My two articles from the WSU game have been published over at BearTerritory.net:

Game Overview:
http://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=847171

Player Profile on Syd:
http://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=847227

Both are subscription articles.

My statistical preview of the WSU game is posted over at BearTerritory.net:

http://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=846189

This one is a subscription article… all the more reason to signup!

Another update on the SAHPC published over at BearTerritory.net:

http://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=843908

Well, the interview went well yesterday… or so I thought:

I know that we’re often our own worst critics but MAN my facial expressions were flat. Yeah, the answers were fine. But I just can’t get over how, as Jason put it in an IM discussion with me “you did sort of look like your cat had just died”. I mean, I SPECIFICALLY said to myself “make sure you’re smiling” because I know that I can look a bit stone faced in pictures. In fact, I remember a couple moments when I tried to smile more. There’s absolutely no indication of that attempt on film.

I mean, how is even POSSIBLE that I can look both like this:

and this:

Oh well…

In any case, here’s a little background on how it all works. They sent me to the University studio when the show was being taped in the morning. They put me in a little room with no more than a chair with a backdrop and video equipment. Then they put a mic on me and an earbud in my ear. The earbud had the audio from the show as well as occasional cut-ins from the producers with instructions or heads up.

That’s all I had. No video monitor to see what was going on. No teleprompter with questions that were going to be asked (they did give me a general idea in the studio that they’d be asking about Riley as starting QB, Javhid Best, the 3-4 and team chemistry, but that’s about the extent of it). Nothing. So if you’re one who noticed that my eyes kept shifting off camera too, I have NO IDEA what I was looking at. I think it was mostly that I felt pretty disengaged and distant as opposed to feeling like I was “talking to the camera”.

While I guess the equipment setup is the norm, I had no idea what to expect and was a bit thrown off by it. But what REALLY threw me off, was the pacing of the show. I had never watched the show before, so I had no idea. I was expecting something a bit more drawn out with more detailed discussion as opposed to the quick hitting, fast paced answering that was expected.

So when the first guy from USC, who’s not in the clip, started blathering away at lightning speed, I had a huge “oh crap” moment. I knew I would get about a 15 second warning when my turn was up, so I quickly in my head got ready to just fly through my answers and did my best to prepare them. I knew that when the moment came I just had to spew out whatever was first on my mind. “Don’t think, just talk”, I told myself. As an example, I had no idea I’d say that Riley’s attitude/energy might make a difference after the first loss. It’s just what came to mind while I was blathering away. The whole thing was just a stream of consciousness. There wasn’t even time to think. In fact, I couldn’t have told you afterwards that I said that. I couldn’t even say how long I was on the air.

I think the next time I’m on I’ll do a lot better. I’ll spend a lot of time prepping content to say. What I noticed from the other two guys (the 3rd guy was Florida) was that they didn’t mind straying from the question and would just keep talking as long as the host would let them, so that’ll allow me to prepare content and use it liberally after quickly answering the question. Basically, the first time you pause, no matter what you just said, they’re asking their next question.

Also, I’ll spend some time in front of a camcorder “having a little talk” with Mr. Stone Face.

All in all though, I was happy with my answers. My only complaint was with the stone faced delivery. In fact, I’m genuinely surprised my answers were as good as they were considering how it all came about and how much of a blur it was. I think what saved me is that I’m so comfortable with the material, that there was never a moment I had to pause to come up with anything. I was able to “execute” on my “don’t think, just talk” and it didn’t make me sound stupid.

Hopefully I’ll get another chance to show I can do it better…

Watch College Football NOW today at 3:00 PM PDT to see me give my thoughts on Cal football to the NFL network crew.

The NFL network is on channel 212 on DirecTV and caried on a number of other providers usually in the same range of channels as the “extra” ESPN channels like ESPN classic, etc.

My analysis of the defensive line during Fall Camp was just posted on BearTerritory.net:

http://cal.rivals.com//content.asp?CID=840508

As an FYI, this is a subscription article. I’d very much encourage people who like what I write to signup with Rivals as I’ll have about 3 articles a week that require a subscription during the season. It’s less than $10 a month which works out to be about $0.75 per article and that’s not taking into account the great articles by Chris and AW as well as access to the subscriber message board (which is by far the best subscription board between all the Cal subscription sites). If you care at all about recruiting or Basketball in addition to football game coverage, BearTerritory.net is the site to subscribe to.

For the financially challenged amongst us, have no fear about this blog suffering. Between the On The Road Home and yet to be named podcasts that Jason, Phil and I will be doing as well as the usual slew of posts including the best live-blogging of road games in the Cal blogosphere (with Jason as our gracious host), we intend to keep this the #2, yet highest quality Cal blog online.

For those not daily visiting the SAHPC court case page, there’s been a ton of activity. I summarized the current state of things as of this morning in an article just published at BearTerritory.net:

http://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=840372

But even since this morning there has been fresh activity. The University submitted a proposed Judgment for Judge Miller to look over. Their hope of course is that Judge Miller just rubber stamps it.

The key development here is that the University is pushing REALLY hard to get these trees down before the MSU game. Their strategy now is to ask Judge Miller to immediately end the injunction with the knowlege that the University has promised not to cut any trees down for two days after the decision giving Volker and Co. two days to file an appeal and attempt to get an appellate injunction in place. By ending the injunction immediately, the whole 20-day extension for appeal is no longer relevant (how can an injunction that doesn’t exist get “extended”).

So in theory, if Judge Miller rubber stamps the University’s proposed Judgment, Fan Appreciation day on Saturday may be a LOT more exciting than we had previously thought, what with the screaming tree-sitters and the chainsaws echoing in Strawberry Canyon.

There is one thing I’m concerned with in the University’s strategy: Judges don’t like to be rushed. I’m not concerned with Judge Miller… she’s so sick of this case she can’t wait to get it off her desk. But the appellate judge is a different matter. If the University does indeed get the injunction lifted with only two days for Volker and Co. to get a new injunction in place from an appellate judge, I can easily see that judge being more likely to issue an injunction because of the shortness of time they get to consider it.

Said another way, if there were 24 days left in the injunction when the appellate judge first gets the case, that gives them plenty of time to think over what to do. They can read a bunch of the rulings and briefs and various submissions from both sides and get a good sense of things without ever having to make any decisions for a number of weeks. Once they’ve done that, they can then decide with confidence that there is nothing here that merits an injunction and deny that request with plenty of time to spare.

If, however, this judge has all of two days to make that decision, they’re going to feel VERY rushed. Many judges will be tempted to put on the brakes at this point so that they can take a more thorough look at the case. The way they do that is by instituting a temporary injunction. And once we’ve opened that pandora’s box at the appellate level, it’s going to be more difficult to get that injunction removed before the entire appellate process is completed.

So, is it worth that risk to potentially move up the tree cutting by 4 weeks? Maybe. Only time will tell.

After I wrote my court ruling blog post I re-edited it up, added a few more details and then submitted to the Rivals gang to be published there:

What The Ruling Means

In this case the information in it is nearly identical to what I wrote in the blog post (I work very hard not to do that most of the time so that I’m actually providing value to the subscribers that they can’t just get for free here), so you won’t gain much in the way of new knowledge by reading it. What I find more interesting about it is the difference in how one writes an article and a blog post. A side-by-side comparison shows all kinds of little differences (all personal references are gone, reduced use of sarcasm and derision, etc.) that I made so that the content would be appropriate for an article.

If you’re interested in that it might be worth a look. (No subscription required to read this article)

My second spring practice article, Brock Mansion Spotlight, was published this morning.

Just like my last one, Chris Nguon was nice enough to give me credit for the whole article, even though he contributed all of the spring practice notes, or said a different way, all of the parts not about Mansion.

For those who wonder if I’m still writing for Rivals/BearTerritory.net, the answer is yes, albeit not very often. You’ll see a few more articles from me as Spring wraps up. More importantly, the current plan (and these things change so nothing is for sure) is for me to cover all of the road games for them this year. I’ll also be covering the weekly press conferences on Tuesdays for both home and away games. I’m pretty excited about getting that much coverage as it’ll mean I’ll see every game this year, both home (season tickets) and away (in the press box) as well as have good access to the players and coaches.

In any case, an article on Vereen I wrote was just published – Spring Ball: Vereen Back in Action. For full disclosure, although I was credited for the full article, I only wrote the portion about Vereen. The parts about Browner and the additional tidbits were written by Chris Nguon. Chris was apparently nice enough to give me credit for the whole thing.

I did a post-USC recap of Longshore’s 4th quarter comeback attempts over his 2-year career that has been posted at cal.rivals.com: All Eyes On Longshore.

This one is a subscription article.

My weekly statistical preview article is posted at Rivals: Crunching the Numbers: USC vs Cal.

As has been the trend, the article is subscription free.

My weekly analysis article has been published over at cal.rivals.com: Controlling the clock key in Cal win.

As has been the trend lately and looks like it will generally continue, this article is free to all to read.

I know it’s after the fact, put I wanted to make sure I linked to it from here in any case:

Crunching the Numbers: Cal vs. WSU

My preview article for the Arizona State game is up at Rivals: Crunching the Numbers: Cal vs. ASU.

This one looks to be subscription free as well.

My UCLA analysis article has been posted at cal.rivals.com: Running in to the Ground.

The article does not require a subscription.

My weekly statistical preview article for the Bears is up at Rivals: Crunching the Numbers: Cal at UCLA

As a bonus, this one is yet again available without a Rivals subscription.

This one was posted a couple days ago, but I forgot to link to it from here: Bears take one as a team.

OK, I’ll admit it, I’d never heard of BleacherBloggers but once I took a look, they seem pretty impressive. Well, guess who gets a mention on today’s show:

Yeah, that’s me alright! And might I add that they zoomed in WAY too much on me and my brother. Nobody should have to see my ugly mug that zoomed in.

For all who are visiting this site through the link at BleacherBloggers, welcome and make yourself at home. I hope you’ll visit often.

Some may have noticed that I didn’t have any articles published in the last couple weeks since the Oregon game. That’s because I ran out of gas. The Oregon game was so exciting that I left Autzen just exhausted. By the time I got home after having published my two articles I had nothing left in the tank. I was only able to get my podcast posted on fumes. Being a father of two young children with a third on the way, while working a full time engineering job for HP, once my tank is empty, it’s hard to get back on track. Add in that last weekend was “do everything I should have been doing on my weekends for the last month” and I was unable to write either a post-Oregon analysis article or a bye week ‘state of the team’ article, both of which were in the plans.

The good news is that I think I’m finally back on level ground and was able to write my Oregon State preview yesterday: Crunching the Numbers: Oregon State Preview. The other good news is that this is a non-subscription article as well so everyone can go read it.