horrifying.

What possible good can it do to keep Jones tied to his Notre Dame scholarship? The move is purely spiteful, a way to force Jones to pay for his own tuition at NIU for this year, to punish him for leaving. However, this also means that Notre Dame is using a scholarship on a player who is no longer on the team -- they're hurting themselves, spending 85 scholarships on 84 players. And Notre Dame really can't afford to keep shooting themselves in the foot this year.

Michael Rothstein, with the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette, also points to the longterm effects on recruiting out of Chicago, which Notre Dame and other midwestern schools depend on.

But in the short term, this is yet another way for big-time sports to hurt teenage kids (Jones doesn't turn 20 until next spring). Regardless of whether Jones' decision was a smart one, or whether his approach was the best way of going about things -- and he has admitted that perhaps he made mistakes in how he went about transferring -- Notre Dame's actions are clearly stupid, short-sighted, and mean-spirited.

The New York Times has no clue what it is talking about

2007-09-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

So I thought it was bad when the Times was supporting the march to war in 2002-2003, unthinkingly parroting the Bush administration's line.

Now I find out they're all on crack.

Six teams have emerged that could conceivably win the national title. And behind them, there is apparently a large gap to second-tier teams, which are beating one another to perpetuate the illusion of parity.

Four of those six top teams — Southern California, Louisiana State, Oklahoma and Florida — have better chances than the other two — California and West Virginia. But these six teams are so far ahead of the pack that any notion that the championship race is wide open is laughable.

Yes, I know the Times knows nothing about sports, and particularly nothing about college football, but this is crazy talk.

We must be good, because we played like shit.

2007-09-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

First things first: at the halftime show, the band played 80s music, and one of the songs was Soft Cell's version of Tainted Love: CAL BAND GREAT!

Second things second: the refs were awful, but that might have been because one of the snare drums was carrying a tub of gatorade on her drum and tossed it aside as she ran out of the tunnel for the pregame -- right onto the referee. He was pissed.

Third: Justin Forsett is awesome. I'll try to find footage of his 39-yard TD, one of three he scored on the day. Until then, a picture.

Fourth: we played like shit (on offense, Norris Malele has three false start penalties, Longshore threw a pick in the endzone, and nobody could catch anything; on defense -- well, actually, we played pretty well on defense), and we still won 42-12. Also, Hawkins ran back the opening kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown.

But mostly, Tainted Love! The Soft Cell version! Played by a marching band! Hip, Hip, Hooray!

Nate Longshore's blog

2007-09-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

He says,

I have wanted to do this for a while now and have just finally got around to it. There are no editors, no media relations, no "supervisors", just me and some guest bloggers leaving our story of what's happening. Sometimes writers and newscasters just don't get the real story, so this will be an interesting opportunity to experience it directly from the athletes themselves.

It certainly will be an interesting experiment, for a player as high-profile as Longshore to introduce their own take on what it's really like to be a student-athlete.

Governors and Coaches

2007-09-11T00:35:00.000-07:00

The Kansas City Star compiled information on the salary for state governors and for coaches of the state university systems. For most states, there is no contest: the coaches win hands down. For example, in Alabama Governor Bob Riley makes $113,000 a year; Nick Saban makes $4 million. Most states pay their governors ~$115,000 and their highest paid coaches ~$1 million.

Even states that don't have high-powered football teams pay their coaches better than their governors: in Delaware, Gov. Ruth Ann Minner makes $133,000 while Delaware State's head football coach Al Lavan makes $200,000. In Maine, Gov. John Baldacci makes $70,000, but Jack Cosgrove at Maine makes $135,000.

The closest salaries are in North Dakota (Gov. John Hoeven, $92,000; ND St. head coach Craig Bohl, $124,000) and South Dakota (Gov. Mike Rounds, $106,000; SD St. head coach John Stiegelmeier, $115,000).

Vermont and Alaska are special: they have no state-funded football teams. Even so, Vermont pays Vermont basketball coach Mike Lonergan $150,000 and Gov. Jim Douglas $144,000. As for Alaska?

Alaska is the only state that pays its governor more than any sports coach in the state: Gov. Sarah Palinmakes $125,000, while Alaska-Anchorage ice hockey head coach Dave Shyiak makes only $112,000.

Not so good, not so bad.

2007-09-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

It was 34-14 with 4 minutes left to go, and then suddenly it was 34-28 with 3 minutes left to go. NOT FUN.

In other news, Jackson scored on a 73 yard end-around, Best scored on the 64 yard pitch, and Montgomery (our technical second string RB, a redshirt freshman) scored from five yards out.

"I'd definitely be smart"

2007-09-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

DeSean Jackson: "I'd definitely be smart," he said. "I'd have the right coverages to contain me."

And yet he does not explain what the strategy would be to contain him. I wonder what it might look like?

Michigan has a great fight song

2007-09-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

So the banner was stupid, but the writer is kind of funny

2007-09-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

The choicest bits:

6. The roughest thing about college football season on the West Coast? The taunting text messages I start receiving at 6 a.m. from people in earlier time zones. My phone is just far enough from the bed that I don't want to get up and turn it completely off. Worst of all, many of the messages are about Tim Tebow. Then at 7:45 a.m., my law school friend Torry, a Berkeley grad, calls to talk trash. Torry spent three years defending Pac-10 football with every fiber of his being. "We're going to beat you," he says, "and then I'm going to remind you how much more fun stuff there is to do in California than just football." I tell him about my banner and how it's going to intimidate him so much, he's not going to want to enter the stadium.

8. Because the Bay Bridge is closed, I take the BART train over to Berkeley. The BART is filled with Vols fans. I end up sitting next to an Asian 20-something for a 30-minute ride under the bay. He tells me that he goes to Cal-Berkeley when I ask how long the ride is. This is our entire conversation after that: Asian man: "Why are you going to Berkeley?" Me: "For a football game." Asian man: "Oh, there's a game today?" Me: "Yeah." Asian man: "Are you rooting for Cal?" Evidently I am not wearing enough orange. My dad is going to be so disappointed.

9. More UT fans swarm the train and immediately start talking about earthquakes as we prepare to go underneath the Bay and emerge in Oakland, "What we need to do for the next 10 minutes is pray for no earthquakes," everyone around this man nervously laughs. My Asian seatmate is unfazed by our imminent death by drowning after the earthquake, "You came all the way from Tennessee for a football game?" he asks.

18. I sit down beside the bear statute for a while and meet two older Berkeley alums who are passing away the pre-game hours by reading the New Yorker. "We used to come here when you could walk in and have your own section of the stadium all to yourself," the wife says. "That was before Tedford," says the husband. Last year, Cal shared a Pac-10 title for the first time since 1975. Cal has not won a Pac-10 title outright since 1958. So it's hard to exaggerate what Tedford has meant to the program.

27. I ask Mohamed what he considers Cal's strongest selling points to be. "Education and diversity," he says. "Go to the parking lot at USC, all the kids have nicer cars than you or I do. They call it the University for Spoiled Children; it's a private school. Here we bring kids from all over the place and show them a new environment ... we don't isolate our athletes either. Freshman year, two athletes room with two regular students in the dorms and they see what college is all about. Our athletic director, Sandy Barber, has a slogan, and it's not a complete sentence, but it makes sense, 'Athletics done right.'"

We won! 45-31, and it was sweet.

2007-09-04T17:59:00.002-07:00

"DeSean Jackson returned his sixth career punt for a touchdown (12:23 in the second quarter) on his 27th career punt return (it was a 77-yard return) ... Jackson now has six (6) punt returns for touchdowns on 27 returns ... NCAA record-holders Wes Welker (Texas Tech) had eight (8) on 152 returns, and Antonio Perkins (Oklahoma) had eight (8) on 113 returns."

Ivan Maisel said, "Tennessee must be the last team in the nation to find out it's foolish to punt to Jackson."

And we also scored 38 other points.

Last year at Neyland, toward the end of the game the Tennessee fans started chanting "SEC." So this year at Memorial, once the game was in hand, some Cal fans started chanting "Pac-10 Football," and the players went wild. They loved it.

And of course we wore the yellow jerseys, which still look awful in the daylight and fantastic under lights.

Awesome video of DeSean's punt return TD against Tennessee

2007-09-04T17:59:00.001-07:00

Brilliant and hilarious, all at the same time

2007-09-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Eminem made a fairly forgettable (and fairly transparently autobiographical) movie a while ago called 8 Mile. The best thing about 8 Mile, according to me, is the song Lose Yourself. The song begins,

Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment
Would you capture it, or just let it slip?

So last year in Knoxville, we choked about as bad as you can in front of the whole damn world.

Guess what was the last song played over the PA during warmups for the Tennessee game in Berkeley on Saturday?

Fucking brilliant.

(My brother asked, "Do you think that was deliberate?")

"It seems to me that if the player is keeping his word, the college ought to, too."

2007-02-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

According to an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville pulled a scholarship offer to a player in November of his senior year, three months after he had accepted the offer.

I realize that schools give conditional offers, and that there is a delicate balance between having enough scholarships available to get the guys you really want and getting enough kids in to fill your needs. I know that many high school students jump ship at the last minute, and that schools are often left in the lurch.

But the kid who got his offer pulled has a point: someone has to keep their word, and I would tend to err on the side of the billion-dollar business being on the hook, rather than the 17-year-old kid.

"If this was a playoff game..."

2007-01-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

Barry Melrose just said (about a regular season hockey game), "If this was a playoff game, we'd be talking about this one as a game for the ages."

This is more than enough argument not to institute a playoff in college football. If there were a playoff, last year's 34-31 USC win over Notre Dame wouldn't have been nearly as impressive. The same thing about this year's Florida-Auburn game or Ohio State-Michigan (unless you are a particular fan of any of those teams -- I'm pretty impressed by this year's Cal-Washington game, but no one else really cares).

Best argument ever not to have a playoff in a game that only features a dozen games a year.

Better championship options

2007-01-03T14:49:00.000-08:00

I like the soccer model for several reasons, and the FA illustrates most of them: in the FA, there are three domestic championships awarded, plus several international ones.

The first is for the best league record in the Premier League; that team has won the League Championship.

Premiership teams can also win a playoff championship against either all the teams in the country, called the FA Cup. It is single elimination, and is one of the most prestigious and exciting playoff championships in the world because it includes all teams at all levels (imagine Mount Union knocking off Florida—it happens in the FA Cup. Heck, imagine Lewis and Clark knocking off Florida). Permiership teams can also win a championship against the best teams in the country, the League Cup. This is also single elimination, but is only played against the top two leagues. This cup is, somewhat obviously, not nearly as prestigious or as impressive to win.

The best thing about the combined FA Cup and League Championship is that to win the former, you have to beat teams from all over, including non-league sides (people who really do play for fun and work a non-sports 9-5 job the rest of the time), and to win the latter, you have to be the best in your league.

Very few teams win both: it's only happened ten times in England in the history of the FA (since 1871). But winning just one is impressive enough.

Bowl games are better

2007-01-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

Everyone is telling me I should want a playoff in college football. But I don't want a playoff. And I think playoff would make things worse, not better.

For all the people claiming that the Boise State-Oklahoma game is reason to have a playoff, I call bullshit.

No one was saying Boise State was one of the top eight teams in the country before Monday, and Boise State certainly didn't ru rampant in those stupid ESPN and SI playoff polls, either (and no one is seriously arguing for a 16 team bracket).

And with a playoff, even if Boise State beat Ohio State in a national championship game, no one is going to imagine that over the course of an entire year, Boise State is overall an obviously better team than Ohio State, subjectively or objectively.

And it turns out, I'm not the only one: Bill Plaschke, "Playoff system really isn't needed after all", and Chuck Klosterman, "No college football playoff, please

Boise St.-Oklahoma

2007-01-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

An interesting subplot of the Fiesta Bowl, which Boise State won 43-42 in what PhantomBear called "the most exciting 3 minutes of football in 24 years": Boise State's football budget ($3.5 million) is essentially equal to Bob Stoops' annual salary.

CFR is on the march!

2007-01-01T09:20:00.000-08:00

College Football Resource is on the campaign against a playoff; in a frankly nauseating trend, Sports Illustrated and ESPN are on the campaign for a playoff. Who says the media doesn't create the stories it reports on?

For the record, once more, I'm against a playoff. I'm mostly against the BCS.

The ideal solution would be a system wherein, in the years where there is some contention about the best team (years which in the past might have resulted in a "split championship"), it would be advisable to attempt to negotiate a game between those two teams.

But most years, this is a stupid idea. If Ohio State had played USC in a traditional Rose Bowl match-up, no matter what Florida did to whomever in they would have played in the Sugar Bowl, everyone would agree that Ohio State was the National Champion. Last year, everyone agreed that Texas should have a chance to play USC, and everyone also agreed that "it wouldn't have happened without the BCS." The former is true, the latter is complete bullshit. It might not have happened prior to the BCS, but it could have happened in any number of other ways.

Honestly, I'm more interested in the integrity of the Rose Bowl tradition in particular, which has been shafted since the introduction of the BCS (moreso in terms of a excellent West Coast team playing against an excellent East Coast, Southern, or Midwest team than in terms of the Pac-10 playing against the Big 10).

The arguments against a playoff in NCAA are so numerous that it is laughable that anyone is seriously considering it:

1) Any appeals to how a professional team does it are based on the limited numbers of professional teams available in any league (there are 32 teams in the NFL; with those numbers, 16 games allows a reasonable assumption of the relative strengths of each team), and the professional needs of the sport, which in the US require parity above all else and so need a playoff system where any team, regardless of consistent athletic excellence over the course of the season, can "win it all";

2) Any appeals to how other NCAA sports do it are based on the limited appeal of any other NCAA sport except basketball: those sports can have a championship because no one particularly cares—and certainly only publish limited column space on it—if an excellent team is left out of the tournaments;

3) Any appeals to the distress of only having won a mythical championship versus a "real" championship are sad and pathetic, and don't give enough appreciation to all the teams before the BCS who won championships, or teams in non-playoff sports, or games or sports played any other way.

4) And of course, in the present system the season is the playoff. We had our initial rounds earlier in the season: Ohio State advances over Texas, Michigan advances over Notre Dame, Florida and Auburn advance over LSU, Arkansas advances over Auburn. The semifinals were in the last weeks of the season: USC beat Notre Dame; Notre Dame is out, USC advances. A week later, Ohio State beat Michigan; Ohio State is in, Michigan is probably out depending on the results of the USC and Florida-Arkansas games. Two weeks after that, Florida beat Arkansas: Florida is in and Arkansas is out; then UCLA beat USC: USC is out.

It could not have possibly been scripted better by a playoff committee.

We don't need a playoff in college football, we need better scheduling.

Breaking news: Tedford wins in Southern California!

2006-12-29T00:10:00.000-08:00

That was a fun game, and now we have our second 10-win season in three years--and we're good enough that everyone, including Tedford, is disappointed by it. This Tedford guy is pretty good. I think maybe we should keep him.

Stuart Scott called Longshore one of the nation's best quarterbacks: 19-24, 231, 1 TD, 1 INT, and he rushed for a touchdown. Lynch and Forsett both rushed for 100 yards; Forsett scored one TD, Lynch two.

Ayoob and Levy got to play a little, (although Levy scored when he shouldn't have, and Tedford supposedly told him to apologize to Coach Franchione. I have no idea if Levy did or not).

So: 10-3, with a season ending 45-10 win. And Tedford finally has a convincing (signature? semi-signature?) win over a ranked team, although even at 9-4 Texas A&M might not be ranked in the final polls.

Go Bears!

Reggie Ball ineligible for Gator Bowl

2006-12-20T22:04:00.000-08:00

The most egregious example of how much emphasis the NCAA puts on the student part of student athletics is their practice of periodically ruling that students are academically ineligible to play.

Students have to be in good standing (not failing any classes) in order to play. Schools like Georgia Tech and Stanford, with superior academic reputations, make certain from the initial recruitment process that their student athletes are able to maintain their academic standing in addition to meeting their athletic goals.

Seniors Reggie Ball, a four-year starter, and CB Kenny Scott, a three-year starter, lost their eligibility somewhere between the start the season and now: over the course of a single semester or quarter. After an entire career at Georgia Tech, they knew better than to let their academics slip.

On the other hand, while they might not ever receive degrees from Georgia Tech, their lack of eligibility this late in their careers isn't going to matter much to NFL scouts.

Does Ted Miller watch Pac-10 games?

2006-12-12T21:52:00.000-08:00

According to Ted Miller in ESPN, "Cal didn't give the Trojans much of a challenge during a 23-9 defeat."

Did he watch the game? It was ugly, sure, but Cal was winning 9-6 (including a safety) at halftime, and we were tied 9-9 at start of the third quarter. Neither team looked very good that night; they were fairly evenly matched in terms of ineptitude.

USC's last touchdown came off on extremely short field — Larson's punt was only 35 yards — and on 4th down. This was not a blowout by any means. Sure, Cal clearly wasn't up to USC for all four quarters, but the game was in doubt until well into the fourth quarter.

Brian Leonard, Draddy Trophy winner

2006-12-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

Brian Leonard has his own Heisman site (although it was reconstituted as an All-American site, when Ray Rice started running wild).

Brian Leonard also has the Draddy Award, which "recogniz[es] an individual as the absolute best in the country for his combined academic success, football performance and exemplary community leadership." Not only does he receive a very large trophy, he also gets a $25,000 post-graduate scholarship. It's not the Heisman; it's better.