My latest article, based on my post-game interview with Justin Forsett, is posted at cal.rivals.com: Forsett the Heart and Soul of Cal.

My recap article at Rivals has been posted. Cal comes up nails in Eugene.

You can also expect a player highlight article and my analysis article over the next couple days. I’ll make a blog post when each goes up.

You can also expect a podcast either tonight or tomorrow night depending on how much energy I have after I finish my player highlight article.

My next article: Crunching the Numbers: Cal vs. Oregon is posted at cal.rivals.com.

I think it is one of my better preview articles with lots of fun and meaningful stats… and only one typo!

My next article at Rivals has been published. Consistency for Cal is key.

As a bonus, this article doesn’t require a subscription to view.

I’ve got a great story for everyone:

My wife tells me Wednesday night “Hey, I’m going to take the boys to their grandparents next weekend and you can come if you want but I’m going to be studying for my Master’s test” (She’s finishing up a master’s degree in Spanish.)

And I say, “Hey! I purposely canceled a bunch of trips to road Cal games because you wanted me home as much as possible during the last trimester of your pregnancy, and now you’re going to stick me at home alone!?!”

And she says, “Oh, I forgot that this was the Oregon game weekend… well why don’t you plan to go on short notice?”

And I said, “Oh yeah!?!… um… um… I love you too!”

So then I said to myself, “You really need to stop talking to yourself.”

But then I ignored me and said “Hey, why don’t you call your boss at Rivals and see if they’ve got anyone covering the game… I mean, they probably do, but it’s worth a shot.”

So I did and yesterday I got back the reply, “You’re in! Our regular guy has a family conflict that weekend.”

And I say (to myself… see it’s a real problem) “SWEEEEEEEEEEET! Not only do I get to go, I get to go for free and do the press box and see the players and coaches again.”

And then I say to myself (ugh… this is getting really bad): “Hey, my brother is going to the game with his roommate. Why don’t you see if you can bum a ride from him and crash in his hotel room? Then the trip will be REALLY free.”

So I e-mail him and he says, “Sounds good, just buy us dinner Friday night or something”

And I say (this time to Brian), “I like Pizza! You’re on.”

All of this is just a fun way to say that I’ll be covering the Oregon game from the press box and will be able to do post-game interviews of the players and coaches. Last year I would always ask before press conferences and other interview opportunities if there any questions my blog readers would like to see answered. Consider this post the place to do that.

As many of you know, last year I was the lead reporter for Rival’s Cal site. Unfortunately for me, and to be honest fortunately for Rival’s subscribers, Rivals shook up the management of the Cal site and I took on a transitional role why the new editors were getting in place professional writers. As a part time writer with a full time job as an engineer outside of the Bay Area I just couldn’t cover the Bears extensively enough to be a one man show. All the while, the new editor was fairly happy with my writing but knew that I wasn’t the future of the site, so let me go in the off-season with the hope that maybe I could do some supplimental work in the fall.

That was the bad news.

The good news is that we came to an agreement earlier this week for me to write analysis and preview articles for the team and my first article, a statistical preview of the Arizona game, is posted now. Of course like most Rivals articles, they require a subscription to read the whole thing.

Expect to see about 2 articles a week at Rivals from me for the rest of the season. (So it’s time to renew your Rival’s subscriptions. 🙂 )

For those who remember the dramatic drop-off in my blogging last year, fear not. I didn’t say much about it at the time because of the nature of the situation, but I was under a lot of pressure to write A LOT more articles than I could. I just couldn’t justify posting on the blog when I was getting a pay-check for something that they weren’t happy with the level of my output. This year things are structured differently, I’m only doing two articles a week, and I’m not the lead writer. Basically my content is seen as a nice addition but nothing critical to the sucess of the Rivals page. There will be plenty of blogging here. Plus we’ve got Jason’s always awesome content to suppliment mine.

I was asked by sportprojections.com to write the preview for the Cal Bears for 2007. Here is the preview. Interesting to note is that Cal got a 1st place vote and it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t going to be the Homer that the UCLA guy was and pick my own team against the concensus of the rest of the pundits out there. But the Arizona contributor thinks highly enough of the Bears to give them their lone 1st place vote.

That’s a first place vote worth getting.