(Written by Ken Crawford)

I can’t believe it. The Pac-12 office actually did it. They threatened and we didn’t believe them. But they did it.

Go here and scroll down to October 20th:

Stanford at California

Yes, the Big Game will officially lose it’s cherished spot the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

We tolerated Stanford playing a game after the Big Game. Then we grudgingly tolerated Cal playing a game after the Big Game. (And losing them all too frequently.) We were almost thankful the one year they pushed back to the 1st week of December so that it was at the end of the season while still being wary of it no longer being on the traditional weekend. Then we bemoaned it being at 7 PM on the traditional day. We feared someday they would make us play it Thanksgiving weekend. Yet we took it all sitting down.

But now they’ve gone TOO FAR.

This is ridiculous. There’s no excuse for this. There’s no reason. One could have easily made a schedule that allowed us to keep our traditions.

I say we start working on our plans to protest this. The only effective way to do it will be at the game itself October 20th. Suggestions? Wearing black? (Too cheesy?) Signs? Refuse to enter the stadium until 15 minutes after the game has started?

There has to be some way to show this is unacceptable. If we do, they’ll change it back for 2013 and beyond.

UPDATE at 4:15 PM: Go to this announcement from Cal and scroll to the bottom for the FAQ from Sandy Barbour to see their weak excuses for being shafted.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

(Thoughts on the game itself will be in a separate post)

After the game, we spent one more action packed day in Southern California. We packed up and left my uncle’s house, who had been hosting us the whole time we were in San Diego, at 7:30 AM yesterday (the 29th). This was no small feat considering we got back from the game at 10:00 PM the night before and mobilizing a family of 4 kids is no small task what with the portable crib and all the other stuff that goes along with a young family. Luckily, my wife who had come along for the trip but didn’t go to the game had gotten most everything possible packed while we were at the game.

The reason for the early departure time was two-fold. First, we were having breakfast with an old college friend of mine who had recently returned to San Diego, her hometown, after years back east. She had never met any of my kids and it had been over a decade since I had seen her. It was good to catch up.

The second reason was that we were headed to Legoland for the day. My kids had never been and with three boys between 8 and 4 years old we were told it was the perfect age for them.

Frankly, I was not all that impressed with Legoland, particularly in the middle of the day. They need to take the chumps who designed their rides on an extended trip to Disneyland an hour up the road and learn a little bit about how to design rides for a good flow. After spending 75 minutes in line for “The Lost Kingdom Adventure” with the kids and then spending all of 2 minutes on the ride itself, I was pretty ticked off. It was the last straw for me in a long day of ridiculously slow moving lines.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that amusement park lines can be long, but what was so frustrating was that in this case there was no reason for then to be. They just didn’t think through how to get as many people as possible through a ride as quickly as possible. Things like loading up more than one car at a time, putting more cars on the loop and instructing their workers on to move people through. Their convoluted rules on who can ride each ride (if you’re 48″ you can ride by yourself on most everything; for those shorter than that, some are off limits and some require an adult to accompany you or in other cases just another person over 48″; and then some rides have age instead of height requirements and still others had maximum weight limits that affected which parents could go on.) while they were well communicated, still caused lots of holdups as confused people didn’t understand the nuances.

I’ve sat in line for over an hour at Disneyland in a ridiculously long line and when I got to the front was amazed at how quickly they were moving people through. I’ve seen how efficiently they dealt with people who couldn’t go on the rides and helped those who could quickly get in their seats. None of that was the case here. These were short lines, sometimes only 30 families deep, that were taking 45 minutes on average to get to the front and each new person on the ride happened at an excruciatingly slow pace.

However, to give Legoland some credit, if they could solve that large problem, it would be an excellent park. The center of the park is a ridiculously awesome display of Lego creations including cities from around the country and a new Star Wars section. The kids spent hours looking at them. They also had plays and short movies that were very creative and well put together. The playing areas, particularly the “Hideaways” in the back of the park, where the kids can run around are really nice too. It actually would be even better in the summer as they have a lot of rides and play areas where getting wet is part of the fun, particularly in the pirate section.

So if you had asked me at 3:30 PM yesterday what I thought of Legoland I would have told you to run and never look back, particularly if you were going to go at a busy time of year (and all things considered it wasn’t that busy/crowded yesterday). However, by the time we left at 6:00 PM having seen a show to help me calm my nerves and spent a lot of time in the center of the park, it had risen to a ‘pluses and minuses’ experience. Having known what it’s like, I would have structured the day very differently and probably would have done my last set of the long line rides during lunch time and once everybody returned from their eating breaks and the park was at its fullest, stuck to non-ride activities. It would have made the day a lot better. That does excuse their poor designs however.

At 6 PM we left the park having seen most of what we wanted to see minus a couple of rides that had an over 1 hour wait. We stopped just up the road in Oceanside to gas up (thanks gasbuddy.com for the cheap gas prices) and get some drive-through food with the plan that the kids could wolf down some food and then fall asleep after an exhausting day for the long trip home. We actually had two contingencies based on how tired I was. We’d either stop at a motel once we got over the grapevine, or if I was feeling up for it, we’d push late through the night. As it turned out, because we left the park an hour earlier than expected and didn’t hit much traffic through LA, I was able to make good time and we made it home by 2 AM.

An interesting note about the trip home was that the kids were unusually cranky. We expected them to be exhausted and thus sleep well, but they didn’t. Perhaps it was because it was the trip home and there was no longer anything to be excited about. Perhaps it was because we didn’t stop half way to let them stretch out like we did on the way down (which was at dinner time on the way down). Perhaps it was because it was the 2nd long trip in 4 days. Or perhaps it was a combination of the above. But I think it was because they were exhausted and thus were less tolerant of the lack of comfort of trying to sleep in the car.

Luckily, when I say they were cranky, it’s not what you think because we’ve been blessed with VERY cooperative and tolerant kids. There were no crying fits or melt downs or other tantrums that one hears about from other horror stories. They were just a little whiney, that’s all. And when we told them how long it was going to be they were great at toughing it out and doing their best to try to sleep even though they weren’t in the best of moods.

All it all, it was a good trip. It would have been a great trip if what happened on the gridiron had been different (more on that later) and Legoland knew how to design high volume rides (or at a minimum I had known in advance that they didn’t).

I’ll consider myself content and happy with a good trip.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

We’ve got the family down in San Diego, well a suburb anyway. We drove down the afternoon of the 26th when the 5 month old went down for her afternoon nap. The one thing we didn’t anticipate was how bad the traffic on I-5 was going to be. Once the Bay Area traffic merged in at I-580 it was slow down after slow down for the next 100 miles. It was particularly bad at the point the San Jose crowd joins in.

We stopped for dinner in Coalinga, far earlier than expected because the slow downs had the baby up from her nap earlier than expected (and of course also we weren’t as far down the road due to the traffic).

To pile on to our misfortune, a bus load of people (literally, as in a tour group) were in front of us in line at the Burger King. Not being in a mood to stew in line, I checked the drive through line and noticed it was pretty short. I left the family inside, got into the minivan, got food from the drive through and brought it inside all before half the bus load was served.

Things improved dramatically from there. The kids got a chance to stretch out for a while and when we got back into the car the trafficked subsided dramatically. We made great time from there the only hiccup being my falling for the old cash price scam at the gas station. We got into San Diego at 11:30 PM, which is right about when we had hoped to, so we made pretty good time on the second half of the trip.

Yesterday we went to the San Diego Safari Park, not to be confused with the zoo down town. I think it is actually nicer than the zoo because of all the open areas for the animals. All 4 kids really liked it. We even saw some Texas fans dressed head to toe in Texas gear. I assume that was so they wouldn’t be captured and thrown back in the gorilla pen by mistake.

Today is game day. We’ll be heading to the stadium around noon with the hope of of having the tailgate fully operational by 1 PM.

As for the game itself, the more I think about it, I think it will come down to the quarterbacks. I don’t see either team establishing a run game if their passing game isn’t working. What I’ve seen of the Texas QBs and how I’ve seen Maynard improve gives me confidence that the Bears have a better than 50% shot at winning this one.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

This meant to go up Wednesday, but the website wasn’t up in the morning and once it was up, there was a lot to go through to get all the data I wanted. Let’s get straight into it.

We now have just about all the information that we’ve been wondering about for Memorial Stadium in 2012. The key piece of data is out there at the new site, the seating chart:

(you can click on the picture for a larger version)

There are a number of notable things right off the bat:

• FINALLY we know which sections will have seats, which will have bench-backs (benches with backs like a seat) and which will have benches. Only the ESP section will have stadium chairs and the old donor sections on the west side will have benchbacks. Everyone else keeps their benches.
• While it’s not in the picture, we also know that all the sections from EE to I will have more space between the rows (more legroom) from the text on the website.
• Sections EE and I are shown as “double wide” sections kinda like the old G and GG sections.
• The Blue Zone on the south side of the stadium is gone.
• The Gold Zone on the north side of the stadium is much larger than in the past.

There are others but those are the big changes.

Of the above items, the one that has me scratching my head is the changed width of sections EE and I. Are those sections REALLY as big as they show? Hard to tell just from the above picture, but the Ticket Office tipped their hand on a different page…

If one goes to the ESP section, you can already pick individual seats right now. They’re a fortune, but they’re there. And when you look there, you get a good finished graphic of the west side:

Based on this (I put in the section letters, so it’s possible I’ve misjudged this but I doubt it), it’s pretty obvious that FF and H are VERY narrow sections, barely a half section, that F/HH is the original section it used to be and EE/I is both the old EE/I, plus half of the old E/II. So really that wide section is only a section and a half and the new E/II is a pretty narrow section.

The next big question is pricing:

FF/H: $1500
F/HH: $700
EE/I: $500
TT/T: $400
E/II/U: $350
Std Price: $300
Gold Zone: $225 ($100 discount for kids)

Another way to look at it is this: If you want added legroom and a bench-back, it’s going to cost you $200 over the standard reserved price. For those who want better seats than that, you can pay another $200 and if you want to be right next to the ESP, it’s another $800

If you don’t care about the bench-back, and you don’t mind staring into the sun, an extra $100 will get you seats on the East side equivalent to the bench-back seats. Or for an extra $50 over the standard price will get you as good seats as you can on the West side, sans the backed seats as well as some East side options.

All of that frankly seems fair to me except for the FF/H bump of EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS!?! That’s a HUMUNGOUS bump to get an extra 5 yards closer to the 50. My feeling is that’s going to be the most empty section. Now, it’s a pretty small section, so maybe there will be just enough suckers who have money to burn but aren’t quite willing to buy into ESP. I see this being people who also haven’t been long time season ticket holders or donors to Cal athletics. Why? Because the plus side is that with the lack of demand I anticipate, you’ll be able to pick your seat (isle, center, high, low, what have you) in that section. Since new-timers won’t get to pick until all the good seats are gone, they’ll get a choice to get some choice seats if they’re willing to pony up.

At least that’s the way I see it going.

The rest of it feels about right. An extra $200 to get the bench-back and the legroom seems fair to me. I might even do it myself (and those who have been around long enough know I’m a perpetual cheap-skate who’s never before paid to upgrade my seats). I think that says something about the demand that will exist for those seats. I know it’ll be a lot easier to talk my wife into that $200 than it was to talk her into $150 or even $50 before (not that I ever tried).

I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not all that much more than those seats were before the stadium upgrade when everyone was on benches and the only benefit of paying was getting a bit closer to the middle. It doesn’t seem like they’re asking too much for the privilege of additional comfort.

This is of course with the glaring exception of FF/H.

Finally, the selection process is going to be similar to the process at AT&T with one new HUGE wrinkle. They’re splitting the overall set into 3 groups. The first group is 2011 season ticket holders or donors over $1200 (before 12/31/2011… hint, hint). The second group is 2010 season ticket holders or donors over $100. Finally, the third group is people who put down season ticket deposits for 2012.

This is great news for those of us who bought season tickets at AT&T as even us relative new timers (and I learned being a 12 year season ticket holder with one missing year in 2003 makes me a “new timer”) will get to pick before just about everyone who didn’t. They’re rewarding our loyalty: YAH!

Within each group, it’ll go back to the whole points system where those who have donated lots of money over the years get more points than the rest of us. One has to go all the way to the FAQs to find this out, but they’re using the exact same point system as last year, so my decision to donate $100 last year got me 5 extra points. YAH!

All of this is a long way of saying I’m happy with the consistency of the Athletic Department. They said they were going to reward those who bought tickets in 2011 and they are, in a big way. They made clear what their point system was going to be last year (something I wish I had known years earlier as I would have donated $100 a year if I knew it was worth 5x what my buying season tickets was), and they’ve stuck to that system. And of course, if you’re willing to pony up big money for the program today, no matter what your history is, you’re going to be rewarded.

Plus, while there are a few quirks in the seating map, it’s a fairly level-headed and evolutionary set of changes, many of which were hinted at during the project.

All in all, I’d say the Athletic Department got this one right.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

I got an e-mail this morning from the Cal Ticket office announcing the new site for the 2012 Memorial Stadium ticket sales (or at least promotion):

http://www.CaliforniaMemorialStadium.com

So far all that’s there, is a 1 minute promotional video, but they promise that tomorrow, 12/14, they’ll have 2012 season ticket information including seating options and pricing. It’ll be very interesting to see. I sure hope it’s pretty detailed. I really liked how for AT&T they had seat-by-seat information by the time it came to purchasing. They also claim that they’ll have priority information. I might even be willing to send in a few extra dollars to get higher on the priority list.

For those who remember, I had my criticisms of the AT&T plan and my prediction turned out to be mostly correct. The cheaper seats were packed but the middle of the stadium was downright empty and when it wasn’t it was because the USC fans bought all the single game tickets. The ticket office seriously misjudged how much people were willing to pay and also how many people were interesting in premium seats. While I might have been wrong that they’d sell out of the cheap seats, it was only because so few people bought tickets.

Frankly, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Check back tomorrow to see if I think the Ticket Office has learned their lesson.

(Written by Jason Snell)

We’re back at last! Jason and Ken talk about the Big Game and the ASU game, explore our feelings toward Mack Brown and the Texas Longhorns, preview the Holiday Bowl and all the other Pac-12 bowls, and much more. Plus, a secret word!

You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Mack Brown (EMFMV 2011 #8) [ 57:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

(Written by Ken Crawford)

It’s been interesting to read some of the message boards post-bowl announcement. As the Texas fans have come to the Cal message boards and the Cal fans have gone to the Texas message boards, the issues of the day has not been which team is better right now (frankly neither fan base is all that happy with the state of their current team) but 2004.

2004, where the Bears were ranked 4th and would have been guaranteed a spot in the BCS in the next-to-last ranking, but were leap-frogged in the final week, ending up 5th, behind Texas. Texas went to the Rose Bowl in Cal’s stead. Cal fans were outraged.

I have no interest in debating the worthiness of each team, which is an entirely subjective activity, but I did want to set some facts straight. Feel free to reference anyone who’s stating BS to this list:

(Note: all rankings and records are pre-bowls, as that’s what the voters had to pick based on)

• Cal beat Southern Miss 26-16 in the final week, but were down to S. Miss 17-16 early in the 4th quarter. However, Cal had statistically dominated the game, particularly the rushing game. It was a relatively easy grind-it-out win for the Bears and Cal pretty quickly put an end to S. Miss’s 3rd quarter rally.
• Texas was idle that same week.
• Texas did not go to the Rose Bowl because the Rose Bowl wanted them more than Cal. This was the older BCS, where the championship rotated between the major bowls. Therefore there were only 8 spots for teams. The following teams were guaranteed spots: #1, #2, the winners of the 6 BCS conferences, a #6 or higher non-AQ team and the higher of #3 or #4 that didn’t win their conference. That year both #1 and #2 won their conference (as is usually the case), so it was the 6 BCS conference champs, plus Utah at #6 (non-AQ) and Texas at #4 who made up the 8 teams. There were no options and the Rose Bowl was forced to pick between Texas, Utah and Pittsburg.
• In the new 10 team BCS, there’s no question that the Rose Bowl would have picked Cal.
• Texas’s only loss was to Oklahoma, the #1 ranked team. Final score, 0-12.
• Cal’s only loss was to USC, the #2 ranked team. Final score, 17-23.
• Of course, Oklahoma was ranked #1 before the bowl game, but we all know who ended up being the far better team. USC destroyed Oklahoma 55-19.
• Most pundits believed Cal played a closer game against USC than Texas did against Oklahoma.
• Texas had beaten more ranked teams than Cal did, but all of them were ranked 20 or lower. It’s not like they were all that impressive wins, either (26-13 over A&M, 56-35 over OSU, 51-21 over TTech (OK, that one is)). BTW, all those teams were 7-4.
• While Cal only beat 1 ranked team, Arizona State, they were ranked higher than all the teams Texas beat (#19). They were also 8-3 instead of 7-4. Cal also beat unranked 6-5 Oregon State, who was under-appreciated as they destroyed Notre Dame in the Insight Bowl. Finally, Cal beat 6-5 UCLA.
• Don’t let any Texas fans understate how hard Mack Brown campaigned. See here, here, here (scroll down).
• Cal went on to lose 31-45 to Texas Tech, a team Texas had beat handily, validating to most that Texas was the most deserving team (dismissing/overlooking the lack of motivation Cal had).
• Texas went on to beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl, winning on a late field-goal 38-37. Of course one doesn’t know how Cal would have done against Michigan.
• Cal was actually ranked 4th in both the AP and Coaches poll, it was the computers that ranked Texas higher (significantly at that).
• It was the coaches poll that changed most in the final week of the season, the assertion being that Big-12 coaches significantly lowered their rankings for Cal in the final week.
• I actually had a hard time finding detailed data on the polls in the next-to-last week and the final BCS rankings week. If someone has links, I’d appreciate it. From my memory, no coaches poll from 2004 was public on a vote-by-vote basis. Even now, only the final week’s ranking is made vote-by-vote public, so one wouldn’t know who changed their vote from the next-to-last week to the final week.

Those are just the facts. Feel free to continue the debate, but at least let’s keep the facts accurate.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony when the kraft Fight Hunger bowl (which seems like one of the more noble bowls by the way) featured two teams that have already fired their coaches. Would the now unemployed coaches and their families be getting bags of food after the game to help them through the rough times?

Luckily this is something one can joke about because I would hope that all the coaches involved put aside enough money from their large salaries to survive being fired and out of work for a while considering the business they’re in. I’d never want to joke if real hunger was involved here.

But seeing as how it likely isn’t, one couldn’t think of a more ironic name for a bowl that featured two teams with fired coaches (other than the “Fight Unemployment Bowl”).

(Written by Ken Crawford)

Now that we’re through the BCS line-up knot-hole, I’ve got another topic that’s been on my mind: Bowl Bans.

Obviously there are two main punishments that the NCAA hands out. Bowl bans, usually for 1 to 3 years, and scholarship restrictions. At first glance they both seem to be good punishments. Going to bowl games is the reward for a good season, something that both the players and the fans love. It also gives the team extra practice time they wouldn’t get otherwise. That’s the “take away the positives” side of it. The “punishment” side of it is that the team’s recruiting will take a hit because new students won’t want to go to a school that they can’t go play in bowl games.

Scholarship restrictions on the other hand is an almost entirely punishment based handout. It hurts the school’s recruiting by reducing the number of kids who can be recruited and the number of kid who can be on scholarship for 1 to 4 years.

At first glance, the heavy handed likely prefer the bowl bans. It has both a punishment and removing rewards aspect. Isn’t it better to take away both?

I say no.

First of all, for the NCAA almost all punishments come LONG after the players and frequently the coaches who committed the infractions have left the program. The result is that taking a bowl game away from a team is likely taking it away from kids who didn’t do anything wrong.

Second of all, with the exception of unusually long bowl bans, it won’t much hurt recruiting. There will usually only be one or two recruiting classes who are even aware of the sanctions while they’re being recruited and for most of them, those bowls will be in their 1st year or two in the proram, when they’re somewhat unlikely to be a starter or someone with significant playing time. That’s not all that much of a disincentive to go play for that school.

Thus I don’t think bowl bans work. That’s half the reason I don’t like them.

The other half is that it also punishes the rest of the conference for the mistakes of the team that broke the rules. This has become quite clear to me after watching USC this year.

See, when a good team is on a bowl ban, every time it beats someone in the conference, it’s reducing both the quality of the bowl the guilt-free team will go to and the number of bowl slots available to the conference. If USC hadn’t beaten Oregon, Oregon would be in the BCS championship game this year. Although it didn’t happen this year, any team that was 5-7 and lost to the team with a bowl ban, was denied a bowl game they would have been in if they could have beaten the team they would have played instead.

There’s even a long-run factor of bowls not willing to offer more compelling spots to the conference because of the weaker looking teams (due to the extra losses put on the conference by the bowl ineligible team) they had gotten in the past.

So the way I see it, the bowl bans don’t hurt the violator all that much (at least the right kids/coaches) and then hurt the rest of the teams in the conference. That’s particularly egregious because those conference teams are the teams that MOST need retribution. After all, assuming the rule breaking helped the violating team get ahead, it was the other conference teams that most directly paid for the cheating in the past.

Looking at scholarship restrictions instead, the impact is to weaken the violating team, which gives more win opportunities to the other teams in the conference (something they deserve based on the harm of past cheating) and not in other ways harming the conference.

If I were in charge of the NCAA, unless I caught and imposed sanctions right away, while the players involved were still at the school, I wouldn’t impose bowl bans. I would instead take away scholarships, and lots of them.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

On the one hand, it ticks me off that Alabama got the BCS Championship slot over Oklahoma State. The only reason I’ll be watching that farce of a national championship game is if I’m bored that evening.

On the other hand, I’m ecstatic about the bowl match-up for the Bears. The Holiday bowl always gets its time-slot to itself and generally turns out to be a good game. Plus, playing Texas. Did anyone say: REVENGE MACH BROWN… REVENGE!?!

Finally, the hypocrisy being smelled is the rules for non-AQ qualifiers. I didn’t realize how high Boise State was ranked… finished at #7 in the BCS, well high enough for the “ranked higher than 12th” rule EXCEPT for the fact that only conference champions are eligible for that rule.

I see, for the BCS title game, winning one’s conference is irrelevant, but for a non-AQ team to get in the mix, THEN one has to win the conference in addition to being in the top-12, something the Mountain West winner TCU didn’t do.

I see how it is.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

I’ve long been a believer that the easiest way to solve over half of the problems in the BCS is to insist that only teams that have won their conference are eligible for the BCS championship game. Seriously, if you can’t win your conference, how can you claim that you’re the national champion?

And making the rule change solves a lot of problems:

• There won’t be two teams from the same conference like this year (likely)
• Due to the above, it significantly reduces the rematch possibilities
• There will never be a controversy about which of two teams from a conference should go (Oregon or Stanford?)

Then there’s the more subjective issue that if you look back, the most egregious and controversial slights have happened when a team that didn’t win their conference gets the nod (2001 Nebraska anyone?). Of course it doesn’t solve every problem, like when there are 3 undefeated teams from different conferences, but there’s a lot of scenarios it significantly cleans up.

Ironically, the BCS is going the opposite way. A couple years back they realized there was an issue with the current rules where the top two ranked teams were from the same conference and neither won the conference. Because there’s a two team limit for BCS games, the question was which of the three would go (the conference champ, the #1 team and the #2 team) to BCS games. Could the conference champ be denied a BCS bowl game? Would #2 be denied a spot in the championship game?. The solution was to say that all three teams in that scenario were automatic qualifiers for the BCS.

But of course they could have solved that problem by just limiting the BCS Championship to teams that won their conference.

And as I said above, if you didn’t win your conference, you have no business being in the title game.

Let’s hope Oklahoma State’s impressive 44-10 win over #13 Oklahoma is enough to leap-frog Alabama, because the last thing I want to see is a repeat all-SEC BCS title game. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even watch it.

Update Sunday @ 7:45 AM: I probably should have made it clear that I prefer an 8-team playoff. I’m somewhat flexible within that model as long as some number of conference winners are automatic qualifiers. My current thinking is the top 5 ranked conference winners (of any conference, not just the current BCS conference and independent teams counting as a “conference of one”) getting an automatic bid, with the remaining 3 “at-large” going to the highest ranked non-conference winners. Point being, the above post is a “if we can’t blow the thing up, this is the minor change I’d make” post, not what I think is the best.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

The first Pac-12 championship game could have been an absolute disgrace of a game, but it wasn’t. UCLA was out-matched, but fought hard and at a few moments (tied 7-7, only down 24-35 in the 3rd quarter) looked to have a shot at pulling off the upset. Oregon quickly put an end to those delusions, but it was nice to see a game that wasn’t a joke.

People will walk away from watching that game thinking it was entertaining, not disgraceful.

So, thank you UCLA for coming to play with heart in a game where you could have given up before the kickoff. It’s not easy to deal with losing your head coach and being a 32-point underdog and viewed as a joke in the title game. They played their hearts out anyway. Thanks! (Now go make us proud in the former-Nut bowl.)

(Written by Ken Crawford)

If I remember correctly, part of what got us all so excited about adding the Alamo bowl was that it was moving to be a January 2nd bowl, the 2nd most prestigious day for a bowl game after New Year’s day. But in our first two years of playing it, it’s been on the very over-crowded days of December 29th and and December 31st. I know a big reason for that is that New Year’s day has been over the weekend, making a mess of scheduling (you don’t want your Jan. 2nd games on Sunday due to the NFL and the Jan. 1st games move to Jan. 2nd when the 1st in on a Sunday, bumping the Jan. 2nd games elsewhere whenever the 1st is on either Saturday or Sunday) for the last couple years… but I’m beginning to wonder if we got a far less appealing game than we thought. After all, the TicketCity bowl (former Cotton bowl) snuck in with the Jan. 1st bowls (the 2nd this year), even though they’ve got a much weaker lineup (#5 Big-10 vs. Conference-USA winner).

I was going to say “As a reminder, the Pac-12 is one of the only BCS conferences without a 2nd new year’s day bowl” but it looks like the landscape has changed. Of the 4 non-BCS game New Year’s Day bowls (Jan 2nd. this year), ALL FOUR of them will have a representative from the Big-10. Three of the 4 will match up against the SEC and one will match up against Conference-USA (what the?). In past years, the Big-12, Big East and ACC have all had one of those slots. Looks like they get to join the Pac-12 in weak bowl land.

But that’s ridiculous, the 5th place team (6th if they ever get 2 in the BCS games) in the Big-10 will be playing on New Year’s Day. This year they’ve got a log-jam of five 10-2 or 9-3 teams, so it won’t be too bad, but in most years, it’ll be a pretty weak team playing on the same day as the Granddaddy of them all.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

Because post-season games are not in the Pick’Em league, the league wrapped up last Saturday. A big congratulations goes out to repeat winner NoBetterThanSolid, the first repeat winner since DuckAndRun won the first two years. NBTS didn’t start out the season well, but played strong down the stretch to take over the lead. Another late surger: Ted Miller.

Of course nobody ever beats the Betting Line (Vegas ALWAYS wins), but we won’t include them.

Here are the players who won individual weeks:

• NoBetterThanSolid: 3 week wins
• kencraw (that’s me ): 2 week wins
• cpoff: 2 week wins
• kwest80: 2 week wins
• ChrisNguon: 2 week wins
• philip: 1 week win
• jsnell (co-blogger): 1 week win

Thanks everyone for participating!

(Written by Ken Crawford)

Let me let you in on a little secret that was force fed to me. They say you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Well apparently that’s not so true for a jacka… er… donkey, because after 4 years of working for Rivals, I finally drank the cool-aid I had resisted for so long.

The real battle in college football is won off the field.

It’s won in two places: The coach’s office while he’s evaluating high school talent and in the living rooms of those talented high school players when the coach is trying to convince him to come to his college.

The reality is that 9 times out of 10, if you look at the recruiting classes of the 3 years prior years, not counting the kids who came in that spring (so for 2011, you look at the kids who were signed in Feb. 2010, 2009 and 2008, and exclude (since so many redshirt) the kids who were signed in Feb. 2011), you’ll know a lot about how that team is going to perform that fall. I did some “star counting” using the last 3 years model and here’s what I got:

2011: 7-5 (185 stars in prev. 3 years)
2010: 5-7 (200)
2009: 8-5 (208)
2008: 9-4 (225)
2007: 7-6 (203)
2006: 10-3 (218)
2005: 8-4 (181)

Now stars aren’t perfect. When compiling the list I saw some real duds (the worst: Kevin Bemoll was a 4-star in 2005, but only played in 3 games) and some significant over-achievers (Tim Nixon, Erik Robertson, Thomas Decoud, Alex Mack, Robert Jordan, Justin Forsett, Mike Mohammed, Josh Hill and Kendrick Payne were all 2-stars), but as far as getting an average how how much talent is on a team, it’s as good a metric as any.

And looking at the record for those years, there’s an obvious correlation. Outliers aside, when the Bears have around 200 stars we’re looking at 7-5 kinda seasons. When they’ve got 215 and higher, that’s when we’ll have special teams. Of course there are some under-performing years like 2010 when the Bears had 200 stars and did worse than both 2005 and 2011 where the star count was in the 180′s.

Some of that over and under-achieving has to do with how many under ranked players there were in the past recruiting classes (or those duds too), but of course on the field does still count for something. Having no meaningful backup QB when your starter goes down will hurt a lot more than the stars could show by themselves (since it’s only one player).

Next year the star count will be 197, so the Bears are getting back on track after the drop-off in the 2008 and 2009 recruiting classes that has hurt us in recent years. Perhaps the Bears will over-perform and we’ll rise from 7-5 to a higher level, but these stats suggest we may be looking at another year of middling bowl eligibility next year.

However, and getting back to the original point of the post, if Tedford can match his star counts from last year in February, we’ll be at 215 in 2013. If he can do it again in February of 2013, we’ll be at 228 in 2014. That’ll be the most the team has ever had under Tedford.

But he’s got to get out on the road and get those “stars” (in real life we call them players). The coaching staff is out there as I type this, in living rooms across America, trying to convince fickle 17 year olds that Cal is the school for them. They’ll be doing this on and off for the next 3 weeks before the bowl game, and then hit the road HARD after the bowl game.

Luckily this year Tedford and Co. have a much better story. The new stadium opens next year. The SAHPC is brand new and awesome. The team is getting back on track and finished on a hot-streak. It will really help to have a big win over a big name team (Texas, anyone?) in the bowl game.

So far he’s got four 4-stars and fpir 3-stars. A recruiting class is made up of 20 or so kids and Cal will need at least six more 4-star kids and of the rest, almost all of them must be 3-stars. A 5-star or two would really help. But that’s not it, as I’ve written in the past, part of what makes a good class is the balance. So he can’t just go out and grab stars. He’s got to get the right kids who both play the positions he needs to fill and who are closer to gems than duds (this is where star counting breaks down).

From what I’ve read, there are a lot of 4-stars out there who still have interest in Cal (28 with medium interest or higher, according to Rivals) and at least one 5-star is in the mix (Shaq Thompson, SydQuan’s younger brother, is considered likely) with 6 others with some interest still. So there’s still the potential for a very good class.

But the truth of the matter is RIGHT NOW is one of the most important points of the season. Tedford and Co. will need to impress a lot of kids between now and the middle of February if he’s going to have the team he needs to make a run at the Rose Bowl in 2013 and 2014.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

Ted Miller had a great comment about Utah’s loss to Colorado in his weekly what we learned post:

Utah, welcome to the Pac-12 way: Utah figured out that consistency is frowned upon in the Pac-12. The Utes, with their home loss to Colorado, figured out that it’s darn near required within the conference’s muddled middle that teams inexplicably face-plant at least once (or twice a year). So you have Cal getting bricked at UCLA, Arizona State throwing up on itself at Washington State, UCLA getting bombed at Arizona and Washington flopping at Oregon State. The Utes are typically great at home. Colorado had lost 24 in a row away from its home stadium. But logic doesn’t always rule in the Pac-12. The rule is inexplicable results are part of the conference’s annual tapestry.

I won’t beat a dead-horse about Utah, but I did want to look at the list of face-plants:

• Cal loses to UCLA
• ASU loses to Arizona
• UCLA loses to Arizona
• UW loses to OSU
• Utah loses to Colorado

So the question is, which one of these is not like the others?

If you guessed Cal, you’re right! Cal is the only one who’s face-plant is to a team from the ‘muddled middle’. The rest are loses to the bottom group. Cal took business against all of the lower teams: WSU, OSU, Colorado. Cal didn’t play Arizona, so I guess that could still be in play seeing as how they were the team to knock off two of the ‘muddled middle’.

I think it says something about how the Bears are viewed. For that to be Cal’s flop, it means that Cal is on the top of the muddled-middle. I think UW is too, but that’s because they beat everyone else in the ‘muddled middle’, including Cal. Cal beat Utah and ASU, and lost to UW (the top) and also to UCLA (the flop). So it seems to me the right ordering of the teams is:

• Washington
• Cal
• Utah
• ASU
• UCLA

(The bottom 3 are harder to differentiate, I debated putting ASU on the bottom but UCLA’s performance versus USC last night and their need for a waiver to be bowl eligible after losing to Oregon next week, had me drop them.)

Expect that to be the order of bowls picked next Sunday as well. After Oregon goes to the Rose and Stanford to the Fiesta or Orange, UW goes to the Alamo, Cal to the Holiday, Utah to the Sun, ASU to the Vegas and UCLA to the Kraft (if they get a waiver).

(Written by Ken Crawford)

This is something I’ve thought of before, but it came back to my mind after reading a quote from a replay booth ref on CGB:

How many camera angles do you get?

it’s totally based on the TV crew. For Oregon/Washington I had 17 cameras. For the Big Game there were only 7. Replay officiating is based totally on an entertainment industry. Once I requested a goal line shot but couldn’t get it because that camera was busy showing crowd shots!

In other words, the replay official is dependent on whatever shots the TV crew gives them. I know this isn’t a big surprise to anyone, but I don’t think people have thought of the implications. TV crews are NOT impartial. Sometimes that’s explicitly obvious, such as Cal games that don’t get picked up by the Pac-12 contracts and the Cal Athletic department gets Comcast to put the game on TV. But it’s true of the media staff even when the game being broadcast by a supposedly neutral party. You don’t think the average cameraman and director who work games in the Bay Area are sports fans and tend to favor the local teams? Of course they are. It’s a big part of the reason they’re in that business, is because they are sports fans and they like to be at the games.

So what’s the result?

The result is that anything that might be controversial is going to have a lot of cameras on it and the producer in the truck is going to be working hard to getting all the right shots. For something that they’d rather not have reviewed, they’re already off taking shots of the crowd.

It’s not even purposeful or intentional, it’s just human nature. When I watch a Bears game and Allen is tip-toeing down the sideline, I’m going to be less likely to inspect every step as a fan of the opponent would, without even trying. When it’s the opposing team tip-toeing, my first question is going to be to want to see every step in slow motion, freeze-framed as each foot is on the ground.

I don’t know what the solution should be. I’m generally not opposed to instant replay (within reason) and I understand the cost issues with trying to have a second video crew who’s whole purpose is for instant replay. But at the same time, it seems to me to be an overlooked component of officiating. Maybe at a minimum requiring certain shots, like a camera on the goal-line that must be pointed at the goal-line at all times (or something similar) should be required. I don’t know.

But what we have right now doesn’t seem fair to me.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

Don’t tell Jason, but UCLA apparently didn’t realize how horrible the stormtrooper look was for the Bears (even though they benefited from it) because they decided to bring it for the USC game. They’ve decided to scoff at tradition, where both teams wear their home colors for that game, and go with a never before used look of all white, including the white helmet.

Not that it’ll matter either way, but UCLA is going to regret bringing out the stormtrooper look.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

For those who have tried to comment recently and were unable to, I apologize. WordPress did its really odd thing where the discussion settings revert automatically to a fairly restrictive policy. It reverted sometime between 11/5 and 11/15 and I fixed it today. Never have been quite sure why that happens. The worst part is I don’t notice it as it only affects people without a login to the site, so until someone says something, I’m oblivious. In any case, comments are now re-enabled.

(Written by Ken Crawford)

After technical difficulties put the kibosh on the Big Game OTRH podcast, I’m back on track this week. In addition to ASU thoughts, you’ll hear about 7-5, the Pac-12 standings and bowl possibilities. Enjoy:

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