“Son of a family-friendly site!?! Another Versus game!?!”

That’s what went through my mind when I saw the announcement that the Big Game will be at 4:30 PM on Versus. This Versus against DirecTV feud just got really frustrating to me. Two weeks in a row of games that no matter how much I’m willing to pay DirecTV I can’t get on my TV.

Yeah, I’m going to game. My kids have not missed a Big Game in their life and that’s not going to change as long as I can help it. But I like to have the game recorded at home for later review and for archiving to DVD (I know, I know, there are torrents available, but generally they’re not as well edited as mine).

I guess it’s good we’ll get some national exposure in the beat-downs I fear we’re going to receive in the next two weeks… or is it?

You might be shocked to know that not only do I work with a guy who used to write material for the Stanford Band, but I actually hired the guy even after learning this information.

Anyway, Chris Holt sends along a link to this Wall Street Journal article about the futility of Cal Football.

I think he was mocking me when he sent it. But, I mean, you can’t argue with the facts. I wear it as a badge of honor. Don’t we all?

Great post on ESPN from Ted Miller, its Pac-10 beat writer, about USC’s problematic dominance of the conference.

This line made me smile, ruefully:

In 2004, Cal was knocked out of the Rose Bowl when Texas coach Mack Brown successfully lobbied poll voters to manipulate the system.

Succinct, isn’t it?

But this one made me laugh out loud:

The Bears have 17 starters, including Heisman Trophy candidate Jahvid Best, back from a team that won nine games in 2008.

USC, meanwhile, is breaking in a new quarterback and replacing eight starters from one of the best defenses in college football history.

Are the Trojans vulnerable?

“No,” Jahvid Best said.

“I’ve heard the same thing every year after they lose seven or eight guys to the NFL. Everybody says they’re not going to be as good this year. But they come back [every year] and are just as good if not better than the year before. They’ve proven that no matter how many people leave, they are still going to be one of the best teams in the Pac-10. So we’re not counting on them being vulnerable. We’re counting on our execution on offense and defense to beat them.”

Not only is that a funny line from Best, but he’s right — you can’t ever, ever underestimate USC. After Cal’s early games with Oregon and USC, I get the feeling we’ll know exactly where Cal falls in the conference. Cross fingers.

At least from my corner of the blogosphere the announcement by the coaching staff that the press will now only be invited to practice for the first 20 minutes of practice and the last 10 minutes, cause a tide wave of emotion and reaction. I wanted to give my thoughts:

Before I get started, a little note on what happens in these times during practice. The first twenty minutes is entirely warm-up and individual drills. This has always been the time that traditionally photographers and TV crews were allowed to shoot. Nothing of note gets reported from this time frame other than who’s not there and who’s in red or yellow (which suggests they’re injured). The final 10 minutes is generally a wind-down time including field-goal practice and the leftovers of scrimmaging. I suspect that with the new rules it’ll be pretty content free. I mean, that’s the whole point, right? What I’m saying here is that for the most part, the press is no longer being given access to practice at all. Those minutes were chosen carefully and there’s no illusion from Tedford or the press that it was an attempt to do anything different.

Now, onto my thoughts…

The first thing to note is that this is completely Coach Tedford and the University’s prerogative. There are no rules that regulate how much or little press access a team must give. One could argue this is an oversight by the NCAA. While they make all kinds of rules about recruits and all kinds of various things, they leave press access completely untouched. As I’ll go into details later, Tedford’s concern is that the coverage of his team is much more thorough than some of his opponents. As such, I suspect that if the NCAA came up with rules that forced equality, it could eliminate this problem entirely and Tedford would be more than happy to comply.

The second thing to note is that the change that has been made is not uncommon. I don’t have exact numbers but I suspect that the new rules are closer to the norm across BCS teams than not. As an anecdotal piece of info, LSU got some heat for making the same change not too long ago. Yes, USC and Florida both have completely open practices, but they’re the exception not the rule. It’s particularly worth noting that these are the teams with the most talented players. That’s not exactly a secret and it ensures that they’ll continue to be on top with reasonable coaching that knows how to take advantage of that talent differential, whether or not their opponent knows what is coming.

The final initial note is that I completely agree that there is a competitive disadvantage to having more reporting on one team than their opponent, which is Tedford’s concern. When Cal’s reporters are giving play-by-play breakdown of what happens in practice and Maryland’s reporters are getting filtered information from the coaching staff, there’s no doubt that the Maryland coaching staff can learn a lot more about how to beat Cal than the reverse. And yes, the coaching staffs read all this stuff. Make no mistake about it. I think that as the season progresses this advantage is less and less because game film makes up the difference, but even at the end of the season, it could still have a small effect.

So, overall I’ve got no problem with Tedford restricting access. What concerns me a bit is the way it was gone about, in two ways:

First, it feels to me like the horse was already out of the barn on this one. They should have been looking at the daily reports that were being done from the get go and made whatever corrections they thought were appropriate a couple weeks ago. To make this change now suggests to me they weren’t playing close enough attention. This is particularly bad because people started signing up for subscriptions based on the level of info provided. Rivals provides a 7-day trial and after 7-days of awesome play-by-play breakdowns, I bet there were a number of people who signed up for year-long subscriptions based on that. A week later, their reason for subscribing was eliminated and I feel bad for them.

Second, I think there’s a better way to go about this. Since only approved media is allowed, there’s a way to limit this without disallowing press access to practice. We had been given rules on what was allowed. Pictures and video could only be taken at certain times. Descriptions of formations were not allowed. Descriptions of plays had to be vague and the emphasis had to be on the players involved not the details of the play. All of these rules had been followed by the press as a whole (yes, I’m sure there were minor oversights here and there, but holistically, they were followed). So, if Tedford was concerned about what was being reported, why didn’t he just handout a bunch of additionally restrictive rules and let us stay? No play-by-play… OK, fine. No completion percentages or yardage information… OK, we’ll follow that too. Whatever it was that he was concerned about, new rules could be put in place that we would have followed and it could have just as easily accomplished the goal.

But in the end, Tedford is responsible for this team and its success. He did what he felt he needed to ensure that success and I can’t fault him for that. While it will limit what I can share, I guess that’s the way it needs to be. I just wish it had been handled a little bit differently.

Over at Calbears.com, they announced that 3 more games have been picked up for TV coverage. (Hat tip to commentor AERose for alerting me to the Minnesota game getting picked up prompting me to go search for a press-release on the subject.)

The new additions after ABC/ESPN picked up USC, Oregon and Maryland via their Pac-10 contract and FSN/Versus picked up no games via their Pac-10 contract, are:

• CSN Calfornia picked up the Eastern Washington game as everyone expected. CSN California is our “fall back” option and they’re small enough of a network that any game they get causes a big up-tick in viewership.
• ESPN (or ESPN2) picked up the Minnesota game via their Big-10 contracts or associated options (I don’t know their contractual situation at all).
• CSN California got the rights to the Washington game from FSN Northwest who had already picked up that game for local coverage. This will ensure that the game is shown locally to those who don’t have the full FSN sports package.

That gets us to half the games on TV with the rest being up for 12-day selections:

For the observant viewer, they noticed that there was no “or ?” on the UCLA game. That’s because there are two contracts available and only two games to pick from, Cal at UCLA and Stanford at Arizona. So both games will get picked up, it’s just a question of who will be on ABC at 12:30 PM and who will be on Versus at 4:30 PM.

The Big Game also seems like a likely pickup as there are 3 television slots available and only 4 games to pick from. Particularly when one of them is Oregon State at WSU, which would only get picked up if for some reason OSU is on fire again this season, something I don’t expect, it seems safe to say that the Big Game will be picked up by one of these contracts.

The other 4 games are battling it out for 1 to 3, 12-day selections with always two or more games getting left out in the cold by the Pac-10 contracts (exception: 10/31 where there’s 1, 12-day and 2 games to choose from). The good news these days is that CSN California appears to be in Cal’s hip-pocket for any game that doesn’t get picked up for one of the more lucrative contracts. That’s where that “or ?” is not something to be worried about. We know exactly who’s going to do it and are pretty confident they’ll want it.

Overall that means things are looking good for a another season with every game on TV.

I’m a bit surprised by this, but FSN/Versus got their first stab at picking Pac-10 games for 2009 and chose to only make 7 of their 18 possible selections, leaving 11 more as “12 or 6-day selections”. That’s a bit higher than usual. I don’t know the exact numbers but I would have expected 10-12 games to be selected leaving just over a handful for the 12 day selections. The Bears got none of those picks 7 picks although I suspect they’ll get more than a couple of the 12 day selections.

As of right now, there’s only one game that couldn’t be on either FSN, ESPN or ABC, the Eastern Washington game. There’s no 12 day selections for that week and lets be honest, even if there was it wouldn’t be picked up by FSN. Look for the athletic office to be getting that game on Comcast Sports California (not Bay Area). FSN effectively did us a favor for not leaving a 12 day selection for that day because negotiations for CSN California to pick it up would have to wait for the 12 day pick before the ink could be signed.

The other game that’s a bit of a question mark is the Minnesota game. It won’t be on ABC or ESPN, but may be on the Big-10 network. It’s yet to be seen whether FSN or Comcast sports could buy the rights to that feed or perhaps whether they could go out and get dueling coverage. Whatever would happen, it wouldn’t fall under the Pac-10 contract because that’s only for Pac-10 home games. My gut says this game will be on TV somehow.

All the rest of the games are either picked up or candidates for FSN, ESPN or ABC to pick up as 12 day selections. I suspect that the athletic department will also be lining up CSN California to pick up any games that fall through the 12 day selections.

Here is where you can see the full TV schedule as it stands.

Well, the first set of TV scheduling announcements is out. The first set comes from ABC (which also means ESPN). In a few weeks Fox Sports and Versus will make their picks. Finally, during the season the networks will chose games based on “reserved” times they selected when they made their picks. They make those picks 12 days before the day of the “reservation”.

The big winner is, and it’s no suprise, USC. ABC scheduled 12 games and reserved time slots for 8 other games. Of those 12 games picked, fully half of them are USC games. Of the remaining 6 games, only 2 are conference games. Both of those included Oregon (versus Cal and Oregon State). The final 4 games are non-conference games. Washington (versus LSU), Oregon (versus Utah), Stanford (versus Notre Dame) and Cal (versus Maryland) each got 1.

Cal doesn’t come out bad with 3 games total (Maryland, USC and Oregon) which is 3rd behind USC’s 6 and Oregon’s 4. Washington and Oregon State are the only other teams with more than 1, with 2 each, and Washington State and UCLA were the 2 teams left out in the cold (boy, I wouldn’t want to be on the Bruin Nation website this week if I was an ABC exec).

Speaking of which, I’m somewhat suprised the Cal versus UCLA game didn’t get picked up. It has a history of being a close game in the Rose Bowl and you’d think they’d throw UCLA one bone. Here’s betting that the game gets picked up as ABC’s 12 day selection that they reserved for 10/17 at 12:30 PM. You’ll notice that minus USC games, ABC was very reluctant to pick up games midway through the season and the back end of the schedule is very “reservation” heavy. That says to me that ABC doesn’t have a lot of confidence about which teams will rise to the top and wants to hold out on their picks.

Other games that I wouldn’t be surprised being picked up by ABC for a reserved game are the Arizona State game (reservation is for 10/31 @ 12:30 PM) and perhaps the Big Game (reservation is for 11/21 @ 12:30 PM) although it tends not to attract the big networks because it’s mostly unrecognized outside of the Bay Area. I’d add the Oregon State game but there’s no open reservation for that day.

Of course many of these plus others could be picked up by Fox Sports and Versus who tend to grab games that have the potential to be big ones if the chips fall certain ways. As I said before we’ll see their early picks a little later this spring.

What is somewhat interesting is that the Maryland game will be a 7:00 PM game. Usually that timeslot is the domain of Fox Sports. But I guess ESPN2 is wanting to compete for that slot early in the season anyway. FWIW, that means I’ll be selling all but one of my tickets for the Maryland game because the boys are too young for games that late and somebody has to stay with the kids, so my wife is out too. That means I’ve got 5 tickets to sell. Let me know if you’re interested in buying some of those tickets from me ($60 each). You’ll get the privilege of seeing me in my native environment. I’m FAR less level headed in the stands. If I don’t get any bites here at least some of them will end up on ebay/stubhub/whatever (any suggestions for the best site for this?)

Click here to see the TV announcement on the Cal Bears website.

We’ve been over how the Bay Area doesn’t get Comcast SportsNet California (sometimes called “West” or sometimes “Sacramento” and not to be confused with Comcast SportsNet Bay Area) but that’s where the bottom end Cal football games end up. To get the came you’ve got to buy a sports package through your cable provider.

I don’t have this problem up in Sacramento as I get both Comcast SportsNet California and Bay Area on DirecTV as part of my base package in the Sacramento region.

In any case, according to Jonathan Okanes, Comcast cable viewers in the Bay Area are getting a reprieve and will now get both Comcast SportsNet Bay Area AND California in their base package.

One can hope that it’ll free up DirecTV to follow suit in the Bay Area.

Thanks to Al from mybearterritory.net for dropping me a line to give me a heads up, but ABC has picked up both the Oregon State game on November 15th and the Big Game on November 22nd. Both will be at 12:30 PM.

The Oregon State game was no surprise because of how important the showdown has become with Cal beating Oregon. The Big Game was more of a surprise because there was no ‘official’ ABC slot available for that time. However, the athletic department clearly pulled some strings to get the game on TV because it won’t be on the ‘normal’ regional ABC broadcast. Instead it will be shown just on the northern Cal ABC TV stations. Quoting from the note about this in the USC preview on calbears.com:

For the Big Game on Nov. 22, ABC will show the game over the air in the San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno and Monterey markets in Northern California. Fans can also access the game nationwide through ESPN GamePlan.

So, for the 2nd year in a row every Cal game will be on TV. The only question remaining is what network the Washington game will be on, but we know it’ll be one of either FSN or ESPN. Here’s the remaining game schedule:

UPDATE: Here’s the official release from calbears.com

This is a bit late, but for those who didn’t know, the Oregon game will be on ABC at 12:30 (on 11/1) like many expected. Here’s the release.

As a reminder, here are the remaining games and their TV coverage:

That just leaves the OSU game which has a couple options and the mysterious Big Game which seems to have no options and no activity on a pick-up by CSN-West. There’s got to be something going on behind the scenes there. Otherwise every other game for the 2008 season will be picked up on TV.

Well, it’s two Monday’s before a Cal game, which means that it’s time for the TV announcement.

Drum roll please…

It’s ABC at 12:30 PM!

Since the Oregon at Arizona State game has lost a lot of its luster with ASU on a 4 game losing streak and Oregon getting killed by USC last weekend and then looking uninspired against UCLA, it’s not a big surprise that ABC went with the game that has the big TV markets (LA and the Bay Area) particularly with Cal back in the rankings.

It’s a relief since that’s all that was available for TV coverage unless Cal could swing another CSN-West deal at the last minute.

As a reminder, here are the remaining games and their TV coverage:

It seems like the Cal vs. Oregon game would get ABC as well with the main competition being ASU at OSU, but with the UCLA game getting that same slot, perhaps not. It’s hard to believe it won’t get picked up at all with two slots availabe and it being the biggest billed game of the weekend.

That just leaves the OSU game which has a couple options and the mysterious Big Game which seems to have no options and no activity on a pick-up by CSN-West. There’s got to be something going on behind the scenes there.

I hadn’t seen much mention of this elsewhere, but the Cal vs. ASU game on 10/4 has been picked up and will be televised by ABC at 12:30 PM. It’s the first ‘traditional’ 12:30 home game for the Bears in a long time. How long… er… look it up yourself!

OK, OK, OK… I’ll do it: It was the 2006 (yes, that’s no typo) Big Game which had a noon kickoff (and as they say in music, that’s good enough for Jazz (meaning ‘close enough’)). The last one actually at 12:30 PM was the 2006 Washingtong game.

Looking more broadly, the next three games have their time set, but we’re still waiting on UCLA, Oregon, Oregon State and Stanford as well as one of two slots for the Washington game that will be televised.

For the UCLA game there is still a 12:30 PM slot available at ABC that will be decided on Monday 10/10 however, that’s also the weekend of the Oregon vs. ASU game so a lot will depend on where those 4 teams are in the standings. If UCLA continues the downward spiral, Cal may be out of luck for the big networks and it may be back on Comcast-West.

For the Oregon game there is both a 12:30 PM ABC slot and a 3:30 PM FSN slot available that will be decided on Monday 10/17. I’m pretty confident Cal will get picked for one of the two. It just matters whether ASU vs. OSU is important enough to get the 12:30 spot over Cal vs. Oregon.

Oregon State has a 12:30 ABC slot and a 7:15 PM FSN slot available. There’s not a lot of good games that weekend and with OSU’s history of upsetting good teams, I think they’ll get picked up, but if either or both teams faulter sufficiently, this would be my guess for the obligatory “radio only” game for 2008.

Stanford is the odd one. While there are no contractual games available through the Pac-10, Cal hasn’t wrapped up a TV contract with CSN-W like they did for other games they didn’t have a contract option for. Does that mean this game won’t be on TV? Seems surprising if that’s the case. Perhaps they’re still in negotiation…

Finally, for Washingon, it’ll either be on FSN at noon or on ESPN(or 2) at 5:00 PM.

Let’s put this in table form shall we:

There’s nothing that cures a season-killing streak in which you lose six of seven games like… removing names from your uniforms?

So says Jeff Tedford in today’s Chronicle:

Maybe as jarring as the gold stripe down the middle of the new Cal helmets, will be the lack of names on the back of the newly designed jerseys. Coach Jeff Tedford removed the names before last season’s Armed Forces Bowl as a tribute to the military, and he admitted Monday that the tribute will continue this season because it was a twofold statement. “After the way Washington and Stanford happened, it was evident that we all needed to come together and look at accountability issues,” Tedford said. “That’s what we did. It was taking identity off of individuals and putting it back on the team.”

Not to freak anyone out, but this is not the first time Cal has pulled a move like this. The last time it happened was during, you guessed it, the depths of the Tom Holmoe era.

Now I’m pretty sure that players are not able to spin their heads around, “Exorcist” style, and read their names (upside-down) on their jerseys as an ego boost. But there is one group that directly benefits from names being placed on jerseys: The fans.

While many of our readers no doubt can memorize the name and number of every Cal player — and can even pick on the subtle physical characteristics that differentiate that number 4 from that other number 4 — I’m betting that 99% of Cal fans can’t.

Names on jerseys help the process by, y’know, actually telling you the name of the guy who just made that play.

Of course the no-names-on-jerseys trick is a cheap motivator. But to me it reeks of desperation, perhaps (I admit) because this is the same kind of genius motivational tactic we saw in the tainted Holmoe era. And because it’s disrespectful to the fans.

But hey, I guess those of us paying hundreds or even thousands of bucks to go watch games in Memorial Stadium aren’t as important as a team-unity stunt. There are plenty of ways to preach team unity to a bunch of college athletes. Couldn’t they find one that didn’t degrade the fan experience?

(Update: Look, this is not exactly a gigantic issue that’s going to rock Cal’s football team to its foundations. But it’s just so stupid that it drives me batty. So I wanted to add one more point. If this is really about “taking identitity off of individuals and putting it back on the team,” why not go all the way? Assign jersey numbers randomly every week and give the number listing only to accredited members of the media! And don’t announce the names of players on the Memorial Stadium system! Make the fancy introduction video on the little BearVision screen all about the team and don’t read off the names of players in a pre-game ceremony. Sadly, the rules don’t allow you to remove numbers completely, but if you really want to “take identity off of individuals,” there are a lot of annoying things you could do. Why stop at nameplates? -J.S.)

Since so few of the Cal games were picked up by the “big” networks, Cal has been aggressively courting the small ones to pick up the games. As such the WSU, Arizona and Colorado State games have been picked up, and they’re all going to be on “Comcast Sports Network – West”. That’s not to be confused with “Fox Sports Network – Bay Area” that was bought and renamed “Comcast Sports Network – Bay Area”.

This also means they have game times for these games:

• WSU: 9/6 at 3:30 PM
• Colorado State: 9/27 at 3:00 PM
• Arizona: 10/18 at 7:00 PM

The extra “good news” here is that we now have a game time for each of the road games one is likely to fly to (Oregon State is such a bad place to get by plane that it is both faster and cheaper to drive). Also, the Arizona game now being a night game means one can fly in the day of the game and fly out the next day to save on hotels and car rentals. For WSU, while the 3:30 PM flight time doesn’t really allow for either a same day arrival or departure without cutting things too close for comfort, I recommend flying straight from Pullman (well, really Spokane) to Maryland. A week in DC (or New York) can always be a lot of fun.

I’m not going to worry about the 5 PM and 6 PM news coverage (which was horrible in the rush) but what is available this morning:

KTVU: C- (Did alright minus grossly exagerating the EIR short-comings in one spot the middle)
KPIX: B (No glaring errors but refused to state any facts, just what both sides were saying)
KGO-TV: B- (No glaring errors but not equal time for both sides, although the previous night’s video is far better. I’d give that video a B+.)
NBC11: F (video is from before the ruling)
KRON: D (No later update after 6:30 PM (at least on the web) and that one was entirely one-sided)
KCBS: C+ (Starts with the tree-sitter side and only “rebuts” it with University side)
KGO: A- (Very balanced. Starts with the facts and then puts protestors as sidebar)
SFGate: B+ (Reasonable balanced with enough details to make it clear what is going to happen)
CC Times: A+ (On headline alone “Judge rules in UC Berkeley’s favor” but it also has the real details)
Daily Cal: B+ (Generally strong but over quotes the PHA rep. and her bogus arguments)
Oakland Tribune: A+ (same article as CC Times)

For what it’s worth, a couple of reports indicated that they’ve managed to force the tree-sitters into one redwood tree, which is really good news. The bad news is that Dumpster Muffin has a death wish. I work with wood a lot and the problem is that it breaks down relatively quickly. If she keeps shaking that platform, it’s only a matter of time before it structurally collapses. I pray to God (quite literally) that she comes to her senses and stops this suicidal activity.

Well the announcement is out on the game-time for the Maryland game (in Maryland). It will be on the ESPN network of stations with a noon local-time start (which means 9:00 AM here on the West Coast). This is not much of a surprise although the nice part it to know that the game won’t take a Thursday night slot. I’d really like to see two more games get selected for TV early, Washington State and Arizona. I say those two because those are the last two games I want to fly to and knowing the start time helps pick out what flights will work, particularly if I’m only hoping to stay one night. I’m hopeful that FSN will pickup the WSU game sometime here in the next month or so since it is so early in the season and their aren’t any good games that weekend that aren’t yet accounted for in the Pac-10.

See the article at CalBears.com for more info on the Maryland game TV contract.

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.