(Written by kencraw)

As I just posted, I’m going to most of the games this year. That’s why you won’t hear a lot from me about the TV contracts and the new Pac-12 Network. As mentioned in a previous post, we “cut the cord” after last season, dumping DirecTV after many years. It was just too expensive and we hardly watch TV at our house, not for any theological/principled reasons, but just because we’re always doing something. Netflix streaming filled any holes we had, especially for the kids.

At that time, the plan was that we’d likely turn back on service for the football season. But since we’re now talking about only 3 games, I made the budgetary decision to leave it off and watch the 3 remaining games from a local sports bar. I’m sure I’ll find one with a free Wi-Fi connection and a power outlet to do live-blogging.

Plus, since I was projecting the TV service to cost on the order of $250 for the season, I’ll be able to buy more beer and hot-wings than any human should reasonably eat… although that’s unlikely to slow me down. 🙂

It may be that I’ll regret not paying more attention to the TV contracts, as there may be issues with finding sports bars that have the games. It occurred to me that most sports bars use DirecTV as it traditionally has the most sports, but as most of us know, at this juncture there is not a contract between DirecTV and the Pac-12 Network.

So perhaps there WILL be plenty of time for hand-wringing and rants.

(Written by kencraw)

Last year was a tough one for me, game wise. Not only did I not make it to any true road game (I’m not counting Fresno State or the Big Game) for the second year in a row after multiple years of going to most of them, I also missed two home games due to family conflicts (WSU and OSU). I guess 5 games is a fair amount when looking at it from some perspectives, but for me, it was a heck of a drought to get through.

That changes this year!

There was almost NO WAY I was going to miss getting a chance to go to the Horseshoe, even if the Bears get killed by Ohio State. Plus, my brother had his 1st child in July(a boy, to keep family tradition alive) and this new Uncle would like to go out an see him. Thus we’ll do like we did in 2008 with the Maryland game: combo a trip out to see him in Massachusetts with a can’t-miss football game. (Yes, I recognize it’s a long way from MA to Columbus, but it was a long way from MA to Maryland too and that didn’t stop us 🙂 )

Then there’s the new Pac-12 teams. Now that I’ve been to all Pac-10 stadiums, I’m sure not going to let a couple new members poke a hole in my accomplishments. I knew the week they were announced as additions to the conference that I’d be making trips out there as soon as they were on the conference schedule.

Since Salt Lake City is just up the railroad track from Roseville, it also provided a unique opportunity to give my boys a chance to do the long Amtrak ride they’ve been begging for, for years. Sure, the Saturday AM arrival time of 3:05 AM is a bit rough, as is the 11:30 PM departure time, but that sort of thing has never stopped me before. Plus, my kids deserve to see just how crazy their father is. The only question is whether we’re staying over Saturday night and making a side trip up to the Golden Spike on the other side of the Great Salt Lake from SLC.

(As a side note, did any of you know that less than 35 years after the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, the section of track where the Golden Spike was driven was abandoned for a more southern route that had less curves and grade issues? They call it the “Lucin Cutoff” and it’s the reason Salt Lake City is even on the railroad route. Then in 1942 the original rails were pulled up for metal during WWII, so there’s not even an operating track at the site of the Golden Spike anymore.)

To add to my Cal Bear riches, there are no conflicts this year with any home games, so I will be going to all 7 of those. In total, that means I’ll be going to 9 of the 12 games, only missing 3. Heck, if the Bears are undefeated after the trip to Ohio State and USC looks vulnerable, I might not be able to talk myself out of doing the bungee trip down I-5 to the LA Coliseum. Although my sofa is closer to the nearest high-school field than the visitor seats at USC at to the field, so that’s always a downer.

In any case, I’m very much looking forward to getting back into the fall routine of going to lots of games.

Anyone else going to Ohio State or Utah?

(Written by kencraw)

It’s that time of year when all the meaningful pre-season polls come out. They’ve always bugged me for a number of reasons, although I fully admit they can’t be stopped, but there’s one explanation for where various teams are ranked that really bothers me:

“I ranked team X below team Y because of their difficult schedule”

Wait a minute… why should that matter?

I don’t think anyone would debate that a team that has a harder schedule might lose more games than a team that plays an easy schedule. However, at the end of the season, we hear left and right how team X should be ranked above team Y, even though they have a worse record, because they played a far tougher schedule.”

Point being, team X is however good team X is. How tough their schedule is, doesn’t change how good team X is. Theoretically, the end of season rankings take into account how tough team X’s schedule was and is supposed to measure just how good the team actually was.

What I think this troublesome trend indicates is an implicit admission that the end of season rankings DON’T appropriately account for strength of schedule and thus teams who play tough schedules will NOT have it properly accounted for, thus when predicting how the teams will be ranked at the end of the season, we’ve got to give them a hit.

To make it worse, since they all implicitly admit that, the LAST thing team X needs is to start the season with a disadvantage. Where one starts ranked can affect where one ends up at the end of the season. If 2 teams go 10-2, all other things being equal, the one who was ranked higher at the beginning of the season will still be higher at the end of the season.

So what do we have for team X? We have a system where they won’t be properly credited in the end of season polls for their tough schedule, starting out with a lower ranking merely because of that tough schedule, something that puts them at yet another disadvantage, when what they really need is a pre-season benefit to do something to try and offset the lack of credit they get for a tough schedule.

And we wonder why so many teams schedule so softly…

(Written by kencraw)

One of the most intriguing things about this year is the amount of head coach turnover. Fully one-third of the conference head coaches are new in 2012. And Cal gets to play 3 of them. I was going to say that seemed disproportionally high considering 3 of the 4 are in the Pac-12 south, but 3 of our 9 conference games seems to be be remarkably similar to one-third. But to add to that, one of our non-conference games is against a new head coach.

From the various commentary I’ve read, both blogs and news media, it sure doesn’t feel like most of them are making enough of this.

To try and get inside my perspective, imagine for a moment you’re a fan of a team that was 7-5 last year. The general consensus is that your team will be better this year, probably. In week 3 you’ve got a home game against a team with a new head coach that has perennially stunk. They’ve flirted with bowl eligibility only twice in the last seven years. As the game approaches, they do look improved, but how much can two home-wins over a Big-12 bottom feeder and a non-BCS team tell you? You also won your first two at home over weak opponents, in what are even more convincing fashion. Plus, you’re ranked, they’re not. You’re at home, and they’re a long way from home. This is their 3rd new head coach in the last decade and the last two didn’t help things.

Are you worried about this week 3 opponent? Probably not.

Well, if your name is Michigan State and the year is 2002, you SHOULD have been. For those who don’t remember their Cal Bear history, Tedford’s coming out game was the 3rd game of his first season, going on the road to #15 ranked Michigan State and winning 46-22, smacking them in the mouth early.

My point is, sometimes head coaches make a HUGE difference in a program and we should know that more than anyone. Just as many teams underestimated the Bears when Tedford was hired, it’s a big mistake to underestimate our foes who have new head coaches.

Let’s flip my “imaginary” scenario around and look at from our perspective.

Were the Bears 7-5 last year? Yes
Is the consensus that the Bears have a shot at moving up this year? Yes
Are our first two games against weak teams we should beat with ease? Yes
Will we likely be ranked if we start with two blowout wins? Ye… well maybe. 🙂

So that’s our half of the equation. How about our opponents:

UCLA has been to a few bowl games in recent years, but generally has struggled. They’ve replaced the head coach multiple times with no real meaningful effect.

ASU has been on a downward trend, missing a bowl 3 of the last 4 years and while each of the last two head coaching changes started out well, within a year or two, they had gotten worse.

WSU probably most closely mimics the pre-Tedford Bears. Not competitive for most of a decade with some signs of improvement at times but other times colossal failures.

Ohio State…. well nobody is overlooking them, so why bother with the analogy.

I guess my point is this. We’ve owned ASU and UCLA in Berkeley, where we get them this year, for as long as I can remember. We haven’t lost to WSU since Tedford’s first year, 2002. There’s a strong temptation to overlook these teams. What’s really changed, right?

Well… maybe. But maybe not. New coaches change things. You can’t count on old trends.

Will all of these teams be better in 2012? No, just as some coaching changes are positive, some coaching changes are for the worse. Frankly, while I have my thoughts on who will succeed and who will fail, history shows it is notoriously hard to predict how coaching changes will turn out. Coaches with strong histories of success can fail. Coaches with dubious histories finally turn a corner. New head coaches rise to greatness. Other new head coaches prove the Peter principle is always at work.

So we’d better be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that none of these changes will matter. We’d better not notch games in our anticipated win column without pause. These changes could make all the difference in the world.

(Written by kencraw)

OK, now that I’ve got my 2 lamenting posts out of the way, on to bigger and better things…

What an exciting year we’ve got in front of us!

After giving up on the bench-back seating, I had a choice to make. Do I sit in effectively the same section as I’d had for all of my years as a season ticket holder or do I “downgrade” to the Gold Zone?

(Note, it’s probably worth looking at the seating chart while reading this post.)

Before the construction, we’d had some pretty special seats in DD: Rows 44 and 45, seats 1-3 in both rows. Obviously 1-3 is on the isle, but more importantly, 44 was the first row above the concourse, so there was nobody in front of us and we had a large platform where the kids could walk around. It had a minor downside that people on their way to and from their seats liked to stop on the platform when a play was happening, obscuring our view, but other than that, they were awesome seats, particularly with young children. The seats on the other side of the isle in E would have been even better because they wouldn’t have had the people obstruction, but our seats were still pretty dang good, all things considered.

But again, by the time my selection time came around, seats like that were nowhere to be found in DD. However, I could have gotten a set of seats in the middle of the first row above the handicap section in J (the equivalent of DD on the other side of the 50). Those were pretty good, but we very much liked having two rows. We put the kids in front of us and my wife and I could sit next to each other. With 6 in a row, we’d inevitably end up with them in the middle and each other barely within shouting distance.

Plus, my costs were going to go way up, at least for that year. $1200 down the drain plus the $1800 for 6 seats (OUCH!). We were back to 6 because I’d want them for future years and there’s no reason to compromise down to 4 as I wouldn’t have to make such big donations in future years. But it put a pinch on this year for sure.

But then, while browsing around, I found the miracle I was hoping for.

In section C, in the Gold Zone, the first two rows on the isle, the first rows above the handicapped section/concourse area, were available. 4 in the bottom row, 3 in the one above it. EUREKA!

Sure, section C gave me a bit of pause, but it was offset by the cost. See, for those not in the know, the Gold Zone has not only cheaper prices for adults, it’s the only section with kids pricing. While the $75 savings for the adults was nice, the BIG win was the $175 savings for each kid. With 4 kids, that’s a lot of savings! All told, I would go from $1800 down to $950.

My lone concern was that, as I had learned in 2011, night games provide a challenge if you buy kids seats. I won’t bring a 8 year old, much less a 3 year old, to a 7 PM game, for obvious reasons. And since nobody else will either, when you’ve got kid’s seats, all of a sudden, you’ve got worthless tickets. With the new TV arrangement I expecting plenty of night games, so it was a real concern.

So I e-mailed my very friendly and helpful University donation rep to ask him if there was any way on a game-by-game basis to upgrade children’s seats to adults. He informed me that all I have to do is take the tickets to the ticket office or the ticket window at the game (or a prior game), give them the children’s tickets and pay them the difference, and they’ll issue adult tickets in exchange.

SWEET! That was the final domino to seal my decision.

All of this went down about 3-4 days before my selection window. So I spent the next half week logging in every 15 minutes hoping “my” seats wouldn’t be taken. I have a firm “no praying about sports” rule, but if I didn’t, there would have been rosaries galore!

And my hopes and wishes came true, my selection time came and the seats I desired were still available. HOORAY!

But what’s this? I select my 6 seats, 3 in the front row and 3 behind them on the isle and the system balks. You can’t leave a single seat orphaned, it informs me.

ARG!?!

Thinking quick on my feet, I try multiple combinations to see what it will allow. There’s no way to get just 6 of the 7 available seats. BUT, it will allow me take all 7 of course, and being in the Gold Zone, that 7th seat can be a kid’s seat and only costs an extra $125. Being a devout Catholic, an extra kid’s seats is at most 28 days away from potentially being needed, so what the heck, I’ll take 7. In the mean time, we’ll get some extra butt space. My wife and I can spread out and take the 3 seats for two of us in the upper row and the 4 kids can sit in the front 4 seats.

(BTW, it seems to me that this is an excellent strategy for those desiring more butt-space. For only $125 a season you can buy an extra kid’s seat that you never intend on using and allow yourself to spread out.)

And that’s what we did: 2 adult seats and 1 kid’s seat in the upper row and 4 kid’s seats in the lower row. The more I think about it, the happier I am. For future years I’ve saved myself a considerable sum and for this year I mostly offset the $1200 donation. I “baby proofed” my seat needs for the next couple years, not needing to move if I ever need an additional seat. And, I managed to get seats nearly as nice as I did back in DD pre-construction. True, there be no platform to walk around on, but we also won’t have the obstruction issue either and we’ll still get the extra legroom of having a first row seat.

Needless to say, I’m happy with my seats and I get more excited about opening day in a beautiful new stadium.

Where did everyone else get seats? Any good stories?

(Written by kencraw)

One of reasons I didn’t do a lot of blogging late in the off-season was I was pretty ticked about how things went down in regards to donating to the athletic program. Before I get into my story, I want to be clear that I believe what happened was more my fault than the University’s and I wouldn’t want anyone to not donate to our Bears because of this post, assuming it’s otherwise the right thing to do.

Think of this more as a cautionary tale to make sure you’re donating for the right reasons.

It all started in December when all of us season ticket holders got e-mails about donating before the end of the year to increase our priority points. Being a guy with ridiculously low points (12 at the time) despite having being a season ticket holder for every year but one (which really hurt my points) since 1999, I decided to look into it.

See, up until now, I’ve always sat in the non-donor reserved section. But the possibility of sitting in the increased leg-room bench-back section was pretty enticing. I’ve traditionally bought 6 seats, running $300 a seat for most seasons or $1800 a year. With the latest baby being a girl and a wife who doesn’t like the games as much as I do, the thought was we’d get 4 seats in the bench-back section. $1200 for the seats ($300 x 4) and $800 for the required donation ($200 x 4) only ended up being $200 more than we used to pay. Then we could mix and match who went to which games: Sometimes me and the boys. Sometimes my wife and I and another couple (night games). Sometimes the whatever 4 from the family who could go when the kids have commitments.

And as with all purchasing decisions, there’s always the upgrade possibilities. Since at the $1200 ‘Big C’ donation level one gets a free parking pass that would otherwise cost me $150, and other benefits like earlier selection times for single-game tickets (and hopefully bowl tickets), it was worth the extra $250 in donation ($800 required, plus $150 for the parking is $250 less than the $1200 needed to be a ‘Big C’ donor) to get there.

I e-mailed the donation office to clarify a few things, notably that I’d get 5 extra points for an additional year of consecutive donating plus 12 points for the $1200. I also said I was interested in seats in a particular section and wanted to make sure I would be donating the right amount.

They were very nice and prompt in their reply, validated everything I asked, but gave one caveat that I ignored: “Of course this donation will not guarantee you seats in the section you’re interested in.”

“DUH!” I said. Priority points determine who picks when, right? But there’s no way all the seats would be gone I thought to myself. I could always pick seats on the opposite side of the 50 if it was overbooked where I wanted to sit.

Then came the selection period. Every day I logged in to see what was available as my day approached. And every day the number of available seats in “my” sections kept shrinking until a couple days before my selection, all that was left was seats in row 7 and below in all of the bench-back seats, on both sides of the 50, both at the $200 and the $400 donation levels.

Frankly, I was heart-broken.

There’s no way I’m going to sit that low. You just can’t see the game. Even if you’re on the 50 yard line, the lack of height takes away your depth perception in the endzones. At the 10 yard line where I’d be sitting, depth perception would be non-existent on the far side of the field. There’s just no way I’m sitting that low.

And to increase my frustration by an order of magnitude, there was this $1200 dollar donation looming over my head. It was now effectively wasted money.

Without going into too much details, it’s worth pointing out how much money $1200 is to my family. I’m a middle class guy, but with 4 kids and a stay-at-home wife (who’s awesome BTW), our budget is stretched pretty thin. We don’t own an HDTV. A 27″ tube TV from 1999 is all we’ve got. Our DirecTV subscription is a thing of the past and we’re not turning it back on for football season. We don’t have smartphone plans with the big carriers, it’s too expensive. We pay $55/month for both our cellphones and are considering cutting back further. Until the Jetta accident, we owned a ’97 Jetta and an ’02 Odyssey with no car payments. Frankly, I’d better get a raise someday soon as the insurance money for the Jetta isn’t going to pay the car payment for the new truck for very long. That or some other budgeted items are going to get the ax pretty soon, and as you can see, we’ve already cut pretty deep.

To be clear, I’m not complaining. I have a blessed and wonderful life and I wouldn’t change a thing. The tight money doesn’t inherently bother me a bit. I know that there are millions of Americans who live much more frugally and couldn’t afford even the cheapest Cal Bear tickets and the expense that goes with going to the game. People with no health insurance, no savings for retirement, things that I’m grateful to have. I’ve got no reason to REALLY complain, and I know how lucky I am in the big picture.

Nevertheless, my point is, $1200 is a BIG deal in my family. It’s a considerable percentage of our disposable income after the necessities are paid for. It’s an ‘up late for 3 or 4 nights in a row discussing it with my wife and running various budget scenarios to decide whether it is worth spending’ amount. It’s a VERY big deal.

“Well”, I told myself, “at least we’ll get some extra perks.” We got to pick our seats earlier than we otherwise would have. We’ll get a good parking spot, not one a mile away on the other side of campus. Things like good seats at the Ohio State game, seats that others may not be able to get.

Well, after talking to the rep from the donation office, it appears my additional priority points benefit should be measured in hours, not days, as to how moved me forward in the pecking order. After getting my Ohio State tickets early, it looks like everyone and their brother was able to get tickets to the game with numerous left over. And the final straw was when my parking pass arrived. I wasn’t in Underhill or somewhere similarly close. Nope, Lower Hearst. it’s only 30% closer than the lot I had last year!?!

Frankly, I got nothing of note for my $1200 (we’ll really for my $1050, as the parking pass would have been $150). Sure I get a promotional magazine in the mail now and again. I get lots of nice letters thanking us for our generosity. I guess my parking spot is a little closer. And I guess if the Bears miraculously make it to the Rose Bowl this year (more on that later), it will be worth every penny when trying to get tickets. But as far as concrete value, I didn’t get a whole lot and I’m not expecting much more in the future.

And at some level, I guess that’s OK. As you’ll see in a later post, I ended up going with some seats that as time has wore on I’ve been more and more happy with. It’s not called a DONATION for nothing. Thinking of it that way, how much should I be expecting in return?

The moral of the story is be very careful what you donate and what your expectations are for that donation. Make sure you can really afford it. Make sure you won’t be heart broken if you get very little in return. Don’t fall for the trap I fell for.

At his point, all I can do is hope the University makes remarkably good use of my donation. My son’s birthday is coming up soon and what he’s going to get from his parents kinda sucks. See, there’s this missing $1200 I could have made VERY good use of…

(Written by kencraw)

I suffered a tragic loss on May 19th. I was driving down to the Bay Area to pick up some solar film for my telescope for the eclipse on the 20th, when I hit traffic on I-80 coming into Richmond. Apparently the idiot two cars back didn’t see all the brake lights because he plowed pretty hard into the car behind me, sending him flying into me, turning me 90 degrees to the left and into the median. The airbags deployed. 2 of the 3 bikes on the trailer hitch mounted bike rack went flying, which was to their benefit, as the lone bike that remained got crushed between the two cars. All of my sailing gear in the trunk was “redistributed” and much of it damaged.

But bikes and sailing gear are not the loss that trouble me.

My ’97 Jetta was my first self-purchased car. I bought it used from a friend of the family in December of 1998 when I graduated from college. I promptly proceeded to abuse that car in every way imaginable. I put a trailer hitch on it to tow small sailboats, growing up to towing a power boat that weighed as much as it did. I’d take it to home depot and load it up with stuff in ways no one would imagine. I would literally get people who would stop and watch me load up the Jetta wondering how (and I think secretly hoping I would fail so they could laugh) I was going to get all that stuff in there. My Jetta never failed me.

Then there was the incident where I brought home a 10′ tall Christmas tree in the trunk with the seat down. Only about 3′ was hanging out the back because I got the bottom of the trunk about 7′ inside the car. When my neighbor saw me pull it out of the car, he fell to his knees laughing asking what kind of clown car that was. He said the tree looked bigger than the car once it was out of the trunk.

The car was so versatile and so abuse-able that in 2006 I wrote a post on my personal blog lauding it while complaining about my 2002 Accord.

But just as important were the road-trips it took. This is the car I used while I was working for Rivals to both get to Berkeley and to go to the road games. It’s been to 6 of the 10 Pac-10 stadiums (Arizona, ASU, UCLA, USC, Stanford and Cal). Although I’ve driven to both Oregon and OSU, interestingly the Jetta was never taken for those trips.

It made countless trips to Berkeley to go to mid-week practices. In the early years it took me to every game. As the family grew, the Accord and later the Odyssey took over those duties, but it still came to multiple games each year when the whole family wasn’t coming to the game. It’s most recent trip was to the Spring game at Edwards field. Sadly that was it’s last trip to Berkeley.

Somewhere around 3/4ths of the OTRH podcasts and just about all of the Rivals podcasts, minus the few I flew to the games, were recorded from within it’s cabin.

A handful of those road trips included suicide missions/side-trips as both me and the Jetta were always a glutton for punishment. Some of you may remember my ASU/Grand Canyon write-up.

Over the years, the Jetta showed it’s wear. Unbeknownst to me, it had become an icon both with my coworkers and my Church friends. After the crash, I heard it referred to as “legendary”, “unflappable” and “the trooper”. It’s a running joke that I had left the windshield cracked for the last 7 or 8 years, because the last time I fixed it, not three weeks later it got another crack from an errant rock from a truck. “God likes to keep me humble” I would jovially answer when people asked me when I was going to get that fixed.

It had been my plan to drive that car into the ground until it would no longer run. It had run for 188k miles without significant mechanical problems (I think a new starter motor was the largest repair it needed). I have another 7 years before my eldest son is old enough to drive. I fully expected that car to make it that long.

But now that dream is over.

No, the Jetta was not going to go softly into the night. I think it was destined for a tragic death, where its last act was a sacrificial one, keeping safe its 3 passengers (me and my two eldest sons) during the crash that would send it to its grave. After 14 1/2 faithful years of service, it wasn’t going to let me down in its final moments.

I now own a 2012 Toyota Tacoma Double Cab. It’s very nice. It’s got some neat features in the cab that my Jetta never had. It tows easier. It hauls a lot more. It’s very comfortable.

And as nice as it is, it’s not my beloved Jetta and I fear it will never be. The days of 30 mpg are long gone even though I got the small engine, the 2×4 instead of the 4×4, and the non off-road suspension. It’s basically the most fuel efficient 5-seater truck on the market and yet I’ll be lucky to get 25 mpg.

And it doesn’t have the memories. Perhaps in 15 years I’ll be exclaiming the greatness of my Tacoma, but it’s got a very high bar to clear to be as beloved as my Jetta, this new truck of mine.

Goodbye my faithful servant, my ’97 Jetta!

“For I am even now ready to be sacrificed: and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord the just judge will render to me in that day.”

2nd Timothy 4:6-8

(Written by kencraw)

I spent a lot of time over the off-season thinking about whether I wanted to continue this blog. Who was I writing for? Who was benefiting? What’s the value? Is it worth my time?

Frankly, CGB has sucked a lot of the fun out of casual blogging. They’ve got more posts about more things by lots of good writers who have lots of good things to say and are often very good writers. There’s just no way I can compete. At the same time, I’m not interested in a big group blog. I’ve got certain standards and issues I’m not willing to compromise. So the way I see it, I can either hang up my hat or I can re-adjust to a format that’s not trying to compete with CGB.

Here’s how I intend to do that:

• “One man’s opinion”: The years of working for Rivals got me in a rut of trying to make sure everything I said was 100% defensible and being very cautious with my words. That’s in the past. This blog is now just “one man’s opinion” and you’re going to get ALL of it. To be clear: As a devout Catholic I find verbal charity and treating the players with respect and honor to be of the up-most importance, so you’re not going to see trash talking. You’re also not going to see a lot of rebutting other opinions or getting into protracted back and forth arguments with anyone. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, including me… so this is where you’re going to hear it, ALL of it.
• More off-topic posts: I’ll be posting more of my personal thoughts on things outside of the Cal Bears. Two things I won’t be covering are religion and politics. I’ve learned that those need to be separate. But you will see more off-topic posts about various things that interest me. My family, cool articles, whatever. I’m sure 80+% of the posts will still be Cal Bear related, but there will be more variety.
• Doing less: Sorry, no pick’em this year. No stats page. No edited podcasts (although I think Jason and I will continue to do our mid-week podcast and my OTRH podcast is likely to continue in un-edited form). More grammatical and spelling errors. Just simple posts that I can get up quickly with less effort. My goal is 4-5 posts a week plus whatever un-edited (at least on my end) podcasts result.

So, with that introduction, here are the posts to expect this week:

• Ode to my ’97 Jetta
• I donated $1200 and I didn’t even get a lousy T-Shirt
• Excited about the return home and my new seats
• 4 new Pac-12 coaches, playing 3 of them
• Road trips: Going to all but 3 this year

GO BEARS!

(Written by kencraw)

Thanks for the comments of concern about a lack of posts. It’s nice to know our commentary is desired. It’s been a busy off-season for me and frankly I haven’t felt like I’ve had anything meaningful to add to the conversation of Cal Football.

Well, that’s not quite true… I had a fair amount to say about the spring game, but it was also a busy time and it is too late now.

Looking at the packed calendar for the summer and knowing the lack of meaningful news between now and fall practice, We’ll be back when fall practice starts.

(Written by kencraw)

I can’t believe it. The Pac-12 office actually did it. They threatened and we didn’t believe them. But they did it.

Go here and scroll down to October 20th:

Stanford at California

Yes, the Big Game will officially lose it’s cherished spot the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

We tolerated Stanford playing a game after the Big Game. Then we grudgingly tolerated Cal playing a game after the Big Game. (And losing them all too frequently.) We were almost thankful the one year they pushed back to the 1st week of December so that it was at the end of the season while still being wary of it no longer being on the traditional weekend. Then we bemoaned it being at 7 PM on the traditional day. We feared someday they would make us play it Thanksgiving weekend. Yet we took it all sitting down.

But now they’ve gone TOO FAR.

This is ridiculous. There’s no excuse for this. There’s no reason. One could have easily made a schedule that allowed us to keep our traditions.

I say we start working on our plans to protest this. The only effective way to do it will be at the game itself October 20th. Suggestions? Wearing black? (Too cheesy?) Signs? Refuse to enter the stadium until 15 minutes after the game has started?

There has to be some way to show this is unacceptable. If we do, they’ll change it back for 2013 and beyond.

UPDATE at 4:15 PM: Go to this announcement from Cal and scroll to the bottom for the FAQ from Sandy Barbour to see their weak excuses for being shafted.

(Written by kencraw)

(Thoughts on the game itself will be in a separate post)

After the game, we spent one more action packed day in Southern California. We packed up and left my uncle’s house, who had been hosting us the whole time we were in San Diego, at 7:30 AM yesterday (the 29th). This was no small feat considering we got back from the game at 10:00 PM the night before and mobilizing a family of 4 kids is no small task what with the portable crib and all the other stuff that goes along with a young family. Luckily, my wife who had come along for the trip but didn’t go to the game had gotten most everything possible packed while we were at the game.

The reason for the early departure time was two-fold. First, we were having breakfast with an old college friend of mine who had recently returned to San Diego, her hometown, after years back east. She had never met any of my kids and it had been over a decade since I had seen her. It was good to catch up.

The second reason was that we were headed to Legoland for the day. My kids had never been and with three boys between 8 and 4 years old we were told it was the perfect age for them.

Frankly, I was not all that impressed with Legoland, particularly in the middle of the day. They need to take the chumps who designed their rides on an extended trip to Disneyland an hour up the road and learn a little bit about how to design rides for a good flow. After spending 75 minutes in line for “The Lost Kingdom Adventure” with the kids and then spending all of 2 minutes on the ride itself, I was pretty ticked off. It was the last straw for me in a long day of ridiculously slow moving lines.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that amusement park lines can be long, but what was so frustrating was that in this case there was no reason for then to be. They just didn’t think through how to get as many people as possible through a ride as quickly as possible. Things like loading up more than one car at a time, putting more cars on the loop and instructing their workers on to move people through. Their convoluted rules on who can ride each ride (if you’re 48″ you can ride by yourself on most everything; for those shorter than that, some are off limits and some require an adult to accompany you or in other cases just another person over 48″; and then some rides have age instead of height requirements and still others had maximum weight limits that affected which parents could go on.) while they were well communicated, still caused lots of holdups as confused people didn’t understand the nuances.

I’ve sat in line for over an hour at Disneyland in a ridiculously long line and when I got to the front was amazed at how quickly they were moving people through. I’ve seen how efficiently they dealt with people who couldn’t go on the rides and helped those who could quickly get in their seats. None of that was the case here. These were short lines, sometimes only 30 families deep, that were taking 45 minutes on average to get to the front and each new person on the ride happened at an excruciatingly slow pace.

However, to give Legoland some credit, if they could solve that large problem, it would be an excellent park. The center of the park is a ridiculously awesome display of Lego creations including cities from around the country and a new Star Wars section. The kids spent hours looking at them. They also had plays and short movies that were very creative and well put together. The playing areas, particularly the “Hideaways” in the back of the park, where the kids can run around are really nice too. It actually would be even better in the summer as they have a lot of rides and play areas where getting wet is part of the fun, particularly in the pirate section.

So if you had asked me at 3:30 PM yesterday what I thought of Legoland I would have told you to run and never look back, particularly if you were going to go at a busy time of year (and all things considered it wasn’t that busy/crowded yesterday). However, by the time we left at 6:00 PM having seen a show to help me calm my nerves and spent a lot of time in the center of the park, it had risen to a ‘pluses and minuses’ experience. Having known what it’s like, I would have structured the day very differently and probably would have done my last set of the long line rides during lunch time and once everybody returned from their eating breaks and the park was at its fullest, stuck to non-ride activities. It would have made the day a lot better. That does excuse their poor designs however.

At 6 PM we left the park having seen most of what we wanted to see minus a couple of rides that had an over 1 hour wait. We stopped just up the road in Oceanside to gas up (thanks gasbuddy.com for the cheap gas prices) and get some drive-through food with the plan that the kids could wolf down some food and then fall asleep after an exhausting day for the long trip home. We actually had two contingencies based on how tired I was. We’d either stop at a motel once we got over the grapevine, or if I was feeling up for it, we’d push late through the night. As it turned out, because we left the park an hour earlier than expected and didn’t hit much traffic through LA, I was able to make good time and we made it home by 2 AM.

An interesting note about the trip home was that the kids were unusually cranky. We expected them to be exhausted and thus sleep well, but they didn’t. Perhaps it was because it was the trip home and there was no longer anything to be excited about. Perhaps it was because we didn’t stop half way to let them stretch out like we did on the way down (which was at dinner time on the way down). Perhaps it was because it was the 2nd long trip in 4 days. Or perhaps it was a combination of the above. But I think it was because they were exhausted and thus were less tolerant of the lack of comfort of trying to sleep in the car.

Luckily, when I say they were cranky, it’s not what you think because we’ve been blessed with VERY cooperative and tolerant kids. There were no crying fits or melt downs or other tantrums that one hears about from other horror stories. They were just a little whiney, that’s all. And when we told them how long it was going to be they were great at toughing it out and doing their best to try to sleep even though they weren’t in the best of moods.

All it all, it was a good trip. It would have been a great trip if what happened on the gridiron had been different (more on that later) and Legoland knew how to design high volume rides (or at a minimum I had known in advance that they didn’t).

I’ll consider myself content and happy with a good trip.

(Written by kencraw)

We’ve got the family down in San Diego, well a suburb anyway. We drove down the afternoon of the 26th when the 5 month old went down for her afternoon nap. The one thing we didn’t anticipate was how bad the traffic on I-5 was going to be. Once the Bay Area traffic merged in at I-580 it was slow down after slow down for the next 100 miles. It was particularly bad at the point the San Jose crowd joins in.

We stopped for dinner in Coalinga, far earlier than expected because the slow downs had the baby up from her nap earlier than expected (and of course also we weren’t as far down the road due to the traffic).

To pile on to our misfortune, a bus load of people (literally, as in a tour group) were in front of us in line at the Burger King. Not being in a mood to stew in line, I checked the drive through line and noticed it was pretty short. I left the family inside, got into the minivan, got food from the drive through and brought it inside all before half the bus load was served.

Things improved dramatically from there. The kids got a chance to stretch out for a while and when we got back into the car the trafficked subsided dramatically. We made great time from there the only hiccup being my falling for the old cash price scam at the gas station. We got into San Diego at 11:30 PM, which is right about when we had hoped to, so we made pretty good time on the second half of the trip.

Yesterday we went to the San Diego Safari Park, not to be confused with the zoo down town. I think it is actually nicer than the zoo because of all the open areas for the animals. All 4 kids really liked it. We even saw some Texas fans dressed head to toe in Texas gear. I assume that was so they wouldn’t be captured and thrown back in the gorilla pen by mistake.

Today is game day. We’ll be heading to the stadium around noon with the hope of of having the tailgate fully operational by 1 PM.

As for the game itself, the more I think about it, I think it will come down to the quarterbacks. I don’t see either team establishing a run game if their passing game isn’t working. What I’ve seen of the Texas QBs and how I’ve seen Maynard improve gives me confidence that the Bears have a better than 50% shot at winning this one.

(Written by kencraw)

This meant to go up Wednesday, but the website wasn’t up in the morning and once it was up, there was a lot to go through to get all the data I wanted. Let’s get straight into it.

We now have just about all the information that we’ve been wondering about for Memorial Stadium in 2012. The key piece of data is out there at the new site, the seating chart:

(you can click on the picture for a larger version)

There are a number of notable things right off the bat:

• FINALLY we know which sections will have seats, which will have bench-backs (benches with backs like a seat) and which will have benches. Only the ESP section will have stadium chairs and the old donor sections on the west side will have benchbacks. Everyone else keeps their benches.
• While it’s not in the picture, we also know that all the sections from EE to I will have more space between the rows (more legroom) from the text on the website.
• Sections EE and I are shown as “double wide” sections kinda like the old G and GG sections.
• The Blue Zone on the south side of the stadium is gone.
• The Gold Zone on the north side of the stadium is much larger than in the past.

There are others but those are the big changes.

Of the above items, the one that has me scratching my head is the changed width of sections EE and I. Are those sections REALLY as big as they show? Hard to tell just from the above picture, but the Ticket Office tipped their hand on a different page…

If one goes to the ESP section, you can already pick individual seats right now. They’re a fortune, but they’re there. And when you look there, you get a good finished graphic of the west side:

Based on this (I put in the section letters, so it’s possible I’ve misjudged this but I doubt it), it’s pretty obvious that FF and H are VERY narrow sections, barely a half section, that F/HH is the original section it used to be and EE/I is both the old EE/I, plus half of the old E/II. So really that wide section is only a section and a half and the new E/II is a pretty narrow section.

The next big question is pricing:

FF/H: $1500
F/HH: $700
EE/I: $500
TT/T: $400
E/II/U: $350
Std Price: $300
Gold Zone: $225 ($100 discount for kids)

Another way to look at it is this: If you want added legroom and a bench-back, it’s going to cost you $200 over the standard reserved price. For those who want better seats than that, you can pay another $200 and if you want to be right next to the ESP, it’s another $800

If you don’t care about the bench-back, and you don’t mind staring into the sun, an extra $100 will get you seats on the East side equivalent to the bench-back seats. Or for an extra $50 over the standard price will get you as good seats as you can on the West side, sans the backed seats as well as some East side options.

All of that frankly seems fair to me except for the FF/H bump of EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS!?! That’s a HUMUNGOUS bump to get an extra 5 yards closer to the 50. My feeling is that’s going to be the most empty section. Now, it’s a pretty small section, so maybe there will be just enough suckers who have money to burn but aren’t quite willing to buy into ESP. I see this being people who also haven’t been long time season ticket holders or donors to Cal athletics. Why? Because the plus side is that with the lack of demand I anticipate, you’ll be able to pick your seat (isle, center, high, low, what have you) in that section. Since new-timers won’t get to pick until all the good seats are gone, they’ll get a choice to get some choice seats if they’re willing to pony up.

At least that’s the way I see it going.

The rest of it feels about right. An extra $200 to get the bench-back and the legroom seems fair to me. I might even do it myself (and those who have been around long enough know I’m a perpetual cheap-skate who’s never before paid to upgrade my seats). I think that says something about the demand that will exist for those seats. I know it’ll be a lot easier to talk my wife into that $200 than it was to talk her into $150 or even $50 before (not that I ever tried).

I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not all that much more than those seats were before the stadium upgrade when everyone was on benches and the only benefit of paying was getting a bit closer to the middle. It doesn’t seem like they’re asking too much for the privilege of additional comfort.

This is of course with the glaring exception of FF/H.

Finally, the selection process is going to be similar to the process at AT&T with one new HUGE wrinkle. They’re splitting the overall set into 3 groups. The first group is 2011 season ticket holders or donors over $1200 (before 12/31/2011… hint, hint). The second group is 2010 season ticket holders or donors over $100. Finally, the third group is people who put down season ticket deposits for 2012.

This is great news for those of us who bought season tickets at AT&T as even us relative new timers (and I learned being a 12 year season ticket holder with one missing year in 2003 makes me a “new timer”) will get to pick before just about everyone who didn’t. They’re rewarding our loyalty: YAH!

Within each group, it’ll go back to the whole points system where those who have donated lots of money over the years get more points than the rest of us. One has to go all the way to the FAQs to find this out, but they’re using the exact same point system as last year, so my decision to donate $100 last year got me 5 extra points. YAH!

All of this is a long way of saying I’m happy with the consistency of the Athletic Department. They said they were going to reward those who bought tickets in 2011 and they are, in a big way. They made clear what their point system was going to be last year (something I wish I had known years earlier as I would have donated $100 a year if I knew it was worth 5x what my buying season tickets was), and they’ve stuck to that system. And of course, if you’re willing to pony up big money for the program today, no matter what your history is, you’re going to be rewarded.

Plus, while there are a few quirks in the seating map, it’s a fairly level-headed and evolutionary set of changes, many of which were hinted at during the project.

All in all, I’d say the Athletic Department got this one right.

(Written by kencraw)

I got an e-mail this morning from the Cal Ticket office announcing the new site for the 2012 Memorial Stadium ticket sales (or at least promotion):

http://www.CaliforniaMemorialStadium.com

So far all that’s there, is a 1 minute promotional video, but they promise that tomorrow, 12/14, they’ll have 2012 season ticket information including seating options and pricing. It’ll be very interesting to see. I sure hope it’s pretty detailed. I really liked how for AT&T they had seat-by-seat information by the time it came to purchasing. They also claim that they’ll have priority information. I might even be willing to send in a few extra dollars to get higher on the priority list.

For those who remember, I had my criticisms of the AT&T plan and my prediction turned out to be mostly correct. The cheaper seats were packed but the middle of the stadium was downright empty and when it wasn’t it was because the USC fans bought all the single game tickets. The ticket office seriously misjudged how much people were willing to pay and also how many people were interesting in premium seats. While I might have been wrong that they’d sell out of the cheap seats, it was only because so few people bought tickets.

Frankly, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Check back tomorrow to see if I think the Ticket Office has learned their lesson.

(Written by jsnell)

We’re back at last! Jason and Ken talk about the Big Game and the ASU game, explore our feelings toward Mack Brown and the Texas Longhorns, preview the Holiday Bowl and all the other Pac-12 bowls, and much more. Plus, a secret word!

You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Mack Brown (EMFMV 2011 #8) [ 57:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

(Written by kencraw)

It’s been interesting to read some of the message boards post-bowl announcement. As the Texas fans have come to the Cal message boards and the Cal fans have gone to the Texas message boards, the issues of the day has not been which team is better right now (frankly neither fan base is all that happy with the state of their current team) but 2004.

2004, where the Bears were ranked 4th and would have been guaranteed a spot in the BCS in the next-to-last ranking, but were leap-frogged in the final week, ending up 5th, behind Texas. Texas went to the Rose Bowl in Cal’s stead. Cal fans were outraged.

I have no interest in debating the worthiness of each team, which is an entirely subjective activity, but I did want to set some facts straight. Feel free to reference anyone who’s stating BS to this list:

(Note: all rankings and records are pre-bowls, as that’s what the voters had to pick based on)

• Cal beat Southern Miss 26-16 in the final week, but were down to S. Miss 17-16 early in the 4th quarter. However, Cal had statistically dominated the game, particularly the rushing game. It was a relatively easy grind-it-out win for the Bears and Cal pretty quickly put an end to S. Miss’s 3rd quarter rally.
• Texas was idle that same week.
• Texas did not go to the Rose Bowl because the Rose Bowl wanted them more than Cal. This was the older BCS, where the championship rotated between the major bowls. Therefore there were only 8 spots for teams. The following teams were guaranteed spots: #1, #2, the winners of the 6 BCS conferences, a #6 or higher non-AQ team and the higher of #3 or #4 that didn’t win their conference. That year both #1 and #2 won their conference (as is usually the case), so it was the 6 BCS conference champs, plus Utah at #6 (non-AQ) and Texas at #4 who made up the 8 teams. There were no options and the Rose Bowl was forced to pick between Texas, Utah and Pittsburg.
• In the new 10 team BCS, there’s no question that the Rose Bowl would have picked Cal.
• Texas’s only loss was to Oklahoma, the #1 ranked team. Final score, 0-12.
• Cal’s only loss was to USC, the #2 ranked team. Final score, 17-23.
• Of course, Oklahoma was ranked #1 before the bowl game, but we all know who ended up being the far better team. USC destroyed Oklahoma 55-19.
• Most pundits believed Cal played a closer game against USC than Texas did against Oklahoma.
• Texas had beaten more ranked teams than Cal did, but all of them were ranked 20 or lower. It’s not like they were all that impressive wins, either (26-13 over A&M, 56-35 over OSU, 51-21 over TTech (OK, that one is)). BTW, all those teams were 7-4.
• While Cal only beat 1 ranked team, Arizona State, they were ranked higher than all the teams Texas beat (#19). They were also 8-3 instead of 7-4. Cal also beat unranked 6-5 Oregon State, who was under-appreciated as they destroyed Notre Dame in the Insight Bowl. Finally, Cal beat 6-5 UCLA.
• Don’t let any Texas fans understate how hard Mack Brown campaigned. See here, here, here (scroll down).
• Cal went on to lose 31-45 to Texas Tech, a team Texas had beat handily, validating to most that Texas was the most deserving team (dismissing/overlooking the lack of motivation Cal had).
• Texas went on to beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl, winning on a late field-goal 38-37. Of course one doesn’t know how Cal would have done against Michigan.
• Cal was actually ranked 4th in both the AP and Coaches poll, it was the computers that ranked Texas higher (significantly at that).
• It was the coaches poll that changed most in the final week of the season, the assertion being that Big-12 coaches significantly lowered their rankings for Cal in the final week.
• I actually had a hard time finding detailed data on the polls in the next-to-last week and the final BCS rankings week. If someone has links, I’d appreciate it. From my memory, no coaches poll from 2004 was public on a vote-by-vote basis. Even now, only the final week’s ranking is made vote-by-vote public, so one wouldn’t know who changed their vote from the next-to-last week to the final week.

Those are just the facts. Feel free to continue the debate, but at least let’s keep the facts accurate.

(Written by kencraw)

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony when the kraft Fight Hunger bowl (which seems like one of the more noble bowls by the way) featured two teams that have already fired their coaches. Would the now unemployed coaches and their families be getting bags of food after the game to help them through the rough times?

Luckily this is something one can joke about because I would hope that all the coaches involved put aside enough money from their large salaries to survive being fired and out of work for a while considering the business they’re in. I’d never want to joke if real hunger was involved here.

But seeing as how it likely isn’t, one couldn’t think of a more ironic name for a bowl that featured two teams with fired coaches (other than the “Fight Unemployment Bowl”).

(Written by kencraw)

Now that we’re through the BCS line-up knot-hole, I’ve got another topic that’s been on my mind: Bowl Bans.

Obviously there are two main punishments that the NCAA hands out. Bowl bans, usually for 1 to 3 years, and scholarship restrictions. At first glance they both seem to be good punishments. Going to bowl games is the reward for a good season, something that both the players and the fans love. It also gives the team extra practice time they wouldn’t get otherwise. That’s the “take away the positives” side of it. The “punishment” side of it is that the team’s recruiting will take a hit because new students won’t want to go to a school that they can’t go play in bowl games.

Scholarship restrictions on the other hand is an almost entirely punishment based handout. It hurts the school’s recruiting by reducing the number of kids who can be recruited and the number of kid who can be on scholarship for 1 to 4 years.

At first glance, the heavy handed likely prefer the bowl bans. It has both a punishment and removing rewards aspect. Isn’t it better to take away both?

I say no.

First of all, for the NCAA almost all punishments come LONG after the players and frequently the coaches who committed the infractions have left the program. The result is that taking a bowl game away from a team is likely taking it away from kids who didn’t do anything wrong.

Second of all, with the exception of unusually long bowl bans, it won’t much hurt recruiting. There will usually only be one or two recruiting classes who are even aware of the sanctions while they’re being recruited and for most of them, those bowls will be in their 1st year or two in the proram, when they’re somewhat unlikely to be a starter or someone with significant playing time. That’s not all that much of a disincentive to go play for that school.

Thus I don’t think bowl bans work. That’s half the reason I don’t like them.

The other half is that it also punishes the rest of the conference for the mistakes of the team that broke the rules. This has become quite clear to me after watching USC this year.

See, when a good team is on a bowl ban, every time it beats someone in the conference, it’s reducing both the quality of the bowl the guilt-free team will go to and the number of bowl slots available to the conference. If USC hadn’t beaten Oregon, Oregon would be in the BCS championship game this year. Although it didn’t happen this year, any team that was 5-7 and lost to the team with a bowl ban, was denied a bowl game they would have been in if they could have beaten the team they would have played instead.

There’s even a long-run factor of bowls not willing to offer more compelling spots to the conference because of the weaker looking teams (due to the extra losses put on the conference by the bowl ineligible team) they had gotten in the past.

So the way I see it, the bowl bans don’t hurt the violator all that much (at least the right kids/coaches) and then hurt the rest of the teams in the conference. That’s particularly egregious because those conference teams are the teams that MOST need retribution. After all, assuming the rule breaking helped the violating team get ahead, it was the other conference teams that most directly paid for the cheating in the past.

Looking at scholarship restrictions instead, the impact is to weaken the violating team, which gives more win opportunities to the other teams in the conference (something they deserve based on the harm of past cheating) and not in other ways harming the conference.

If I were in charge of the NCAA, unless I caught and imposed sanctions right away, while the players involved were still at the school, I wouldn’t impose bowl bans. I would instead take away scholarships, and lots of them.

(Written by kencraw)

On the one hand, it ticks me off that Alabama got the BCS Championship slot over Oklahoma State. The only reason I’ll be watching that farce of a national championship game is if I’m bored that evening.

On the other hand, I’m ecstatic about the bowl match-up for the Bears. The Holiday bowl always gets its time-slot to itself and generally turns out to be a good game. Plus, playing Texas. Did anyone say: REVENGE MACH BROWN… REVENGE!?!

Finally, the hypocrisy being smelled is the rules for non-AQ qualifiers. I didn’t realize how high Boise State was ranked… finished at #7 in the BCS, well high enough for the “ranked higher than 12th” rule EXCEPT for the fact that only conference champions are eligible for that rule.

I see, for the BCS title game, winning one’s conference is irrelevant, but for a non-AQ team to get in the mix, THEN one has to win the conference in addition to being in the top-12, something the Mountain West winner TCU didn’t do.

I see how it is.

(Written by kencraw)

I’ve long been a believer that the easiest way to solve over half of the problems in the BCS is to insist that only teams that have won their conference are eligible for the BCS championship game. Seriously, if you can’t win your conference, how can you claim that you’re the national champion?

And making the rule change solves a lot of problems:

• There won’t be two teams from the same conference like this year (likely)
• Due to the above, it significantly reduces the rematch possibilities
• There will never be a controversy about which of two teams from a conference should go (Oregon or Stanford?)

Then there’s the more subjective issue that if you look back, the most egregious and controversial slights have happened when a team that didn’t win their conference gets the nod (2001 Nebraska anyone?). Of course it doesn’t solve every problem, like when there are 3 undefeated teams from different conferences, but there’s a lot of scenarios it significantly cleans up.

Ironically, the BCS is going the opposite way. A couple years back they realized there was an issue with the current rules where the top two ranked teams were from the same conference and neither won the conference. Because there’s a two team limit for BCS games, the question was which of the three would go (the conference champ, the #1 team and the #2 team) to BCS games. Could the conference champ be denied a BCS bowl game? Would #2 be denied a spot in the championship game?. The solution was to say that all three teams in that scenario were automatic qualifiers for the BCS.

But of course they could have solved that problem by just limiting the BCS Championship to teams that won their conference.

And as I said above, if you didn’t win your conference, you have no business being in the title game.

Let’s hope Oklahoma State’s impressive 44-10 win over #13 Oklahoma is enough to leap-frog Alabama, because the last thing I want to see is a repeat all-SEC BCS title game. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even watch it.

Update Sunday @ 7:45 AM: I probably should have made it clear that I prefer an 8-team playoff. I’m somewhat flexible within that model as long as some number of conference winners are automatic qualifiers. My current thinking is the top 5 ranked conference winners (of any conference, not just the current BCS conference and independent teams counting as a “conference of one”) getting an automatic bid, with the remaining 3 “at-large” going to the highest ranked non-conference winners. Point being, the above post is a “if we can’t blow the thing up, this is the minor change I’d make” post, not what I think is the best.