ABC/ESPN did the first round of game selections for the Pac-10 last Friday picking 14 of their 20 Pac-10 games they intend to televise (they could chose to pick up more later). Cal was chosen for two games:

• The season opener versus Michigan State on ABC (5:00 PM – 8/30)
• USC matchup on ABC (5:00 PM – 11/8)

For those who don’t know how the system works, the Pac-10 has contracts with a few networks to televise their games. ABC/ESPN is the primary one. FSN is the secondary one. The third was TNT (or was it TBS?) but was sold to Versus last year. The 3 networks get to pick in that order.

They get to chose their games before the season starts. They can however chose to defer their choice until during the season, getting to pick 12 days before the game (or perhaps 6 days in rare cases).

So now that ABC/ESPN has made their picks (14 now and 6 deferred to the season), FSN is next up to bat and you should see their selections in the next few weeks. They’ll likely pick a handful of games and leave the rest for mid-season selections. They’ll be more likely to defer on weeks where ABC/ESPN has already locked in their selection as they don’t have to worry about ABC getting a pick before them when the time comes for the 12-day pick.

The final thing to note about how it works is that it only applies to games where the Pac-10 is the home team. So for Cal, the Maryland game will be determined by whatever contracts the ACC has and whatever mechanism they use to pick the games. It wouldn’t surprise me if that means it’ll be on ESPN gameplan or something like that.

Some notes of interest about ABC/ESPN’s selections:

• They picked more games before the season than in the past. Usually it is less than half their alloted games. 14 of 20 is a lot higher than that.
• USC was chosen for A LOT of the games. More even than usual. 6 of their games (so fully half) were chosen with half of those getting the prime 5:00 PM slot on ABC. What that says to me is that they’re having a hard time figuring out who’s going to challenge USC for the crown and so had to take a shotgun approach instead of risking not picking up the biggest game of the Pac-10 season.
• UCLA was chosen for 4 games, the only other team besides USC to get more than 2 selections. That says a lot about how excited everyone is about UCLA with a new coach.
• Stanford and WSU got ZERO selections and Arizona got one “maybe” where ABC has said it will either select Cal vs. UW or ASU vs. Arizona. Of course this means no one expects any of these three teams to do much this season and for very few people to be interested in watching.
• Oregon also slighted with a single selection, again versus USC. That says to me that ABC/ESPN expects them to tank without Dixon and Stewart.

See this CalBears.com article for details.

I’m a pretty Cal focused writer. I don’t read general sports blogs, even ones dedicated to college football. So when I saw a post over at California Golden Blogs about a big controversy with blogs and specifically an interview with the author of DeadSpin, I have to admit that I had never even heard of DeadSpin.

Seeing as how the conversation/controversy is really about blogging versus the print media, I think that I’m in a unique position to comment on it being a full member of the blogosphere and a half member of the print media.

Before I get to my main point, I’d like to make a couple foundational points (please see the video to understand the topic fully):

1. Every blog is different: It’s completely unfair to compare my blog to another blog in regards to the appropriateness of the content. It’s not different than it being unfair to compare the New York Times to the Sacramento Bee. A good discussion of the topic needs to transcend the specifics of one blog or another to the reason certain types of blogs are popular.
2. Viewership is what gives credibility: This is true for traditional print media just as much as it is for blogs. What is different is the bariers to entry. For print media, you have to have a certain level of readership before you can be in print. Nevertheless, the underlying principle is the same. However, print media advocates don’t seem to realize just how irrelevant a small blog is. They often seem to forget that the small blogs are far less consequential.
3. Access to team only 1/2 the equation: The only aspect which professional journalist have an advantage is in quotes and ability to cover players. The reality is that any fan can watch the games and learn the formations and all that needs to be learned to be an excellent analyst of sports. What they will not have is the personal access to the players to see that half of the game.

With those foundational points out of the way, I think that what upsets people here is two-fold. The simplest level is just journalists who are losing their jobs being upset about that. I won’t begrudge them that. It is difficult to see your living disappear. However, that’s not the important aspect that upsets people. What upsets people is the vulgar, crude and inflamitory content that is on a number of blogs. As many might guess, you can count me amongst those who find those types of blogs very objectionable.

But here’s the key point: Those blogs are only popular because people enjoy/like them. The reason that is such an important point is that if we want someone to point a finger at there is only one place that blame should go: the public.

The public is who views these blogs. It’s their decision. You want to know why the blogger in the interview sounded so cocky? Because he knows he’s successful and there’s nothing any journalist can do to change that. So the reporter who was lambasting him was really lambasting the wrong group. Who he should have been lambasting is the crowd behind the moderator. They’re the ones who determine what is newsworthy and what is disgusting.

To go further, if you look at other aspects of the news, it’s immediately clear that it’s not just the blogs who are catering to low-brow content. All one has to do is look at the headlines of major papers that talk about tabloid content like Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton. A generation ago newspapers had a society page, and it was buried. It would never have made the front page.

So it’s not like the traditional print media is holding some impressive high moral ground here. They just as much as bloggers cater to what society wants. And what society wants has generally, in this bloggers humble opinion, degraded a great deal over the last generation.

To weave that point into the final thing I want to say, I’ve always been a big proponent of just covering the team. I like to talk X’s and O’s and all that sort of stuff. I’d prefer never to mention a player’s name. “The quarterback passed the ball to the outside receiver on the weak side” would be just fine with me.

But if we look at the majority of sports press coverage today, and I mean the print media primarily, it’s far more about the individuals involved than it is about the team. This has only become more true over the last 10 years as the press’s monopoly on game information has disappeared. As that has happened, their coverage moved to what they still had (and still have for that matter) a monopoly on.

In my opinion, it is the move towards covering the players, not the team, that is just as much directly responsible for the disgustingly tabloid-like coverage of sports. As such it is my opinion that the print media is just as much to blame. Or said another way (and circling back) they’re just as willing to cater to the public’s desire for low-brow news.

Finally, I wanted to give some perspective on how my mind changed when I became a part-time member of the press. I’m hoping that my experience will be valuable to others:

1. I realized just how much the players are regular people: The moment this sunk in was when I was covering the 2006 USC game. I went up to Hughes after the game to interview him about the play where he got beat on 4th and 2 for the go-ahead touchdown for USC. I saw a man who’s heart was crushed. To some degree this is a bad example because of just how good of a cornerback he is and everyone was willing to overlook his somewhat minor mistake. Nevertheless, while there are plenty of players who make big mistakes that cost Cal the Rose Bowl now and again, let us not forget that these are human beings that need to be treated with the respect that every human being deserves. There is no need to kick them when they’re down.
2. I realized how hard it is to write a good article: Blogging is hard work. To get a good following takes a ton of work and dedication. It’s peanuts easy to being a reporter. As a reporter, you’ve got to write a game summary article that can be printed whether or not you want to. You can’t just swear off football for a week after the OSU loss. You’ve got to stick it out. You’ve also got to find something good to write about both in the good weeks and the bad weeks. It’s really far more demanding and I say this as someone who’s given a great deal of freedom as to when to write.
3. I realized how making something a job makes it entirely different: If I do something the Cal Athletic department doesn’t like, it’s a big deal. I can lose my job. While to some degree I think that means that bloggers are a bit more free to say the truth, that lack of accountability also means they’re far less likely to make sure they give everyone their due. They won’t spend the extra time to make sure that their opinion is supportable and reasonable because there is no consequence to not doing so. For the reporter, you need to be squeeky clean on everything and it’s a much bigger burden to carry than most people think.

Hopefully this post has some value other than helping me put my thoughts on paper. I can say that while Deadspin’s author made some good points about the value of blogging, I can also say that he really is, as the reporter put it, “full of shit”. Deadspin is completely unwilling to be accountable for their own content. They don’t care that it’s profane. They don’t care that the commentors are profane. Hiding behind free-speech and saying “not every post is like that” or “I didn’t post that” when you’re the publisher of the site is completely bogus. He’s personally responsible, just as is every publisher, for the content of their publication. I haven’t visited his site in the past and now I’ve got a reason to make sure I don’t in the future.

Hopefully the public will have the same sort of backbone and moral fiber to do the same to every publication, whether it be traditional print media or blogs, who are the cause of the this moral collapse. The public is not only the only entity that can reverse the trend but they can easily do so if they have the will.

For those who aren’t as fortunate as my brother and uncle and won’t be at the UCLA game (and that includes me), you’ll be well taken care of on TV with an ABC broadcast, assumably in HD. The only remaining game without television coverage at this time is the Washington game which I’m sure will get picked up during the normal TV cycle two weeks in advance.

The announcement came out today that the Oregon State game will be at 4:00 PM (on 10/13), televised on Versus. Of course many will complain that Versus blew the last game they had, and I guess that’s fair enough. May I humbly suggest that the TV coverage will be much better this time. Give ’em a second chance.

Also, I promised a podcast and some follow up Oregon posts by Sunday night that you may have noticed never got posted. Unfortunately I was just exhausted after the trip home yesterday from Eugene and I had to get up early this morning so I opted for a good night sleep over buring the midnight oil.

I was able to review half of the game from the TV coverage last night before I crashed and I’ll review the second half tonight after a function at Church, so you can expect that post tonight. I recorded the podcast when I was in Eugene, it’s just a question now of editing in all of the player interviews I had, including Longshore’s thoughts on how his ankle is feeling. I can’t promise that tonight because I also owe an analysis article to Rivals by tonight. I’ll try to get the podcast done tonight as well, but if not, I promise it’ll get posted tomorrow (Tuesday) night. Finally, you can expect a trip-recap post about my trip up there later in the week with a number of pictures, perhaps as late as over the weekend.

I saw more “it’s official” posts and articles on GameDay coming to Oregon that I care to count and not one of them could reference a press-release or quote from either a University of Oregon or ESPN official. While the body of work of those articles definitely made it look official, I’m one to hold off until an actual press-release is made for the “it’s official” statement.

Well we finally have it:

The ESPN College GameDay website shows this week’s show being hosted from Eugene, OR.

Two notes:

1. There is a poll there of who people think is going to win. Oregon Duck fans are known for their quickness to inflate those types of polls and this is no exception. The Ducks are up 68-32 as of 4:45 PM PDT. Go vote if you care about that sort of thing.
2. I’m pretty excited about getting up at 6:00 AM to go get a good spot behind the camera and hold up my sign… now I just have to decide what it should say. Any ideas?

Not our Pac-10’s OSU, but the Big 12’s Oklahoma State University.

The controversy is over head coach Mike Gundy’s comments about a newspaper column at his post game interview. You can see those comments in this YouTube video. You can read the column that has him so upset at The Oklahoman, byline Jenni Carlson. This was all pretty much regional news until CBSSportsLine’s Dennis Dodd jumps in the fray with his column.

On the one hand, I like the fact that coach Gundy stood up for his players and refused to ignore what I believe to be a very childish column. Seriously, bringing up his mom feeding him after the game? That’s bad form. Write about his performance on the field. Reading a couple of Ms. Carlson’s other articles, she seems to be one of those writers who loves to act like she knows everything, has good insight and has no sense of integrity or what is appropriate to discuss about college football. I’m making a snap judgement based on 2 video articles and 3 written columns, but that’s the way it appears based on my limited exposure to her work. I suspect this was not the first column that upset coach Gundy for its crossing the line into personal attacks.

At the same time, it was childish to refuse to do a press-conference at all and spend his time berating a single writer, a slightly over-weight young woman, and tell her that “she obviously doesn’t have any children.” Does he know her well enough to know whether that may be a very painful subject for her? And if so, why is he calling her out in public instead of having a closed room meeting? If you’ve got a complaint about a writer, the right place to air those complaints is with the writer themselves or if they’re being completely unreasonable with their editor. In fact, it’s probably wise to raise the complaint to the athletic director and let them address the matter.

Nevertheless, Dodd steps into a situation he either knows too little about to speak with any authority or he is too close to the situation to speak objectively. He completely mis-characterizes the nature of the column just noting it as being critical of the team, which is a ridiculous understatement and entirely focuses on the excesses of coach Gundy’s statement.

To me this seems to be a situation where it is best for everyone’s bosses to call them into their offices and tell them to let the issue die, and by the way, don’t be so hot headed in the future. Stay away from the personal attacks next time, all of you.

Well, it’s not an announcement from ESPN itself, which is what I really like to hear, but it’s from an actual reporter who covers the Oregon Ducks. Those guys usually don’t say something is official unless it is:

LINK

Quote of interest: “Chris Fowler of ESPN’s College GameDay program just informed UO officials that the show will be based in Eugene this Saturday.”

In a much predicted selection, ABC selected the Cal at Oregon game for their 12:30 PM time slot on September 29th. This is shaping up to be a big game. Both teams are undefeated and should be undefeated after their matchups against Pac-10 bottom feeders Arizona and Stanford respectively this weekend. There is even speculation that ESPN’s GameDay crew will head to Eugene for their weekly preview show. ABC/ESPN will be airing the USC vs. Washington game at 5:00 PM as well on the same day.

While I haven’t seen an announcement from either Cal or the Pac-10, Versus is showing the Cal vs. Arizona game on their programming calendar for 9/22 at 3:00 PM PDT. Unless this is a case of a network counting their chickens before they hatch, one has to believe that they’re going to be showing the game.

Many are real negative about Versus but personally I don’t think it’s all that bad. Yes, it’s not ABC or ESPN, but it is national televised for every game, unlike even ABC which shows its games regionally (usually 4 across the nation) or FSN which is of course VERY regional down to individual TV markets. Additionally, unlike CSTV, Versus is included in most cable and satalite packages by default so the potential audience is far larger. While I’d prefer that these games were still on TBS (Versus replaces TBS in the Pac-10 television contracts this year) because of the high recogniation of the channel and the higher likelihood of a channel flipper happening upon the game, I’ll take Versus any day over CSTV or Comcast Sports Net.

UPDATE 9/10/07 @ 3:30 PM: The official Cal Bears site confirms it.

Cal is ranked 10th in both the AP and Coaches poll. They leapfrogged Ohio State and Michigan (take THAT Big-10!). I was hoping they’d leapfrog Virginia Tech after their lack-luster performance on Saturday and although they came close (8 points or less in both polls), I think VT got some sympathy points for their plight… not that I can blame anyone for sympathizing with their University after last year’s tragedy.

Also worth noting is that Cal is #2 in the Sagarin computer ranking that is used as a part of the BCS formula. Sagarin uses that along with some other computer numbers, including margin of victory which is not allowed for the BCS ranking, to come up with an overall ranking of #4.

A reminder for all Bear fans our there who wish to see this Saturday’s game versus Colorado State: The game will be on CSTV which is not in most cable packages. I know that on DirecTV, my provider, that CSTV is part of the $12 a month sports package that gets you all of the FSN affilliates (I get just the Bay Area feed by default) as well as 5 or 6 specialty feeds like CSTV. With DirecTV you can add a package to your plan for a minimum of one month so it’s going to cost me $12 to watch this game. Such is life.

In any case, consider this your reminder to call your content provider. You don’t want to be part of the Cal Bear faithful rush on Friday an Saturday morning that is likely going to take down the Comcast call-center.

When I FINALLY got home last night at midnight (left seat at approx. 9 PM, got to car at approx. 10 PM at Rockridge BART, completely diaper changes and pre-trip prepping by 10:20 PM and made it to Roseville around midnight… phew!) I flipped on ESPN to see how the game was being reviewed and where it fit in the headlines.

Boy, it was buried…

Between the Michigan debacle, the no hitter in Boston (which took too much press, IMHO), the PC-required Virginia Tech. mentions, the huge crash at the NASCAR race (ouch, btw), the Cal vs. Tennessee game barely got more mention than all the other games. The positive news was that in the review, Cal got its props for the victory in the recap, but it was dissappointing to see it lose the headliner status it had at the beginning of the day.

Such is life i guess.