Intimidating Venues, take 1

Most people claim that home-field advantage scores out at about 3 points per contest. That is, just by donning your colored jerseys, you claim a field goal on the visiting team. This is of course because for most schools, the visitors get an allotment of about 5% of the tickets available. In a stadium the size of the Big House (Michigan), this is 5,400 tickets. That's not many, when the other 102,600 fans are rooting for the other guys.

There are other reasons why playing out of town is tougher: the travel time, the lack of familiarity with the stadium, sometimes the time change or the altitude or the weather; when Cal played Air Force last September, the players hadn't realized that their helmets would expand, because of the thinner altitude. Tedford traveled up to Tahoe a few weeks before the game to hold some practices, to get the players acclimated to the idea. When Cal played Southern Mississippi, the game was originally scheduled for daytime in September, a much different prospect from December at night, when the game was finally played. Some people attribute the weather to the overwhelming advantage The Swamp (Florida) or Death Valley (LSU) give their teams.

But mostly it's all about the screaming fans who want blood. And since most stadiums allow the sale of alcohol, the home town fans really want blood.

Last year at the Coliseum, in LA, there were 84,000 USC fans in red screaming every time Aaron Rodgers went under center, and 8,000 Cal fans whispering whenever Matt Leinart took his turn on the field.

But it's not simply sheer numbers that can provide a substantial advantage. It's the noise those numbers make. Sounds travels better at night (this is physics), so when LSU plays in Death Valley at night, those Tiger fans sound a lot louder than they would during the day. [It's also cooler, so everyone has more energy.] Autzen, in Eugene, is tiny (55,000), but those Duck fans make the place rock.

This got to be a problem last year (and the year before, and forever since I can remember) at Memorial, because it's silent. We're used to being awful, and we're used to having no fans, and we're not used to cheering. Tedford and Rodgers both made appeals to the fan base to actually give Cal some home field advantage, and get in the game, but have no idea if it will work.

Texas A&M has a long-standing tradition of having the stands provide a 12th man, with organized and football intelligent cheering. It hasn't made altogether a difference in A&M's fortunes on the field, but that may have more to do with Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas than A&M's 12th man. The Packers (switching abruptly to the NFL) have a well-deserved reputation for being intelligent and loud; it helps that the Packers play in an outdoor stadium in Wisconsin, where weather is a factor. The Gators have smart fans, too.

But this isn't all of it, because on neutral fields where the fans are split more or less evenly (Jacksonville for the Florida-Georgia game, for instance, or back when the Iron Bowl was played at Legion Field in Birmingham), the home team still has an advantage.

Maybe it's just intimidating to not feel like you're at home.

Tim and Marshawn and standing in for greatness

This is an interesting time to be a Cal fan. Tim Leyden over at SI.com wrote an article about the new Harris Poll that's taking over for the AP in the BCS calculations, and the pic that goes with the article on the front page? Marshawn, charging for a TD. Lynch wasn't even a starter last year, even if every time he touched the ball be went to the house and back again (did I mention first touch=TD?). The article isn't about any team in particular, and Leyden got a picture of our boy from Oakland Tech (my local high school) as his cover shot?

So when other, more prominent schools have players who get used as the standard "college football player," I assumed that there was a strange groupthink going on, and it was clearly based on nothing much, because there are 119 I-A teams out there, each of which has 85 scholarships and most of which carry ~20 more players (the math says there are more than 10,000 major college football players in the country every year in Division I-A alone), so how do you pick a single player to represent the whole shebang? The answer is, of course, you let some other guy pick for you, or you pick a nice looking photo, or you pick a guy who wears colors you like or your lucky number.

And then, if enough people share that lucky number* or like those colors or even if enough people think that player is pretty good, he starts getting attention, and eventually, he gets the Heisman Trophy. Because if you don't know they exist, you can't vote for them. And if a guy like Tom Leyden says this guy is good enough to stand in for all of college football? He must be good enough to get a Heisman.

But this is all awfully strange for Cal fans, this groupthink that says our Marshawn is the epitome of college football. We all know he is the best thing since a picnic of sourdough, crab and zinfandel, but we figured everyone else in the country was eating hot dogs and drinking Bud. And we're having trouble responding appropriately, mostly because we have no idea how to do this whole success thing. We Cal fans are several generations of people who grew very good at losing, and winning is always much more complicated.

*Lynch, who has a 30 foot high picture of himself at the North Tunnel in Memorial Stadium, has changed his number from 24 — which he very nearly shared with Eric Zomalt, a free safety in the early 90s, and brother to my favorite player ever, Greg Zomalt, FB — to 10, so that his cousin can be 11 and his best friend 9. Last year, 10 was taken by Burl Toler's grandson, Burl Toler III (to whom Lynch threw a TD in the Stanfurd game, Toler's last). Leyden's picture is of Cal #24.

2005 previews

College Football News are yokels who don't know jack. However, this is interesting:

17. California
The program pulled off a huge coup keeping Jeff Tedford, one of football's hottest coaches, in Berkeley leading the way to one of the school's best recruiting hauls ever with several great JUCO players who'll be among the Pac 10's top stars. Marshawn Lynch is considered by some to be an even better back than J.J. Arrington, the offensive line will be among the best in the country, and there's more than enough team speed to hang stride for stride with anyone on the slate including that group down in L.A.
Relative strength: Offensive line
Relative Weakness: Linebacker
Star of the team: RB Marshawn Lynch, Soph.
Key game: November 12th vs. USC

CFN is ranking all 119 D 1A teams, and given that we lost just about everybody on offense except for the line, and almost the entire front seven on defense, I'd say a little questioning is in order, so 17th at the start of the season isn't bad. (Of course, in the known-nothings, CFN has Notre Dame in the high 40s. Not that I think ND'll be any good, but talk about upsetting the status quo. Lots of people seem to think that the mere presence of Charlie "God" Weis on the sidelines is good for at least three wins.)

Two things, though: "Marshawn Lynch is considered by some to be an even better back than J.J. Arrington." Um, anyone who doesn't consider Marshawn to be a great deal better than J.J. is crazy. J.J. is great, and kind, and a good guy, and a fucking workhorse behind the line (he gained over 550 yards in the last two games of the season; he broke Muncie's single season record of just over 1,400 yards at the Big Game just before halftime, and then ended the season in January with over 2,000 yards). Man can run, and rumor has it he's slated to start at Arizona, which is wonderful for a guy from a small town who didn't get recruited out of college and only started for a single year. [Of course, Arizona sucks so bad they were the only wins for the Fortywhiners last year. In other news, Arizona's Head Coach is Dennis Green, former Stanfurd Head Coach coach. Football is a very small and very incestuous world.]

But Marshawn is better. A lot better. He's so good, his first touch went for a long touchdown. He's so good, his freshman highlight reel lasts an hour. He's so good, he's thrown 2 touchdowns. Better than J.J.? Oh yeah. Better than Chuck Muncie? Probably.

And check this out: relative strength: O-line; star: Lynch, RB. Nothing less than 3,000 yards, I'm telling you. And center Marvin Philip should be a first rounder, if there's any justice in the world.

"Jeff Tedford got what he wanted.'

Last week the most amazing thing happened.

The American Football Coaches Association decided to reveal votes in their NCAA D IA college football poll. The first line of the article is the subject of this post. How strange; just because Tedford's "Sturdy Golden Bears" (as one ESPN announcer insists on calling them, because he's obviously heard the fight song) lost out to the Longhorns in as obvious an example of nepotism as ever existed in college sports, it's all about what Tedford wanted. This narrative started last year in November, and seems to have some pretty powerful staying power. It's strange that Teaff was so vehement about not making the votes public last year, and this year he is fine with it, but the vote on this topic was very close last year, and obviously it's Teaff's job to do whatever the members of the Coaches Association tell him.

This is probably a good thing, what with the whole move toward transparency in situations where there is a great deal at stake. There is a lot of money involved in college football rankings; the difference between Texas' #4 and Cal's #5 in last year's final BCS ranking was $9 million, not including future endorsements, recruits, and national exposure. But part of me thinks that privacy in voting matters too.

Obviously I have an interest in this case. I spent most of December 5th-January 2nd in a horrid fog of agony and anger because I went to San Diego (and lost) rather than to Pasadena. But as much as I wanted the votes to be made public in December, in the harsh light of May, I think it's actually the wrong thing. This might have something to do with the Newsweek kerfluffle about anonymous sources, but it also has to do with the act of voting, which ought to be always private and personal and anonymous. There is value to attaching a name to things that have money involved, but there is also value to being allowed to express an opinion that won't come back to bite you because it contradicts of public position you are forced to hold.

Frankly, I think the best solution to the problem — and I thought this in December as well – is to allow all 119 D IA coaches, and any D IAA coach who has played a D IA opponent that week, to vote on the rankings. It makes no sense to only allow slightly over 50% of the eligible participants to vote.

The fact that college coaches don't have the time or resources to track all 119 teams in D IA football shouldn't actually matter. They all have access to the same possible information (as happens in voting all over the world), and they all should be allowed to participate, anonymously.

Now, the issues with the Associated Press poll and the BCS are a different matter entirely, though no less disquieting.