(Written by kencraw)

The fundamental question one has to ask themselves when considering the strength of Colorado is: “How bad is Arizona?” This is particularly so because the Bears and Buffs have no common opponents… which is kinda rare for conference foes this late in the season. But the one conference team Colorado beat (Arizona) has two common opponents with Cal.

So we’re going to completely abuse the transitive property today…

• Arizona lost 41-19 @ Oregon. Cal lost a nailbiter in Autzen.
• Arizona hosted UW and lost 21-16 in a game where UW started really flat, but once they got up to speed rolled over Arizona. Cal lost in overtime on the road.

So there’s no doubt that Cal is a lot better than Arizona when doing a common opponent analysis… but then when you look at the Colorado vs. Arizona game and see 34-0 it makes you think that Colorado is probably better than the both of them, right? And that’s bolstered by the fact that all of their losses are to pretty good teams. Texas A&M, a strong Minnesota, ASU (the class act of the conference this year), and even USC ain’t bad.

Well, not so fast.

The level of blowout of those losses should be quite concerning for those trying to sing Colorado’s praises. They didn’t just lose, they were blown out by all of them but A&M. So my gut is that Arizona is *REALLY* bad and we shouldn’t put too much stock in that blowout win over Arizona.

My thinking is that today we have two very similar teams… they have just enough talent to be dangerous, but enough holes and problems to be on the weak end of things. So in the end it’s going to come down to who wants it more. And frankly, that scare the crud out of me. I’ve seen too many games where I’m not feeling a lot of passion out of the Bears.

But I refuse to make the trip to Berkeley so pessimistically so I’m going believe that the Bears bring a strong effort today and their slight talent edge combined with home field advantage is enough to finally get Cal back in the win column.

Bears win 27-13