Breaking news: Tedford wins in Southern California!

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

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?

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

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.

Requirements to be an all-america selection

Kevin Johnson of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger selects the all-county teams in several sports. He has decided that there are non-athletic minimum requirements to be selected to those all-county teams.

• Athletes must have a B-average or higher GPA to be considered.
• Athletes must have participated in some other school activity.
• Athletes must have done some type of volunteer or community service work in the past.
• Athletes must have maintained some dedication or commitment to achieve significant accomplishments while playing team sports.

We know about the Draddy Trophy, but what would it look like if All-American selections were made on the basis of those additional qualifications?

Special? Athletes? What?

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that "seventy percent of scholarship athletes at UCLA over the previous three years were special admits," students admitted after not qualifying under the ordinary admissions policy. Only three percent of the general student body at UCLA are special admits, usually students with exemplary talents or who come from backgrounds that don't generally result in college attendance. At Cal, the figure for athletes is 52%.

At both schools, the vast majority of these athletic special admits are football players.

This is a disservice to college athletics, but it also disserves the rest of the student bodies at schools which value their athletic achievement more than making sure their students are capable of performing to the level expected at their chosen institutions. If UCLA wants to make 70% of their athletes special admits based on exemplary talents outside the classroom, 70% of the general student body should also be admitted on the basis of non-academic talents. Alternatively, if they only want 3% of the student body to be admitted on a non-academic basis, then only 3% of athletes should be admitted without qualifying through the regular admissions policy.

The drawback to this is obvious: Stanford has recently moved to a system of requiring all applicants, athletes included, to be admitted through the admissions office, and the school has all but stopped employing special admits. Of course, Stanford's football team went 1-11 last year.

Scott Fujita, flaming linebacker

Scott Fujita's grandparents were interned during World War II, and he wants everyone to know about it. His father was born in at the Gila River internment camp in Arizona. his grandfather enlisted in the 442nd Regiment, and his grandmother received a reparations check and a personal apology letter 47 years later.

David Flming writes, "It still angers him that the subject was largely ignored by his teachers. To counter that he studied and wrote on the subject frequently when he was at Cal."

And Fujita adds,

"The value of telling my story is that the topic of Japanese internment will come up," he says. "It helps to educate people, especially in this day and age of heightened paranoia and fear. That kind of thing cannot happen again. There are things going on right now in this country that are just baffling. We may not be taking people and forcibly relocating them but there are many liberties that are being suspended right now. It's a delicate issue. Obviously we are at war and we all have to be smart and observant of our surroundings but at the same time any prejudice has to be unacceptable."

Graduations rates for bowl teams

AP reports that, according to the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport,

"Forty-eight schools [playing on bowl games] graduated two-thirds or more of their white players, but just 18 met that mark for black players. Twelve schools graduated less than 40 percent of their black football players, while no program fell below that standard for white players."

BCS schools had a higher graduation rate than their counterparts in general for both black and white sudents, but the white students outperformed the black students by 25 percent (81% of white BCS student athletes graduate, compared to 56% of black BCS student athletes). This is nearly double the average discrepancy, as division-wide 62% of white students and 49% of black students graduate (a 13% difference).

It's good to know that schools that play in bowl games have transparently higher academic achievement rates. However, it's impossible to know based on this data whether the numbers are higher because standards are higher, or whether the numbers are higher because schools that compete at an elite level make sure — by any means necessary — that their athletes are academically eligible.

Moreover, the even larger gap between white and black student atheletes in bowl schools is indicative that these schools, while doing more for their students, are not doing enough for their at-risk students. For every future NFL player, there are half a dozen more who don't make it: these students deserve an college degree.

Cal's Academic Game Plan

The Cal Sports Report for the first week of December included a segment on Cal's Academic Game Plan. This past semester, no Cal football players were on Academic Probation. That's pretty impressive.

Irony Week in College Football

Florida's first (and thus far only) National Championship was in 1996, won after a game against Florida State.

This is the same Florida team that had already lost to Florida State in their last regular season game.

If Florida wasn't quite as good at Florida State at the end of November (the final score was 24-21, in Tallahassee), why in the world did they get to play Florida State again in January?

Irony of ironies? Ohio State was 10-1 going into the Rose Bowl, having lost only to Michigan, and that by four points.

National Champion Men's Water Polo!

Cal won its 12th National Championship in Men's Water Polo today by beating USC, 7-6.

Go Bears!

Five in a Row!

26-17! Of course, that means we almost lost to 1-10 Stanford at home, but still.

And UCLA beat USC 13-9, which means Cal is Pac-10 Conference Co-Champion for the first time in my lifetime.

We're 9-3, conference co-champs, and playing the Holiday Bowl for the second time in three years (San Diego on December 28th against Texas A&M. Go Bears!). Jeff Tedford is absolutely amazing, and he needs a raise.

And of course, we've got the Axe! We've got the Axe! We've got the Axe!

[And how about one of my favorite cheers?

Give 'em the Axe, the Axe, the Axe;
give 'em the Axe, the Axe, the Axe;
give 'em the Axe, give 'em the Axe, give 'em the Axe,
where?
Right in the neck, the neck, the neck;
right in the neck, the neck, the neck;
right in the neck, right in the neck, right in the neck,
THERE!]

Pac-10 Co-Champs!

For the first time ever, Cal is Pac-10 Champion in football! (The Pac-10 only came into existence in 1978, and our 1975 co-championship was in the Pac-8.)

Let me repeat:

Pacific 10 Co-Champions!

Go Bears!