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.

Requirements to be an all-america selection

2006-12-10T18:57:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-12-10T18:05:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-03T16:39:00.000-08:00

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

Go Bears!

Five in a Row!

2006-12-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

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!

Good thing they're not playing the University of California Golden Bears from Merced

2006-11-30T17:17:00.000-08:00

Texas A&M Athletic Director, Bill Byrne made the announcement in his weekly column: “I'm glad to tell you where we're going bowling: we'll be in 'America's Most Beautiful City,' San Diego, California. We're playing the University of California Golden Bears from Berkeley.”

The real reason there will never be a playoff in college football

2006-11-30T00:37:00.000-08:00

This year, college bowl games will pay out more than $187 million to NCAA schools throughout the United States. More than $820 million has been paid out in just the past five years and the bowls will conservatively payout more than $2.1 billion over the next ten years.

That's a pretty compelling argument against a playoff, don't you think?

What I want out of a computer ranking system

2006-11-29T21:43:00.000-08:00

I might someday actually devise a program to rank teams in some way that I find favorable, but until them, I'm going to lay out the premises behind what I consider the most useful determinants for ranking.

1. Record. Clearly, winners should be ranked above losers.

2. However, winners who beat other winners should be ranked above winners who beat losers, and losers who closely lose to winners should be ranked about the same as winners who closely beat losers. And this should go at least three-deep into the schedule: opponents record, opponents' opponents record, and opponents' opponents' opponents record. This should also, in theory, give enough closure to the system to take into account approximately 150 teams but only 12 games.

3. Division I Playoff Subdivision games should be counted differently than Division I Bowl Subdivision games. Whether that means they only count as .75% of a win (and 1.33% of a loss), or a team is penalized for playing a Division I Playoff Subdivision team matters less than taking this into account.

3A. Similarly, playing within your conference allocation should count differently than playing outside of it. This would be better served by including both information on the conference—playing and closely losing a BCS conference game counts more than playing and handily winning a non-BCS conference game—and by accounting for Athletic Department budget—schools with budgets of over $75 million (Texas) who play schools with budgets of $13 million (North Texas) are clearly not operating on a level playing field.

4. Home field advantage counts. Home wins should count less than road wins; perhaps 8 home wins is equal to 6 road wins. Neutral wins aren't as good as road wins, but are better than home wins.

5. Score counts, but not raw score. We'll do it logarithmically. That is, if a one-point win results in the winner being considered as being one point better than the loser, a 10-point win makes the winner only two points better than the loser, while a 100-point win makes the winner three points better than the loser. (Clearly, there are some bugs to be worked out).

6. Because football is a game played by very young men, the emotional aspects of the game should count, too. Therefor, both the rankings at the time of play are taken into account—beating the AP #2 team in the country in the second week of the season takes effort, even if that team ends up losing five or six games afterward—and the rankings at the end of the season—beating the team that eventually becomes #2 at the end of the season in the first game of the year still counts, even if they weren't ranked there then—are important to acknowledge.

7. The rankings shall not be released until there is sufficient data to make the rankings comprehensible. At the bare minimum, this would require four or five games.

I have no idea how to compile these general guidelines into a comprehensive system, however. But it's a start.

Pac-10 All-Academic Teams

2006-11-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

First Team:
RB Byron Storer, California Sr. 3.44 Mass Communications
DB Randolph Bundy, California Sr. 3.10 American Studies

Second Team:
C Alex Mack, California So. 3.47 Legal Studies
DL John Allen, California Jr. 3.24 Political Science
LB Gregory Van Hoesen, California Jr. 3.17 Art Practice

Honorable Mention:
OG Noris Malele, So.; OG Erik Robertson, Sr.; OT Scott Smith, Sr.

Lynch and Hughes Pac-10 Players of the Year

2006-11-28T20:04:00.000-08:00

If there was ever any doubt about how far Cal has come in the last five years, this should dispel it: Marshawn Lynch, Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year and Daymeion Hughes, Pat Tillman Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year.

According to the Pac-10 press release,

Lynch is just the third California player to be selected Pac-10 offensive player of the year and the first since quarterback Mike Pawlawski in 1991

and

Hughes becomes just the second California player to be selected Pac-10 defensive player of the year, following cornerback Deltha O'Neal in 1998.

Cal had seven first-team All-Pac-10 selections (including DeSean Jackson at two positions, PR and WR), and Hughes, Lynch, and Brandon Mebane were consensus first team choices. Overall, 19 Cal players were honored.

Byron Storer was a first-team All-Academic and second-team All-Pac-10 selection, Alex Mack was a first-team All-Pac-10 and a second-team All-Academic selection, and Erik Robertson was a honorable mention for both All-Academic and All-Pac-10 honors.

Holiday Bowl

2006-11-28T19:52:00.000-08:00

The 2004 Holiday Bowl was the first bowl game I'd been to, and one of the most depressing games I've ever seen.

Let's hope the 2006 version is a little better: Holiday Bowl Bid Gives Cal Unprecedented Four Straight Bowl Trips

2nd place in the Pac-10 again... by PhantomBear

2006-11-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

After the USC game, there was a bit of blame tossed around about Cal's poor execution.

PhantomBear responded with an impassioned rant:

Does anyone think that is REALLY a problem after 5 years? Tedford has "lost" something he had his first two years?

I have done my share of pretending like we somehow are doing worse every year, BUT, here are some of my little "facts"

FIRST and foremost, Tedford has improved by about a game a year (2004 was a fluke IMHO based on what has happened before and after). That means that this year is the first year we REALLY BELONG in the Holiday Bowl, so this is not "here we go again," it is, "how far we have come!" We can almost count on a better next year every year.

SECOND, PC at SC is a dynasty. They win and win a lot. It takes a fluke to beat them, or if you are lucky, your best day and their worst. thats the way it is. Thing is Dynasty's only last about 5 or 6 years before they burn out or the rest of the league advances to the new level (changing from old offense to new offense etc). In that time, teams like Texas, maybe Ohio St and maybe Cal one day, will their way to the top over unbeatable teams.

THIRD, It took Bowden 17 years to build a national championship team. he was second place a LOT in that time. Texas was KNOWN to choke against Oklahoma and come in second every year, and then one year they took that step. Most teams stay in second a while and then take the step. Tedford will naturally take the step one day.

FOURTH, Tedford changed from his misdirection/aggressive play calling, to a "we have to players to beat any team" mentality. Instead of out tricking the other guy with play calling, he has changed to out playing. THAT IS GOOD in the long run. Against PC he might need to change that for now, and maybe he has swung to far to fast, but coaches that have to trick their way through a season dont win many games (Dorrell tricked and lucked their way to 10 wins, fake punts and garbage...I don't want to be like that).

LAST, Tedford is a Cal Coach, not a coach. It seems like the 2 million is less important to him than the fans and players and the school. The man threw up after the Tennessee game. In Heaters blog or article he noted that Tedford came to make a mark and leave, and now he bleeds blue and gold. The way he gave the students a thumbs up after the game, and changed our team from a loser on the field and in the classroom(comparatively) to a winner in both places...That is amazing, and is what Tradition and legacy's are built with.

Basically I dont think Tedford has lost anything. The 10-2 season was out of the linier progress Tedford has brought, and spoiled us into thinking Championships are won in 5 years...

The biggest thing we forget is that national championship seasons take 2 seasons to build, Tedford needs back to back GREAT seasons for a true NC hunt. Going undefeated does not even guarantee a championship. League Championships are hard, even harder when your program is building at the same time that a dynasty is emerging, and we still don't have a good locker room! Yet Tedford STILL would have gone to the rose bowl any year between maybe 1993 and before 2004 with 2004's team, he just was unlucky to have that team in 04.

Bottom line is every year we can honestly look to the next year to be better. VERY few people are alive that can say that about Cal football at any other time.

Being a Cal fan has become very very very good.

Information! Data! Make arguments based on fact!

2006-11-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

PhantomBear just found this: a frighteningly comprehensive record of college football's history, including complete conference standings, game results, and draft picks.

It's a little overwhelming, but for people who like facts in addition to explosive expository and opinion, it's a great place to lose a few days.

People unclear on the concept

2006-11-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

Brad Edwards (ESPN Insider), says that regardless of what happens this year, someone is going to be upset:

Either way, a team with a lot of clout would feel jilted by the system, inciting another major BCS controversy and even more cries for a playoff.

Although it's certainly not what the fans are looking for, the final three weeks of the season are really starting to take the shape of a playoff bracket. Saturday's Michigan-Ohio State game is essentially a national semifinal, with the winner earning a spot in the championship game. If USC beats Cal on Saturday, the following week's game between Notre Dame and USC could almost be like the other national semi. But if Cal beats USC, and the Trojans then beat the Irish, it's possible that the SEC Championship Game could serve as that other semifinal … if Florida and Arkansas are both there with 11-1 records.

Not only do I agree that what we have looks a lot like playoffs already but is a lot more fun, but I have to wonder whether the people who are going to be crying for a playoff actually watch college football. I know it's a cliché, but the whole "season a playoff" thing is true if the best teams agree to play each other, and never more so than this year.

Script it out: of twenty teams that have been considered very good this year (Arkansas, Auburn, Boise State, Boston College, Clemson, Cal, Florida, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Rutgers, Texas, USC, Wake Forest, West Virginia, Wisconsin), all of them but Boise State and Cal play at least two others on the list, and all except Boise State, Cal, Oklahoma, Texas, and the three Big East teams play at least three.

With a little judicious scheduling (I'm looking at you, Big East, Big XII, and Cal), we have a playoff system already. And this doesn't even include the conference championship games.

We've had two #1 vs. #2 match-ups through scheduling alone already, which was exactly what the BCS was designed to create.

We don't need a playoff, and we don't need the BCS. What we do need is more flexible scheduling, faster, and with an eye to creating the best match-ups. Next year, put Ohio State on USC's schedule, make Notre Dame play Florida, send Texas to Arkansas.

What I said

2006-11-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I proposed something unorthodox in this age of BCS insanity: if the #1 and #2 teams play each other in the last game of the season, we know the national champion.

Stewart Mandel agrees:

[T]here are only two national-title caliber teams this season … and they're playing this Saturday. After watching Michigan in person Saturday for the first time since the Notre Dame game, I fully believe that The Game is a toss-up. This is not a slight against Ohio State, which is still quite clearly the team to beat. But the Wolverines are that good -- particularly their defense. Neither teams' Big Ten schedule has been particularly daunting this season, but they've both gone out and won convincingly every week. So when I see Florida barely surviving South Carolina (Big Ten equivalent: Penn State) or Texas losing to Kansas State (Big Ten equivalent: Purdue), it only reinforces that OSU and Michigan are in their own stratosphere this year.

More perception than reality

2006-11-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

"Rutgers would be left out of the final game in Glendale, Ariz., because it's Rutgers, and because the system is based more on perception than reality, and because the past is every bit as important as the present."

There's a reason only a few teams have ever won a national championship.

According the College Football Data Warehouse, this list is comprised of 44 teams total and those numbers include the championships allocated by about three dozen or so "selectors" over the years; the problem is that exalted list includes five Ivy League teams and the University of Chicago. Only 23 current NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision teams have ever won more than 1, and that list includes Army (1914 and 1944-1946) Cal (1920-1922 and 1937), Maryland (1951, 1953).

Rutgers is, not surprisingly, not on the list.

Princeton, on the other hand, has won 24 national championships, the first in 1869 (although Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 that year) and the last in 1935.

Stanford's last win?

2006-11-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

Stanford was winless from 12 November 2005, 364 days ago (20-17 against Oregon State) to 11 November 2006 (20-3 against Washington).

That's a long time.

The Cal board is blaming the players, but...

2006-11-11T23:39:00.000-08:00

Tedford said, "As coaches, I'll take the blame for the loss. Our offense didn't do enough, and that directly falls on my shoulders."

45-42/44-34

2006-11-11T21:57:00.000-08:00

It seems Louisville's defense, however pathetic, is a lot stronger than Texas' defense.

But is the Big East better defensively than the Big XII?

Let's give Wisconsin a shot!

2006-11-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

One of the one-loss teams never mentioned in the national championship conversation is Wisconsin, and because of the Big Ten rotation, they don't play Ohio St. this year. If Ohio State beats Michigan, I say give Wisconsin a shot at Ohio State; the worst the happens is we have a triple-one-loss scenario like people are predicting for the Big East (because everyone thinks WVU is going to beat Rutgers).

Well, that was depressing

2006-11-11T17:08:00.000-08:00

20-24 against a team that was 4-5. And I hate Mike Stoops. On the plus side, Stanford finally won.

On the even more plus side, go Terps! (And here's hoping Woods is okay.)

[And! Not that I'm superstitious or anything, except that I totally am, they wore their road whites for the first time since Tennessee, and as soon as they ran out on the field, I said, "Oh, shit." Let's hope Tedford dresses them accordingly next week against USC.]

Either the Big East is a BCS conference, or it isn't

2006-11-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

Everyone is wondering, in the unlikely event that there are two and only two undefeated teams from BCS conferences in the country come Dec. 3rd, if those two teams should meet for the national championship.

Now, Mike Tranghese will undoubtably not get too upset if Rutgers is kept out in favor of, say, Florida but instead goes to the Orange Bowl. That's still an amazing story.

But this begs a question: if the Big East is a BCS conference, and is treated like all the other BCS conferences, and there are only two teams that are undefeated in those BCS conferences, why wouldn't those two teams play for the national championship?

Either the Big East is a BCS conference, and its undefeated conference champion should be treated like any other undefeated conference champion — and Rutgers get a shot at Ohio St.;
OR
BCS-conference affiliation quantitatively matters less than individual schedule — in which case the strength of schedule should be a factor in these decisions, and a team like USC which schedules three OOC teams that are a combined 23-5 and whose conference slate is 44-39 should get the nod ahead of Ohio St., whose OOC opponents are 24-16 and whose conference opponents are 40-40 — if we exclude Michigan, the Big Ten slate that Ohio St. plays is 30-40).

Things that are cool:

2006-11-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

The Empire State Building lit up in red for the Rutgers-Louisville game.

Anyone got a picture?

Joke of the week

2006-11-09T13:59:00.000-08:00

Ted Miller's skinny on Saturday's Washington-Stanford matchup in Seattle:

"Stanford finally proving it's worthy of the Ivy League"

(from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

A laugh a minute in Berkeley

2006-11-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

"As practice closed (on Wednesday), Tedford attempted some deep passes with his quarterbacks running routes. The coach was just 1-for-4, but it had more to do with the quarterbacks' hands than the former Fresno State QB's arm."

Rutgers: unbeaten at home against ranked opponents...

2006-11-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

I thought Cal had a history of futility:

According to Jake Curtis,

"[Monday was] the 137th anniversary of the first college football game ever played: a 6-4 victory by Rutgers over Princeton before a few hundred spectators at Rutgers. On Thursday night, Rutgers again will host a milestone game, because it will be the first time since the Scarlet Knights began playing football on Nov. 6, 1869, that a ranked Rutgers team will face a ranked opponent."

Dave Newhouse interviews Marshawn Lynch

2006-11-08T13:08:00.000-08:00

It seems Marshawn really is from Oaktown. He probably voted for Barbara Lee, too.

Newhouse: What's the biggest change in you since coming to Cal?

Lynch: I just look at life more critical. Things I didn't pay much attention to before I got here, I've opened my eyes to, like a whole another side of the world.

Newhouse: Anything specific?

Lynch: Mainly being a young black athlete. A lot of the classes here deal with race and gender. Just knowing where I'm from, there's not a lot of people at Cal that came from the same background.

Newhouse: Have you grown from this disparity?

Lynch: Yeah, just being aware and knowledgeable of those things. When I was taking the SATs, I was sitting next to somebody who had SAT prep courses — one-on-one tutoring to get ready. And all that played a factor into getting (that somebody) into school. So it's just looking at life more critical.

If you get a chance: the "run over by a car" brothers

2006-11-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

ESPN has a great article (Insider access only) about sophomores Mike Tepper (OT) and Rulon Davis (DE), who within three weeks of each other in 2005 were both run over — Tepper by a Chrysler, Davis by a semi. A year later, they've both played fairly important roles for the team this year: Tepper has started two games in place of Andrew Cameron, and Davis in providing depth.

Thomas DeCoud!

2006-11-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

A friend of my brother's who is a sports writer in the Chicago area, saw Marshawn Lynch's TD reception last night on a ESPN highlight and said, "Man, he's good."

We in Bear Territory agree.

On the other hand, Thomas DeCoud is great.

Watch this highlight at ESPN (first, they show Lynch TD #1, and then...):

UCLA is punting (it's late in the third quarter, and this is only the second punt of the game by either team), and they make the mistake of punting it right to DeSean Jackson, who had already returned two punts for TDs this year (plus a third one last year: his first collegiate touch ever was a 49-yard punt return for a TD). Jackson starts left, but there are a couple of Bruins there. He goes right, and there are three guys bearing down on him: #2 sophomore WR Ryan Graves, and twin linebackers Kyle (#54) and Korey (#55) Bosworth. All three were in great position to tackle Jackson.

Thomas DeCoud had other ideas.

The best part was the crowd noise: the entire stadium gasped at DeCoud's hit, and it took a while for the crowd to realize that Jackson was still running.

DeCoud knocked both himself and Korey Bosworth down, and neither played again. They were both down for a very long time; Bosworth had a concussion and fell a second time walking off the field. He was able to return to LA with the team, but it was pretty scary for a while. Today's papers report that DeCoud didn't even known Jackson had scored until Jackson thanked DeCoud for the block after DeCoud returned to the sidelines.

Jackson said he didn't even see the block, but he heard it.

If Ohio State and Michigan play each other on the last day of the season

2006-10-31T21:01:00.000-08:00

And Ohio State and Michigan are ranked #1 and #2 when they play, then why isn't that the game to decide the National Champion?

It's the end of the season (because college football shouldn't be played after Thanksgiving, and at least the Big Ten knows that).

It's the #1 and #2 teams against each other, putting it all on the line for the title of best team in the nation.

It's mythical anyway, so why not this game rather than another mythical game two months later?

None of the other options — neither the Big East undefeated that isn't yet nor the one-loss teams that are clearly not as good as whomever beat them already — are as good as Michigan or Ohio State.

So why isn't the national champion going to be crowned on Nov. 18th?

(This is also known as, "How the BCS fucked up college football again.")

Sagarin scares me

2006-10-30T14:26:00.000-08:00

In both his ELO-Chess and Predictor ratings, Sagarin has us in the top three -- #3 in the ELO-Chess, #2 in the Predictor. The only team Sagarin thinks we'd lose to is Ohio State. Good thing they're not going to the Rose Bowl.

Even More on Massey (and Weis' complaints)

2006-10-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

60 Minutes Charlie was complaining last week that Notre Dame didn't move in the polls despite winning (and were passed by idle Florida); this week, they were leapfrogged by an idle Cal.

Good thing Charlie doesn't know about Massey's comparative rankings, because Cal is #4, according to a consensus of 58 rankings systems.

Notre Dame? #12.

[Note: I don't buy that we're the fourth best team in the country, but I do think we're better than Notre Dame.]

Complicated Permutations

2006-10-29T12:18:00.000-08:00

Everyone's been talking about the various ways Cal can get to a bowl game, and which bowl game is most likely. The two most talked about games are the Rose Bowl and the National Championship Game (strictly speaking, not a bowl at all).

However, all the complicated scenarios are entirely too much to think about when the situation is still to easy: win, and we have nothing to worry about. Lose, and we probably deserve the Holiday Bowl.

It's not that tough after all.

Breaking News!

2006-10-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

Temple won!

TEMPLE WON!!

28-14 over Bowling Green (4-5).

And now... Stanford has the 2nd longest losing streak in the country, because Temple won!

My other favorite team

2006-10-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Someone else likes Rutgers!

I wouldn't say that they're on the national radar just yet, but there are some indications the team has started to attract boosters outside its own zip code. For instance, the last time they were ranked as high as 16th in the Associated Press poll, college football had only 13 teams. ESPN has snared broadcast rights to a bunch of Rutgers games away from camcorder-crazed players' fathers. Somebody from Sports Illustrated called the athletic director's office looking for directions, or it might just have been a pizza delivery guy who got lost.

In re: next week's game against UCLA

2006-10-26T17:46:00.000-07:00

The UCLA game is the Joe Roth Memorial Game.

Mike Silver of Sports Illustrated (formerly of the Daily Cal) interviewed Marshawn Lynch and Robert Jordan last week during Cal's bye, and during the conversation, the Oregon yellow-on-blue uniform came up.

Silver noted, "I think we should go with black-and-gold, like the old California license plate," and Marshawn replied, "That'd be nice. What I really want is to wear those Joe Roth (era, circa 1975) jerseys -- the royal blue with the bear stickers on the helmet."

Jon Carroll on Marlon Wood

2006-10-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

Jon Carroll, colunist for the San Francisco Chronicle, is not a sports fan. However, he had reason to comment on two catches made last week.

The other catch was not particularly athletic, although it did require calm under pressure. It happened at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, home of the Play, the five-lateral end-of-game miracle play that allowed Cal to beat Stanford, an event that always makes God smile. This time it was Cal's opponent, the University of Washington, that was momentarily visited by the triumph fairy.

Last play of the game: Washington, down a touchdown, 40 yards from the goal line. Washington quarterback Carl Bonnell threw it high and far; three athletic Cal defenders rose to intercept it. It bounced off all 30 outstretched fingers and fell into the hands of a lightly regarded Washington receiver named Marlon Wood.

He could have dropped it; no one would have blamed him if he had dropped it. No one expected that the play would be successful. But he caught it, turned and struggled an additional 2 yards for the touchdown. Cal won in overtime, so Wood's catch became a footnote. Yet it's something that he'll have forever. In Seattle, it'll be, "Marlon Wood? Say, aren't you the guy ..." "Yup, that's me. I caught that ball."

Berkeley, Police, and fraught relationships.

2006-10-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

Pat Forde thinks Tedford is the highest ranking college coach who is not escorted by a police force of some sort.

The Pac-10 and WAC aren't as into the police presence/college worship that the south is (especially the SEC and Big XII), but I would imagine even if the rest of the coaches in the Pac-10 wanted, Tedford being escorted anywhere by the police wouldn't really fly in Berkeley — even if it was the UC Police.

Police escort means something different here.

But I think the more important factor is the same reason that Cal fans have been bemoaning the lack of sell-outs, the low attendance, the lack of enthusiasm generally for college football in the Bay Area: it's just not that important out here.

We have other things to think about, other interests, other concerns — and not just the NFL. As Forde notes,

Actually, it's only theoretically about safety. In reality, trooper presence is partly about ease of movement through fired-up (or liquored-up) crowds. And it's mostly about status -- for the coach and for the cops, who seem to excel at working their way into the background of TV shots.

Our crowds aren't usually that fired up (too many people have theater tickets on Saturday night, or a concert to get to, or dinner reservations), and we certainly aren't about to accord any sort of celebrity status to our coaches.

(On the anniversay of the Oakland Firestorm, we'd love to give celebrity status to our firemen and police officers, but that would be for doing their jobs, not for escorting coaches.)

An explanation for why Texas is ranked 9th in the BCS

2006-10-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

The computers think Texas is, on average, the 15th best team in the country. Why?

Stewart Mandel might have one reason:

Here's an interesting little factoid for you: Texas has played seven games this season without leaving its home state. Furthermore, the 'Horns have yet to face an opposing team in its home stadium, having played five home games, a neutral-site game against Oklahoma (Dallas) and a "road" game against Rice at Houston's Reliant Stadium.

Every single computer ranking takes into account the location of a game: home games are easier to win than road games, and neutral games are somewhere in between. If Texas hasn't left the state yet, and their wins are over teams with a combined record of 18-21, then all those 42-14 games aren't actually that impressive to the computers.

Maps + College Football = awesome!

2006-10-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

I just found this via The Wizard of Odds: MapGameDay.

This is fantastic, and it includes a nation-wide map of the teams in the top-25 polls (like this one for the Sagarin rankings).

the best poll ever

2006-10-18T00:54:00.000-07:00

19. Rutgers - I'm starting to get pretty scared that Rutgers will accidentally make it into the National Championship Game.

(In other news: 8. Auburn - Auburn's victory over Florida is making Arkansas' victory over Auburn look extra good, thus making USC's victory over Arkansas look really extra good, thus ruining Auburn's BCS ranking. The Tigers really dropped the ball on that one.)

Rankings, again....

2006-10-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

This week's Massey comparison
[Note: the verticle is the consensus, and the horizontal is the correlation: that is, the rankings on the far left are the ones that are most correlated to the set of rankings as a whole; the larger the standard deviation across your top-25, the farther to the right on the layout you are.]

Three of the five least corrolary rankings this week? In order, AP (5th least corrolary), Harris (4th), and USA Today/Coaches (3rd).

Out of the 95 rankings taken into account this week, Massey's number indicate that the three most influential rankings are three of the least correlary to the way the rest of the country sees college football.

But at least everyone agrees about the top three teams.

More Slingbox info -- it turns out this was a big deal

2006-10-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

Nobody from Sling Media scored a touchdown or picked off any passes for the California Golden Bears on Saturday, but more than 3,000 football fans were rooting for the company just the same.

I have an entirely understandable fondness for teams that are historically awful

2006-10-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

BRAD EDWARDS, ESPN Research:

When Vanderbilt kicked a field goal in the final seconds to beat No. 16 Georgia, it was more than just a rare SEC road win for the Commodores. It was the end of the longest losing streak against ranked teams in the history of the AP poll, which has been around since 1936. Entering Saturday, Vanderbilt had lost 54 straight games to AP-ranked teams -- a drought that began in 1992 -- and had not beaten a ranked team on the road since knocking off Alabama in Mobile on Oct. 7, 1950. To top it all off, it was Vanderbilt's first win in school history on the campus of a ranked opponent.

Cal-WSU isn't on TV, but...

2006-10-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

The co-founder of the company that makes the Slingbox, Jason Krikorian, is a Cal grad. So when he heard that the Cal-WSU game wasn't going to be televised (after the Cal-OSU game wasn't televised, either), he offered his company's product to Cal so fans could watch the game.

The school will be using Sling Media's Slingbox device to stream the scoreboard feed from WSU's Martin Stadium over the Internet back to Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, where Cal fans will be able to watch the game on the scoreboard, free of charge.

Broadcasting and Cable, a television industry journal, thinks that this might revolutionize the industry.

Cal has two Fine Arts (Art Practice) majors on the team

2006-10-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

Only one of Cal's two art practice majors is starting.

CBS did a special segment on the two, starting CB (and many people's informal pre- and mid-season All-American) Daymeion Hughes and LB Greg Van Hoesen.

Heismans? In Berkeley? Moooooooo!

2006-10-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

Cal has what some people are calling a legitimate Heisman candidate, and it's not Marshawn Lynch (605 yards on 86 carries with 4 rushing TDs; his 7.0 yards per carry is 7th in the country, and his 605 rushing yards are 14th nationwide).

The shocking news is that it isn't DeSean Jackson, either, he of the eight-game TD reception streak dating back to last year and 8 receiving TDs in six games so far this year (and oh, yeah, two gorgeous punt returns for touchdowns so far).

Nope, the shocker is that Gene Menez thinks Nate Longshore, even after his abysmal game at Tennessee, is a contender. And the stats back him up: 102-157 for 1410 yards, 17 TDs and 5 INTs. The guy is a first-year starter (the best thing he had to say about the Minnesota game was that it was "fun" to finally play in the fourth quarter of a game: he broke his ankle in the first half of the opener last year, and was pulled at Tennessee), and looks like a #1 draft pick.

More on Massey

2006-10-10T00:12:00.000-07:00

The consensus across 68 rankings is that Cal is the #7 team in the nation.

I think that's a little generous, but it's also pretty satisfying.

For the record at the halfway point, my top 25 looks something like this (in alphabetical order, because until they play each other or numerous of the same teams, it's hard to tell who's better than whom):

First tier:

Boise State
Florida
Louisville
Michigan
Ohio State
USC
West Virginia

Second Tier:

Cal
Iowa
Missouri
Notre Dame
Tennessee
Texas
Wisconsin
Georgia Tech

Third Tier:

Arkansas
Auburn
Boston College
Clemson
LSU
Navy
Oregon
Rutgers
Tulsa
Washington

The first of the five things Stewart Mandel learned this weekend

2006-10-09T23:47:00.000-07:00

1) That the national title race is down to nine contenders. They are: Ohio State, USC, Michigan, Florida, West Virginia, Texas, Louisville, Tennessee and Cal.

?!

Putting Tennessee in perspective

2006-10-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

Thirteen different Golden Bears have earned their first career starts in the first four games this year. Redshirt freshmen Cameron Morrah (TE) and Syd'Quan Thompson (CB) were both starters in their first collegiate games at Tennessee, while sophomore Alex Mack (C), senior Bryan Deemer (OG), junior Justin Moye (LB), junior Brandon Hampton (ROV) and junior Thomas DeCoud (FS) also had starting debuts against the Volunteers.

So: three of our four defensive backs were starting their first game in Neyland stadium, and two of our offensive linemen were as well. Which were the worst parts of our team that day? The secondary and the offensive line play.

I suppose people can keep asking questions about that game, as long as they actually listen to the answers.

Some very impressive stats from the last game...

2006-10-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

Category:	Cal	Oregon
First Half Plays:	26	44
First Half Time of Possession:	10:45	19:15
First Half Score:	28	10
Second Half Plays:	42	21
Second Half Time of Possession:	22:42	7:18
Final Score:	45	24

That's pretty impressive ball control — both quick strike control and grind it out control.

Wishful thinking?

2006-10-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

A little bit of wishful thinking from the Washington State athletic Department in its press release for this weekend's game: "The WSU Cougars 4-2 overall and 2-1 in Pacific-10 Conference play, host the California Bears, 5-2, 3-1, Saturday in a 2 p.m. at Martin Stadium."

Cal is, of course, 5-1, 3-0 in the Pac-10.

Things people thought before Saturday

2006-10-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

Last week in response to Oregon Head Coach Mike Bellotti feeling a little unloved now that Cal Head Coach Jeff Tedford has been anointed quarterback guru of the millennium, Rod Gilmore wrote, "Saturday, you can judge for yourself as to which quarterback guru should get the credit for Oregon's rich tradition of developing quarterbacks."

I guess that question has been answered.

[Dixon: 20-35 for 263, 2TD, 3INT; Longshore: 14-26 for 189, 3TD, 1INT. But at the half, the numbers were Dixon 10-18 for 94, 0TDs, 2INTs (77.2 passing efficiency) and Longshore 4-11 69 yards, 2TDs, 1INT (130.9 passing efficiency). And Longshore was playing abysmally all game.]

The only poll you need to know

2006-10-04T01:22:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Massey provides rankings for the BCS based on a computer model. He also provides something much more useful: a ranking comparison based on over 50 different rankings that provides a meta-ranking analysis based on the consensus value of their ranked positions.

He notes,

The ranking comparison gladly accepts any ranking that results from:

* A human poll conducted by a major publication or group (e.g. the AP)
* An advanced computer rating.
* A mathematically based sequential rating (e.g. Elo's update formula)
* Publicly well-known systems (e.g. the RPI)

(FYI --

The plain text version sorts the teams by consensus ranking vertically, and sorts the ranking systems by correlation horizontally. Team names are listed at regular intervals so that they will always be visible. The high (red) and low (blue) rankings for each team are highlighted.)

The comparison is updated every week after the new rankings come out, and while it's fun to argue about single polls (like the AP or Sagarin), this type of meta-analysis and the development of a consensus across more than 50 different polls is enlightening.

Go Read Sunday Morning QB

2006-09-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

In regards to Notre Dame this year: "Reality is strongly advised to cease and desist any future efforts to interfere with the inevitable march of history towards these inviolable events...."

[Of course, see also Ohio State and the power of non-reality based thinking.]

I'm still getting used to this winning thing

2006-09-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

"Ryan Torain did what few other Sun Devils could at Memorial Stadium. He made California look bad."

Of course, if one were to actually look examine the game's outcome, both statistics and score, one would realize that Coach Gregory was looking to first defend the pass — traditionally ASU's strength — and focus on All-American tight end candidate Zach Miller (2 catches for 19 yards), and second defend the run.

The over 200 yards rushing, 190 of which for first-time starter Rudy Torain, included only one rushing TD, but Carpenter threw for 177 and 4 INTs (with 2 touchdowns) on 16 completions in 36 attempts. ASU was fairly unbalanced, rushing over 45 times, and actually gained more yards per rush attempt than pass attempt (4.9 to 5.2).

This emphasis on the run didn't translate to a win, because the secondary preyed on Carpenter to a remarkable extent because the defensive front was playing to contain Carpenter and the run, not to stop the run.

Maybe our defense looked bad in giving up 400 yards of offense. But they also scored 14 points and held last year's efficiency leader to a QB rating of 80. I don't think they looked that bad.

A fascinating primer on INTs (and fan reactions)

2006-09-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Chronicle: "Cal cornerback Daymeion Hughes had stuffed all the data into his head during the week, so when the situation presented itself late in the first half, he was ready."

The Arizona Republic: "There were a couple of balls that I thought were for sure completions that were picked off," Carpenter said. "I just turned the ball over too many times. That's been the story of my year so far. I don't know what I'm doing (wrong). I've tried to change something every week, I've tried to figure it out and it doesn't seem to work."

ASU Message Board: "This is how Cal so effectively dismantled us. These are correctable deficiencies. Unfortunately it may take some time. I wish our coaches were as observant and could correct these issues BEFORE the season. After reading this I can understand how we've been outcoached every time we've played Tedford."

Rehashing the same old stuff -- Thompson and Tennessee

2006-09-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

I didn't quite process the fact that not only was Syd'Quan Thompson starting his first collegiate game as a redshirt freshman in front of 100,000 screaming Vols fans in Knoxville, but he was starting under a first-year defensive backs coach.

R. Todd Littlejohn was hired in the off season when J.D. Williams moved to Washington. In fact, Littlejohn was hired just before the last week of spring practice. This doesn't excuse the mistakes Thompson made, but I didn't realize just how new to the program everyone was.

PhantomBear has been saying for a couple of weeks now that based on the nature of the mistakes Thompson was making — going for the ball rather than the tackle in all three long Volunteer TDs that he was burned for — it was obvious he is going to be great, at least as good as Hughes (5 INTs, 2 returned for TDs) or Deltha O'Neal (10 INTs for Cincinnati last year). And Thompson had one INT yesterday, and almost had a second one that, had the receiver not made a nice defensive play, could have gone for a TD.

I think our very young secondary (3 first-time starters = Carpenter 16-36 for 177, 2 TD, 4 INT) is going to be okay.

Go Scarlet Knights!

2006-09-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

So we didn't go anywhere in the rankings despite beating a ranked team in one of only two meetings between ranked teams this weekend. But Rutgers! Rutgers is ranked for only the second time in my life!

I've liked Rutgers ever since we gained our only victory against them in That Horrible Year (a game that was originally scheduled to take place in New Brunswick on Sept. 14, 2001. It was rescheduled). And when I found out that Rutgers won the first college football game ever, I realized my fondness was well-placed.

[Also, I have an undeniable fondness for fullbacks, and the fact that Rutgers is promoting Brian Leonard with a website and everything makes me like them even more.]

Being a Cal fan, I have a certain appreciation for what other people call "losers" and what I prefer to think of as "teams worth rooting for, because then no one will ever accuse you of being a bandwagon fan."

So, Go Scarlet Knights!

When the President makes the wrong decision

2006-09-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

You know, Temple probably wishes it could get rid of its last two games. Just wipe them off the books, call a do-over, try again some other time when conditions are more favorable.

Of course, Temple lost its last two games 62-0. Not two games that added up to 62-0; both games had a final score of 62-0, and Temple didn’t win either of them. I bet if she could, Ann Weaver Hart would change the recorded outcome of Temple’s last two games (they lost their first game of the season to Buffalo, 9-3 in overtime. That’s not so bad in comparison).

University of Oklahoma President David L. Boren thinks that the Oklahoma loss on Saturday shouldn’t count, either. Boren sent a letter to the Pac-10 complaining about the outcome of the Oklahoma-Oregon game outlining five complains. The fourth was,

The Big 12 should request that the game should not go into the record books as a win or loss by either team in light of the level of officiating mistakes.

Of course, the Sooners lost because of two questionable calls by the officiating crew, and the Owls lost because they were completely outplayed.

I understand that Boren and Coach Bob Stoops are upset that the outcome of the game hinged on a referee’s call. This happened to them last year against Texas Tech, and they lost that game, too. I understand them wanting to see some changes in the replay system — it turns out, the guy in the booth didn’t get to see all the angles everyone else who was watching the game got to see, so clearly there are some problems.

But I haven't seen anything -— in video of the play, shown endlessly on TV stations across America on Saturday and posted on hundreds of websites, in photos of the event, or in comments by players — that provides indisputable evidence to overturn the call(s) made on the field.

1) Did an Oregon player touch the ball before it had gone 10 yards? The footage shown repeatedly on ESPN was from approximately the 40-42 yard line, and so required a viewer to rotate the image in their head to see whether the ball had reached the 45-yard line. It probably had not, when I rotate the image in my head, but the video is not indisputable precisely because it requires this interpretation.

2) Did Oregon actually recover the ball? When the official blew the whistle, the ball was being held by an Oregon player who was under an Oklahoma player. Whether the Oregon player had possession or not, the whistle had blown, and so the ball was dead when #23 for Oklahoma recovered. This play is not reviewable. My opinion is that the whistle was blown too soon, but that’s just an opinion.

And regardless of whether the call(s) were blown, Boren doesn’t seem to understand a fundamental point about sports: there is a winner and there is a loser, and the participants agree beforehand that this is how it will be. You don’t get to have a do-over if the game doesn’t happen the way you wanted it to. (Let’s erase the Cal-Tennessee game from the books, because Squid — what PhantomBear calls SydQuan Thompson — wasn’t quite ready for DI play, so the plays he gave up shouldn’t really count.)

Stanford is still upset about the 1982 Big Game, Georgia claims Georgia Tech used ringers in their 1943 and 1944 games and those wins should be forfeit, and depending on who’s counting, the Florida-Georgia, LSU-Tulane, Clemson-South Carolina, Cornell-Pennsylvania, and Washington-Washington State rivalries are also disputed.

Of course, the NCAA doesn’t believe Georgia, and gives Georgia Tech those wins, and the disputed games for the other series’ are also officially wins or losses for someone. This isn’t the first time a game has had an outcome that isn’t acceptable to the loser. It won’t be the last.

But what message does it send to the players — and fans — of a team when the University president demands that a game, which he had previously agreed to have on record as played by his team, shouldn’t be counted just because his team lost? If Oklahoma had won despite those controversial calls, Boren probably wouldn’t have minded.

And he almost certainly wouldn’t have done what Cornell did, according to Jake Curtis.

The same sort of thing happened in 1940, when Dartmouth won its 18th straight game by scoring on the game's final play for a 7-3 win over Cornell. Cornell scored what appeared to be the winning touchdown on the final play for a 7-3 victory. But films the next day revealed that the winning play had occurred on fifth down because of an officiating error, and Cornell subsequently forfeited the game to Dartmouth.

We can all agree that Cornell made the right decision. And if Oregon wanted to, they could make that decision as well — although unlike the Cornell-Dartmouth case (or the 1991 Colorado-Missouri case), the call is not indisputable. But it isn’t Boren’s decision, and he’s sending the wrong message by even suggesting it.

Bush should have known better (not that one, the other one)

2006-09-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

Most of me thinks this won't have any appreciable effect on anything whatsoever. They've been doing it for a long time, and while this is pretty egregious, they're still USC. The same rules don't apply to them. (I suppose in this, they are exactly like the other Bush.)

But the power of the media these days might (and I emphasize the might) change that.

We can hope.

[And for those of you keeping track at home, please compare Reggie Bush to Ray Ray McElrathbey. Sometimes, there are legitimate reasons to allow "extra benefits." Getting to stay in a hotel room in Las Vegas on your agent's dime is probably not covered under any of them.]

Real fans are going to have some problems this weekend

2006-09-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

All over the country on Saturday, football fans will be excluded from watching many of the amazing games that are scheduled.

If you're at one game, you can't watch any of the others. It's only if you are a fan without a team (not a real fan), or a fan without tickets (not a real fan), or a fan whose team is playing an away game (and why aren't you traveling with the team? Not a real fan!) that you might be able to take in any of the following, at least one of which should be a decent game:

Michigan at Notre Dame AND
LSU at Auburn AND
Nebraska at USC AND
Miami at Louisville AND
Texas Tech at TCU (Go Horned Frogs!) AND
Oklahoma at Oregon (Go Ducks!) AND
Florida at Tennessee (Go Vols!).

I'm in Berkeley for the (wait for it...) Cal-Portland State game! (If only it was a Cal-Portland State women's soccer game, I'd be excited. Football? Not so much. Although last year's Michigan-Notre Dame game left quite a bit to be desired, and I want both LSU and Auburn to lose, and while I don't like Miami I don't care about Louisville and I can't root for USC under any circumstances, so perhaps it's all for the best.)

Even Stewart Mandel had to beg for a tailgate or couch space to watch the Florida-Tennessee game since he's stuck in South Bend for UM/UND.

We Hate the New Clock Rules

2006-09-15T01:49:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already, go to http://www.wehatethenewclockrules.com and sign the petition.

Because if you like college football, then you probably really hate the new clock rules.

Maybe Tedford knows what he's doing

2006-09-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, PhantomBear was a little irate about our kickoff coverage. We've had some problems with this in the past and Minnesota's Davis is not Reggie Bush or Maurice Drew-Jones. Phantom Bear wondered why Schneider was directionally kicking to #2 every single time, and why he wasn't just putting it out of the endzone (especially when on two kickoffs with 15 yarders tacked on {and thus from mid-field}, he didn't send it out of the endzone).

Jay Heater, in his new Contra Costa Times Cal blog, notes,

Someone had asked about Cal's kickoff that was returned for a touchdown by Minnesota. Yes, indeed, it was supposed to go exactly where it went. Place-kicker Tom Schneider was told to kick it there and he did his job. As coach Tedford said, when you can pin a team into the corner, you don't have to cover the entire field. Tedford explained that one of his defenders got knocked off his line and Minnesota simply did a great job of moving a couple other tacklers out of the way. Tedford said the scheme was sound, and he had to tip his cap to Minnesota for a big play.

Good to know it was just crappy execution, rather than really bad gameplanning.

Walk-on student-athletes are not like you or me

2006-08-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

[Because I forgot to mention this before: The Chronicle, while not the most sterling example of journalism ever, had a great subheadline for their fall camp preview: "Bears might even live up to expectations." Do you think we've been burned by our (not even very) high expectations before?]

Last week, the Chronicle ran an article about Tedford's success with, and appreciation for, walk-ons.

Why is he so successful?

Walk-on quarterback Bryan Van Meter, a sophomore out of Aptos High School, will make the trip to Tennessee as the Bears' third-string quarterback. That position was open due to the suspension of senior quarterback Steve Levy, who has been competing against senior Joe Ayoob and sophomore Nate Longshore for the starting job.

Making the traveling team was somewhat of a surprise for Van Meter since red-shirt freshman Kyle Reed had been generally taking most of the snap behind Longshore, Ayoob and Levy. Tedford said Van Meter's knowledge of the offense set him up to make the trip.

Van Meter has been at Cal the same amount of time as all-everything recruit Kyle Reed (Reed redshirted last year; Van Meter didn't), but Tedford obviously think if things have gone so far south he needs his third-string QB, it's better to go with the guy who knows the playbook than the guy who will try to force things because he knows he can. (Also: Van Meter is a white kid from rural, fairly wealthy Aptos, and Reed is a black kid from one of the most ethnically mixed cities in the US who went to Oakland public schools. Not that this has anything to do with why Van Meter is "smart" and Reed is "athletic.")

Poor Timmy

2006-08-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

On Friday during practice, Tim Mixon, Cal's starting CB and punt returner, tore his right anterior cruciate ligament.

He was a 2nd team All-American at CB and top 15 in the nation in yardage returning punts last year.

Ouch! Poor Timmy.

(On the bright side, even though he's a senior this year, he lost nearly all of his sophomore year to a torn ligament in his left knee, so he might be able to get a sixth year of NCAA eligibility; or he might just go in the NCAA draft, since he is a highly regarded a pre-season All-American candidate.

But still: poor Timmy.)

Marshawn for President!

2006-07-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Cal has launched their very first Heisman campaign page: Marshawn Lynch: 2006 Heisman Trophy Candidate. And of course, the main picture is an almost-proto Heisman stiff-arm.

42 days until kickoff!

More on OOC stuff - particular to the SEC and Pac-10

2006-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

An excellent analytic comparison of the SEC and Pac-10 from 2002-2005 out-of-conference outcomes, including an adjustment for home field advantage (3pts).

The result indicates the Pac-10 is slightly stronger, but of course, the person doing the analysis is a Cal fan, so he would say that.

It's on!

2006-06-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

And in the ages-old fashion, Germany won their opening fixture 4-2.

Home field advantage is taken to new heights in the World Cup: the host nation has won six times (out of 17 tournaments; Brazil has won five more, and that leaves a whopping six tournament wins for people who were neither the home squad nor Brazil. I think this game is fixed). In a field of 16 teams teams (24 starting in 1982, 32 in 1998), for the host team to win so regularly is astounding. Eleven times the host team has been one of the four best finishers, including in South Korea four years ago and not-so-much powerhouse Chile in 1962 (the other six times are what happens when you hold the finals in places like the US or Switzerland). Amusingly, the single time it was held in Brazil, Uruguay won (1950).

If I were a betting person, my money would be on Germany. Since I'm not, I'm going with Croatia and the Netherlands in the final, and then I don't care which team wins because it's good all around.

College Football game guide, 2006

2006-06-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

The essential college football game guide: every regular season game for 2006, from Boston College at Central Michigan at 6pm EST on Thursday, August 31, to Colorado State at San Diego State, 8pm EST, Saturday December 2. Plan accordingly.

Thanks for CFR for the link.

Congratulations, Men's Rowing!

2006-06-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

Cal's Men's Rowing captured the IRA Varsity 8 title, and the overall IRA team championship title.

Go Bears!

(Also, check out the front page for the official Cal sports page, it's pretty cool.)