(Written by kencraw)

We move to the defensive side of the ball in our depth chart analysis…

NG – Kendrick Payne with Moala as backup (or Tipoti, who’s been injured): Payne has shown flashes of greatness in his backup time behind Derrick Hill, but he’s also shown inconsistency. Here’s to thinking he may pull a Cameron Jordan this year… or perhaps next year when he’s a senior. That said, he’d better do it right away if he wants to keep his starting spot, because true freshman Viliami Moala has the frame, the size and the talent to possibly become the best Nose Guard in the Pac-12. One assumes all he needs is the experience and time in the program to deliver on that, if he’s even half as hungry to succeed as the articles have suggested. Having Tipoti as a 3rd backup is of great comfort because while I never see greatness from him, he’s definitely serviceable if Payne goes down and Moala isn’t ready.

DE – Trevor Guyton and Ernest Owusu with Deandre Coleman and Gabe King as backups: I won’t lie, I’ve had a thing for Owusu ever since I saw him at the Spring game 3 years ago. For some reason he hasn’t been quite able to live up to the hype. Part of that is he’s always been behind Cameron Jordan. So will he come of age this year? Hard to tell, but there’s no doubt he has potential and is at a minimum capable from what we’ve seen of him in the past. Guyton on the other hand has been the guy who continually over-delivers and gets more playing time and has more success than his press clippings would indicate. I feel pretty comfortable with him as a starter. But just like last year, the best thing about our DE’s is our depth. There won’t be any exhausted players out there this year. Both Coleman and King are ready to make an impact and the word on the street is Mustafa Jalil and Brennan Scarlett are coming along nicely as well.

OLB – Dan Camporeale and Dave Wilkerson with Cecil Whiteside/Ryan Davis and Chris McCain as backups: With Mychael Kendricks moving to the inside, the intrigue on defense was always at outside LB. And “intrigue” it provided. Dan Camporeale? WHO!?! This guy is either the next Alex Mack of the team (remember he was an unheralded 2-star who was fairly unknown when he was named a starter) or none of our outside Linebackers are quite where they need to be and the walk-on is getting the starts until someone emerges. Wilkerson is of course a more known quantity, but still not someone who we’re ready to jump up and down about. Here’s guessing that OLB will be running a lot of blitzes this year, something that even the less refined guys can do as opposed to being involved in lots of complex scheming. If there’s good news, it’s that depth won’t be a problem and there’s lots of young talent, Whiteside and McCain in particular, who by the end of the season may have turned the corner.

ILB – DJ Holt and Mychael Kendricks with Robert Mullins and Steven Fauna as backups: Unlike a number of the other positions on defense, it’s depth that is the issue at inside linebacker. The starters are solid and I have every reason to believe that both Kendricks and Holt are set to have breakout years. They’re going to be the heart and soul of the defense. Luckily injuries at linebacker seem less common than on the line because what’s behind them is a bit scary. Mullins has never quite made the jump, although I have more confidence in him not being a detriment. The others are young, which is a positive (they will improve), a negative (lack of experience) and a question mark (is there greatness there? are they a flop?). Fauna and Forbes (another who has been mentioned) fit in that category. If there’s good depth news, it’s that there are lots of candidates so one would hope at at least a couple of them will step up.

SA – DJ Campbell and Sean Cattouse with Avery Walls and Michael Coley as backups: Cattouse is another who’s shown signs of brilliance but also inconsistency. He’s also another I’m optimistic will turn the corner this year, and frankly by the 2nd half of last year in many ways already had. Campbell is consistent and more than capable, so those two give me a great deal of confidence as starters. If it weren’t for true freshman Avery Walls, who’s getting so many props from Tedford in the post-practice reports one thinks he’s got a bit of a man-crush on him, I’d be more concerned with depth. But with the semi-serviceable Moncrease and the supposedly talented redshirt Freshman Michael Coley back there as well, one has to think the depth at safety is more than acceptable.

CB – Marc Anthony and Steve Williams with Josh Hill and Stefan McClure as backups: There’s been little in the way of reports for the cornerbacks, which I see as a good thing. Anthony and Williams should do just fine and Josh Hill has had a lot of experience. He’s one who could also jump to the head of the pack, but Hill’s academic problems has significantly impacted his playing performance, having missed practice numerous times to get his studies back on track (and this is as good a time as any to praise Tedford for continuing to be a standup guy in this area). I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hill in a starting spot come the end of the season. Not to be overlooked Williams has impressed with his abilities and stealing the starting job mid-season last year was no small feat. He didn’t disappoint. As for downsides, the depth here is not as great as other positions, particularly considering how often Cal likes to put a 5th DB on the field, and that 5th usually comes from the cornerbacks, not the safeties for whatever reason (although some indications have Walls and Coley as leaders for that spot).

Overall, there’s no position on the defense that is in trouble or even a big question-mark. Thus, there’s every reason to believe this will be a solid unit this year. But what’s encouraging is that there is a LOT of upside with this group. Frankly, of our 3 defensive guys lost to the NFL (Jordan, Mohammed and Conte) only Jordan was a particularly impressively talented player. The other two were exceptional because of their technique and their heart. I see MORE talent this year than I saw in last year with those three. But will that talent make the leap? Will the leadership be there to come up with the critical and decisive play when it is needed, the sack, forced fumble or interception that will be a game changer? If not, this will still be a solid group, more than good enough to keep Cal in games and allow the offense plenty of chances to succeed. If so, this unit could be scary good.

(Written by kencraw)

Well, the word on the street is that ticket sales for the Fresno State game are going slowly. So far they’ve sold about 7500 tickets and they need to sell about 1500 more through the Cal Bears ticket office (the ATO) to break even.

And my thought is “DUH! Of COURSE ticket sales are going slowly.”

The increase in ticket prices is a real problem that the ATO needs to understand. The ticket prices for the season tickets, for only 5 games, were about the same as last year with 7 games, including the Big Game. So if I had gotten the same seats I usually get (regular reserved with no donor money), and got the Big Game tickets I’d pay on the high end of what I usually pay (somewhere between $2k-$2.4k):

6 season tickets: $300 x 6: $1800 (avg ticket: $60)
6 big game tickets: $75 x 6: $600
Total $2400

And now to add to that another game, where equivalent seats would be ANOTHER $75 each, and we’ve got a budget buster of a situation.

For me it’s even worse as with a new baby in the house and my insurance continually whittled away so that my percentage of the birthing cost going up significantly over previous kids (honey, are you SURE you want that epidural?), we had to cutback and get the cheap seats at AT&T. I still got the Big Game tickets because tradition is tradition, but I’m just not feeling like paying out for all my usual tickets.

Knowing me, I might end up forking over for two tickets or something at the last minute, but, sorry, I just don’t have it in me to pay more than in the past particularly for what is a pretty mundane/weak lineup of games.

(Written by kencraw)

It’s not officially released, but we seem to have the majority of it from many different quotes from Tedford.

QB – Maynard with Bridgeford as backup: I think Bridgeford looked great when I saw him play in the spring and Maynard had potential. I have confidence that Maynard has come a long way or Tedford wouldn’t have put him above Bridgeford. So overall I feel really good here, even if Maynard doesn’t deliver or gets injured, I feel like we’ve got a good crew.

RB – Sofele with Deboskie-Johnson as backup: Sofele is the one that worries me. I think I’m more positive about him than many people are, but there’s no doubt he doesn’t have the punch of any of our recent starting RB’s. Seriously, like Seseme Street, which one of these is not like the others: Arrington, Lynch, Forsett, Best, Vereen, Sofele. Now, in a lot of respects, we’ve been VERY spoiled for the last 7 years, and I think this is why I’m not as low on Sofele as others. I think if the offensive line gets its act together, he’ll do just fine, but I don’t see him as an above and beyond back who can be successful even when the other pieces aren’t working, like our previous backs. In better news, I feel like the depth behind Sofele is good and I have higher hopes for Debo than most and there’s lots of talent waiting behind him. It could be by season end, Sofele is a starter in name only.

FB – Will Kapp with John Tyndall as backup: When Eric Stevens was in the mix (he’s out of the season with a torn ACL) I thought this was a pretty strong unit, but without him, it’s in shambles. Kapp has great heart, but he just doesn’t have the size or the speed needed to be a strong fullback. Our best hope is that Tyndall, who has the physical gifts needed, will improve enough to take over the spot by mid-season. That he hasn’t done it already, says something about his development. I hate saying it, because I really like Kapp (he makes everyone else better with his commitment, energy and focus on technique), if we can’t find someone who’s better than him, we’re in pretty bad shape.

WR – Allen and Jones with Calvin as the 3rd and Clay and Edmond as backups This is a strong group, the starters being contenders for being the best pair in the conference. If Calvin stays as improved as he was in spring and Clay can keep away from his recent injury problems and show the moments of greatness from the spring, this could not only be the best offensive unit but also the deepest.

TE – Anthony Miller with Hagan as backup: Anthony Miller is the real deal and seeing Hagan move forward over Ladner says to me we have two quality backups. The one thing I don’t think we have is the talent for a lot of two tight end formations, although Ladner when healthy may give us that and perhaps Hagan will show us more than I’m thinking for his converted WR frame.

OL – Schwartz, Schwenke, Galas, Cheadle and MSG with the backups being unclear: The starting group looks pretty strong, but the depth behind them is REALLY thin. Rigsbee has been injured. Tyndall has potential but never seems to actually get there. Brazinski is still very young. Heralded recruit Matt Williams didn’t get much press at all, so assumably is still learning the ropes. Maybe there’s some gems there that under Michalszik will come a long way (and FAST, before anyone gets hurt), but if there’s one position that’ll have me cringing if someone goes down, it’ll be the offensive line. But not to overlook the positives, the starters look like a pretty good unit that has a lot of experience with each other. Strap on those knee braces tight boys!

Overall, that’s not a bad situation to be in. I think this years offense is going to be a lot better than what finished up the season last year. (It better be, because that was as sorry an offense I’ve seen on the field since “Way to go Hol-moe” was a popular cheer.) I suspect we’ll see fewer plays with a fullback in the formation to compensate for that weakness, leaving only the O-Line depth as the truly concerning thing. All in all, it feels like a move in the right direction.

(Written by kencraw)

OK, this Bear Fan is finally coming out of hibernation…

Not that I haven’t been busy. We’ve got another new Crawford in the house as of July 5th. This time it’s a girl, so apparently I only have girls when the Bears have a losing season. 🙂 In any case, the last two months have gone by in a flash, so sorry for the even slower than usual off-season.

I’ll be posting pretty regularly from here on out. I hope to get in a few looking back posts before the season starts (I need to clear some space off the Tivo before I can put more games on it, after all). And of course I’ll have my game-by-game predictions and general thoughts. Plus I’m sure Jason and I will do our regular podcasts.

But until then, I’ll start with this:

I don’t think there’s been a year since 2002 where there have been as widely different expectations between fans. It’s no surprise really. Last year was a huge letdown. We lost a lot of key players. But yet somehow in the middle of that, there’s a lot of reasons for hope. With, two new QB’s in the hopper (one coming of age (Bridgeford), one transferring in (Maynard)), and with our young defense has a lot of returners back and our offensive line looking pretty experienced, it’s not outrageous to think that this year has most of the pieces needed to be something special.

And if that weren’t enough, you’ve got the external factors. The “neutral” site game against Fresno State. Home games in San Francisco. The 1st year of the Pac-12 which includes and playing new teams, not playing other teams, and compressing the schedule by one week (to make room for the conference championship game). It all makes for a lot of wildcards.

But amongst all those wildcards you can call me cautiously optimistic. I’m fairly confident this will be a bowl eligible team, particularly if the Bears get through the non-conference games unscathed (something I expect).

I also expect more consistent play. The defense isn’t going to have games like the USC or Nevada games this year. The offense won’t fall off a cliff if any one person gets injured (not like last year with Riley).

But consistent play and bowl eligible might look a lot more like 7-5 mediocrity than challenging for that Rose Bowl berth we’ve all been dying for.

(Written by jsnell)

A few years ago I realized that no Cal football players have ever been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And so immediately my attention turned to Tony Gonzalez, who seemed to be a lock to become Cal’s first Hall of Famer. He’s one of the best tight ends ever, and I saw him play. That’s cool.

Since that initial revelation, I’ve realized that Aaron Rodgers now stands a decent chance to get to the Hall too, given his strong numbers so far and the fact that once a quarterback wins a Super Bowl, the threshhold for hall induction is a lot lower. (Not Trent Dilfer low, but low.) A-Rodg just needs to keep doing what he’s been doing and he’ll probably make it.

But it’s all academic now, because as of this weekend, Cal has its first Pro Football Hall of Famer: Les Richter.

Richter played for Cal during the Pappy Waldorf era, specifically as a linebacker for Cal’s 1949-51 squads. During those three seasons he played on two Rose Bowl teams, which says a lot about how good Cal was back then and how bad it’s been since. Yes: Les Richter played on Cal’s second-to-most recent Rose Bowl team.

Richter went on to play in the NFL for the L.A. Rams from 1954-1962, then retired and got into motor sports and motor sports venues, becoming a NASCAR executive. He died in June 2010, and his son Jon was on hand to pose with his father’s bust at the enshrinement over the weekend in Canton, Ohio.

Congratulations to the Richter family and to every Cal fan out there—there is now a Golden Bear player in the Hall of Fame! Now we’re only two behind Stanford.

(Written by kencraw)

Let’s say you just graduated from Cal and you got a job where you telecommute from your home, so you can live anywhere. And you want to live somewhere that you can drive to all the Cal road games in your old 35 mpg compact car. Where do you live?

Battle Mountain, Nevada, of course! This rustic unincorporated town with a population of 2,871 and an elevation of 4,511 is half way between Winnemucca and Elko on I-80 and at the NV-305 junction (key to heading south). It’s a copper and gold mining town in the heart of… um… a copper and gold mining community in the middle of the high desert. Temps in the summer routinely reach 100 and it gets light dustings of snow in the winter. It’s also home to the “World Human Powered Speed Challenge” where the current world record for pedaling a bike was set.

Back to football, here are the driving times:
Arizona: 14:15
Arizona State: 12:34
Cal: 7:02
Colorado: 12:43
Oregon: 9:08
Oregon State: 9:50
Stanford: 7:47
UCLA (Rose Bowl): 10:12
USC: 10:18
Utah: 4:49
Washington: 12:58
Washington State: 11:05

You could setup shop in Winnemucca, but the extra hour of driving to Battle Mountain will cost you on what is already the longest trip to Arizona and push the Colorado and ASU trips up to the clear #2 and #3. On the positive side, you’ll save that same hour on trips the Bay Area, Oregon and Washington (the LA schools are a wash). So maybe with Cal being in the North division, particularly since you’ll be going to more home games at Cal than anywhere else, Winnemucca is your wiser choice. Plus the population of 7,172 will mean a few more friends to hang out with and it’s summer temps are about 5 degrees cooler.

But if you really want to be in the center of the Pac-12, with the shortest driving length to each school, Battle Mountain, NV is the clear and logical choice.

(and no, I’m not moving.)

(Written by kencraw)

My biggest complaint BY FAR with wordpress is how after various upgrades, it disables commenting for non-admins. It’s particularly troubling because I never realize it, as I can comment as an admin.

Nevertheless, it was brought to my attention again that commenting was disabled and I’ve re-enabled it. Comment away!

(Written by kencraw)

In what to me was somewhat surprising news, Maynard has been named the starting QB.

What wasn’t surprising was that Maynard was named based on the media reports. Quotes from Tedford have repeatedly reflected that he saw Maynard as the one in the lead. Similarly the reports from the open practices indicated Maynard was getting more than his share of 1st team snaps.

But based on what I saw at the one open practice I was able to see, this was VERY surprising. In fairness, the practice I went to was an early one, so Maynard was still early in the process of getting comfortable. But he just looked horrible. Nevertheless, who am I to question? I didn’t see all that much.

The other surprising bit was naming it shortly after spring practice wrapped up. This is definitely a change in form for Tedford who hasn’t named a starting QB before fall practice when there wasn’t an incumbent since… um… never. OK, I don’t know that for sure, but someone else can do the research and report back. 🙂 Suffice it to say, I can’t think of a time he did it.

But the logic seems sound. Tedford wants Maynard, who is new to the program to be able to have a leadership role during the un-coached summer sessions and be in a good position for success when fall practice starts. If Maynard truly has shown that he’s picking up the playbook quickly, particularly when combined with his year of starting experience at Buffalo, there’s reason to be hopeful that with more time as the clear leader through summer and fall, he’ll be ready to excel come the first game.

Another unstated reason for the announcement may be for the coaching staff to start thinking about offensive strategy now that we’ve got a QB with some dual-threat capabilities. One doesn’t put in some QB running plays overnight. If the staff is going to do that, they need to be working on it right now.

While I don’t expect wholesale changes, it’ll be interesting to see what new wrinkles are in the offense next season. And here’s my prediction: If Tedford has a scheming trick up his sleeve, we won’t see it right away. He’s going to wait for the game when he most needs it. (UW? USC?)

(Written by kencraw)

New conference commissioner is obviously very good at his job. There’s 3 billion obvious reasons ($$$) why. But as I was dissecting the details we have about the contract, one major thing hit me:

Minus the dollar figure, the CONTRACT is not as big of a change as it was pitched.

And at first glance, that seems ridiculous, but if you think about it, it’s remarkably similar to what we have today (minus the dollars of course). The key thing to note is that the Pac-12 TV Network (I’ll call it the “P12N”) is for all intents and purposes not part of the contract. I mean, none of that $3 billion dollars is paid so that we can have the P12N. If anything the contract dollar figure is smaller because we’re keeping the rights to broadcast the games.

But we have that today. Any game that isn’t picked up by either ABC/ESPN or Fox, is free for the home team to schedule through independent contract. Of course the P12N will centralize that and make the distribution of those games go through the conference, but again, while there may be language in the contract regarding that, it’s not a fundamental change in what sorts of rights the TV network has.

Once one breaks through that barrier, the rest of the similarities become clear:

The number of games included was the part for me that really drove the point home in my mind. This contract was pitched as covering “all games”, but when you get right down to it, it’s just a few more games a year (including the conference championship game).

Now, to be fair, it appears that on the Basketball side, we’ll be getting a lot more games on ESPN than before, but since this blog is a football blog, I’ll overlook that in this post.

Also, the addition of games on Fox and FX for the Fox side of the contract is notable for giving us more exposure, particularly since the FSN networks are not in a lot of people’s cable/satellite package. In fact, games on Fox, might just be the one area we’ll really get better national visibility.

But in my mind the biggest change is that the conference now gets some higher priority picks for their own distribution, as opposed to just getting the table scraps of what the TV networks didn’t want.

To be clear, I think the P12N is a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE deal. The fact that every game will be on TV is a big deal. But it’s not really part of that $3 billion dollar contract (in fact, it’ll take some of those dollars away from the schools for start-up dollars). What we really got is a contract that is remarkably similar to what we’ve had in the past, but we finally got ABC/ESPN and Fox to pony up for what it was worth and as a result, they’ll be showing a few more of those games on their best channels.

Just trying to put things into perspective…

(Written by kencraw)

I was reading about the new media contract and came across the bit about all football games being televised. Did they mean all conference games, or did that mean ALL games? So what does a guy like me do when a question like that comes to mind? I try to figure it out:

We know that there will be a total of 80 football games televised: 44 on ESPN/Fox and 36 on the new Pac-10 network. We also know that there are 55 conference games (9 games x 12 teams / 2 + 1 conference championship game). So yes, the contract is for more than just all conference games.

But is 25 games all the rest? No, it’s not. 12 teams play 3 non conference games, so we’re 11 games short of the 36 that will be played. But of course, the contract won’t cover non-conference games played on the road. It can’t. The home team gets the TV rights for almost all non-conference games. So is 25 the rest of the home conference games?

Which brings me to the point of this post…

If every non-conference game was based on what is called a “home-and-away” agreement (where there will be two games, one at home and one at the home of one’s opponent), then 25 games would be too many. There would only be 18 home non-conference games each year.

So, here’s what’s worth blogging about: Built into the contract is an assumption that there will be some “pay-for-play” games, games where there is no reciprocal game at the opponents home field and the team is paid to come play a Pac-12 team. And a lot of them.

The way it works out is that 10 teams should have two home-and-away based games each year (for 10 home games (half the total number of games)) and one pay-for-play game (10 more home games). The remaining 2 teams would have one home-and-away based game (1 more game) and two pay-for-play games (4 more home games).

It’s just an interesting little note about what’s assumed for the non-conference arrangements moving forward. To be honest, it’s far more pay-for-play games than I thought. Looking back to the beginning of the Tedford era, there’s been no season where the Bears have had 2 pay-for-play games and 3 seasons where there weren’t any.

Expect to see the trend towards pay-for-play games to increase in the future across the conference.

(Written by kencraw)

The internet is abuzz this morning with news that the Pac-12 media rights (TV, etc.) deal has been struck. It’s worth $3 billion over 12 years.

That’s $21 million per-school, per year, well more than double what we currently get. Hurray!

It’s also interesting that the deal is a joint FOX and ESPN deal. From Wilner:

* ESPN and Fox will be co-rightsholders.
* Games will be shown on Fox, ABC, FX, Fox Sports Net, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU.
* The contract includes the Pac-12 football championship game, which will be shown alternately on Fox and ABC.

A couple more links, one from Wilner, one from the NYT.

I think this is a great deal. No need to buy a game-package like “ESPN Gameday” that costs a couple hundred dollars for the season. Lot’s of channels to make sure the games are all on TV. Keeping ESPN involved ensures we get lots of airtime on sports center and all the other sports news shows that are so important for visibility.

Add in that it still leaves the Pac-12 it’s right to create a Pac-12 TV channel/network and it’s an absolute FORTUNE of money, the biggest deal ever for college sports, and one has to hand it to Larry Scott.

Congrats Larry! You’re doing great by the Pac-10/12.

(Written by kencraw)

I got an e-mail today from Sandy Barbour indicating that the great fund-raising efforts of the baseball team have paid off. You can read her e-mail here and a press-release with the chancellor’s comments here. The team will be saved! WOOHOO!

Frankly, I’m quite surprised they were able to raise as much money as they did. Good for them. I’m also a bit surprised that there’s an announcement when they’re $1 million short of the stated goal and “the team’s formal reinstatement will be announced once the $10 million target is met through continued fundraising.” Huh? Wasn’t this the official announcement? It’s a bit odd. I guess it’s a statement that they’re committed to re-instatement and there’s no “decision” left to be made… just a few more dollars (OK $1 million) to be secured.

Nevertheless, I share the confidence of the administration and the fundraisers that the money will be raised and the official announcement is just a formality.

It’s a great day for Cal athletics!

(Written by kencraw)

Well, my date FINALLY came up. After two and a half weeks of patiently watching all the seats get grabbed up, I finally got my chance at 1:46 PM today.

The process was smooth and simple, as I expected. I have to admit this automated self-selecting system is far nicer in concept than the traditional “hope the ATO is nice to me and understands my note” system that has been used in the past. (BTW, I found the ATO to be very nice in their selection when I wrote a good note, explaining exactly what I wanted and where I was willing to compromise. The seats we’ve had for the last handful of years were great.)

Of course the seats I got were not nearly as nice as I hoped and there’s no doubt that lots of formerly high donors were snapping up cheap tickets this year, which is fully their right. There are plenty of cheap tickets left, but the good ones are all but gone. I guess that’s my penalty for not being a donor. For me, we ended up picking seats in the 2nd to highest row of section 332. We’re in the middle of the row, which wasn’t what we wanted, but I felt the slightly better location was worth it over seats in section 317 that were only two from the isle. In either case, we were going to be in the highest rows. At this point, unless I was going to pay for big-donor seats, everything was at least 2/3rds the way up the upper deck.

The lower deck was out of the question for me. They’re SO low, the sight lines are horrible, particularly from the endzone, the only place a non-donor could sit down there. Which brings me to my thought for the day:

I think the athletic department made a mistake in where they put the “reserved” seats and where they put the “blue/gold zone” seats. They should have switched them, and put the $275/seat and no discount for kids seats (the equivalent to the old reserved) on the upper deck. As I stated above, the sight-lines are better and it’s not that far from the field. It also better matches the reserved seats in that they were in the corners, not the endzones. Conversely, they should have put the $225/seat with a $75 discount for kids seats (the equivalent of the old blue/gold zone), in the endzone. They’re the cheapest seats and have always been in the endzone and again, as said above, have a worse view.

The fact that the “reserved” seats have lots of available seats and the “zone” seats are filling up fast, indicates that they got the pricing/demand curve backwards on those two. Had they got them right, and flopped their locations, I probably would have paid the extra money to sit in the “reserved” sections and gotten better seats within the same section I’m sitting in.

The good news for me is that this year’s tickets cost about half what I expected. I budgeted $2500 for 6 tickets in the annual budget and paid $1225 (plus a $100 donation so that next year I’ll have a better priority number). I ended up going with 4 adult and 2 kids tickets because there are some games, like USC as a night game, that I won’t be taking the kids to and would like to take friends to, but would also like to save some cash when I bring the 4 kids with my wife.

Good luck to those who haven’t yet had a chance to pick! Here’s a tip: I’ve you’ve got some extra dough, there’s still some GREAT big-donor seats left. 🙂

(Written by kencraw)

For the season ticket holders out there, they know that seat-picking time is around the corner. I wanted to give some of my thoughts on what’s about to happen.

First the positive:

I went to AT&T park for the promotional open house event. It was simple but well run and getting to walk the stadium was well worth the drive (my family combo’ed the event with a trip to the Exploratorium for the kids). Minus the left field corner seats where both the foul pole and the stadium structure make it hard to see the near endzone, there’s very few bad seats in the house. The lower deck, particularly the endzones have some depth perception problems because of how low they are (since it’s a baseball park), but overall, it’s pretty good, particularly on the upper deck, which was better than I expected.

Which brings me to my concern:

I believe that the University is significantly over expecting people to pay for expensive seats.

I’ve thought this for a while now, from the first instant I saw the seating/pricing chart. If you look at it, there’s a LOT of high priced donor seats and a fair number of seats that look to be the equivalent of the Blue/Gold zone and not much in-between. But my instinct grew stronger when I went to the stadium and was surprisingly happy with the upper deck (“view level”) seats.

But not wanting to solely rely on my instinct, I decided to see if they were really asking for too many people to pay donations for their seats. Not having exact seat counts for each section at both Memorial and AT&T, I had to guestimate, but based on how the sums worked out, my numbers probably aren’t too far off. I assumed each of the sections in Memorial had 1500 seats and each full section at AT&T had 500 whereas the smaller middle level was half that (BTW, that results in a Memorial capacity of 67K and 38.5K for AT&T). That results in the following table of seats:

*The student section, being bleachers, is the section I’m least confident of the AT&T quantity. That could easily be 5K, but 3K is my best guess.

Obviously one would expect a number of sections to be smaller than their Memorial equivalent, so I’m not particularly concerned with the young alum, student or visitor section. The two that are troublingly small to me are the Blue & Gold equivalent (which is the white seats in the linked diagram) and the general reserved. While not all of the 21K reserved seats at Memorial were sold as season tickets, my gut feel is that the number is higher than 6K. Even more troubling is the Blue and Gold, which are PACKED at Memorial. They are reduced by more than half.

Are they really expecting these people to bump up into donor seats?

Then, if you look at the donor sections, they’re all larger in size. Of particular note is the $600 to $800 bucket, which is now 5,000 seats larger! And to be perfectly clear, I was generous in my groupings. Memorial didn’t have $800 donation seats, they had $600, so by grouping those two together, I’m already assuming some of the $600 donors are willing to up their numbers a little. I used that same grouping methodology across the entire table, assuming that many of the $300 will be willing to go to $400, the $150 to $200, the $75 to $100.

Even with that generous grouping the ONLY donor section that didn’t increase in size was the top-end $1200 level… but that’s because they’re the source of most of the ESP seats. So really if we were to group those two, that group would be rising in number too.

And here’s where this concern gets personal… or said another way, here’s where the concern ends up with a lot of ticked off people:

The seat selection process goes from the long term donors to the short term non-donors (which is perfectly fair). I fit somewhere in the lower middle third, a medium term non-donor. I’m around selection #25000 out of 40K. I get to pick on April 6th, when the first selections start March 14th. (Again, I think that’s fair.)

But what happens when all those bigger donors and longer season ticket holders decide to buy cheap seats? There’s nothing that mandates that they pay for the expensive ones. I see a domino effect where everyone keeps pushing out, section wise, picking cheaper seats than the University is expecting both because they don’t want to pay as much as the University wants AND because by they time they get to pick, the section they’d like to sit in is down to the last few bad seats from the higher donor groups. This is particularly true when combined with my earlier positive that there’s very few bad seats in the house. Why pay more when you can get a darned good seat for less?

In any case, as each group expands beyond their prior grouping, things will get worse down the line until when they get to me, there will be a ton of VERY expensive seats left and effectively no seats available in my price range. (This is particularly worrisome for me because I need 6 adjacent seats.)

I sure hope I’m wrong, but I’m quite concerned. How will the University respond when #39000, a guy with two Blue Zone seats goes to buy his tickets and all that’s left is $1200 donor seats. The guy was guaranteed seats as a 2010 season ticket holder, right?

(Written by kencraw)

On February 15th just before 6 PM PST, the first section of the historic stadium had been destroyed so that the exterior wall was visible on both sides:

In the week since then, the vast majority of the western wall has been exposed:

(Note, click on the picture for full res pictures)

Nice to see progress being made!

(Written by kencraw)

I saw this tidbit in a new SFGate article:

According to the university, rugby raised about $6 million, baseball $1.5 million to $2.5 million, lacrosse $400,000 to $500,000, and gymnastics less than $1 million, with the remainder not earmarked for any particular sport.

There’s been an open question until now about whether the saved women’s sports had raised enough. Up until now we had numbers for rugby ($6m) and baseball ($1.5m-$2.5m) and the total ($12m-$13m), which left a big gap, approximately 3 to 6 million. If the two saved women’s sports had raised the majority of that money, one could easily say they had “saved themselves” through their fund raising.

Personally, I had suspected this wasn’t the case, but until now I didn’t have published numbers to support this. Now I do. The women’s sports looks to have raised about a million total (I’m assuming the women’s gymnastics raised half (or perhaps a bit more) of the total gymnastics funds).

There’s no need to re-iterate my earlier points, I just wanted to make sure that it was clear that the numbers had been verified and that the women’s sports were spared not because of their fund raising, but because of Title IX.

(Written by kencraw)

This is not official, but it’s officially the worst kept secret in Berkeley (now that coach M is officially the offensive line coach and OC)… Cal has scheduled FCS’s Presbyterian College, from South Carolina. That, along with confirmation that the Colorado game will go forward as planned, even though they’re now in the Pac-12 and the game will officially be a non-conference game, rounds out the schedule:

(Written by kencraw)

The Chronicle is reporting that 3 of the 5 sports have been saved: Rugby, Women’s Lacrosse, and Women’s Gymnastics.

The answer for why Baseball and Men’s Gymnastics didn’t get spared is because they didn’t raise enough money. Which is true, I guess. It appears baseball only raised $1 million (update, it appears it was $2 million) and gymnastics didn’t raise nearly that. That’s not enough to save them.

What’s deceptive in that explanation is that it’s not why the two women’s sports were saved. I guarantee you neither the women’s lacrosse team nor the women’s gymnastics team raised $1 million. It appears that well over half the money was raised by the rugby team, with baseball coming in 2nd and then a couple million of general donations to save all 5.

What I’m saying is that if it was just about the money, rugby and baseball would have been saved and that’s it.

No, it’s pretty clear that the two women’s sports were saved because cutting any women’s sport, irrelevant of whether men’s sports are being cut at disproportionally higher numbers, you’re going to run afoul of Title IX. The university just couldn’t take the chance that they’d get sued.

Basically, the rugby team raised enough money to save itself by making sure the dollar figure was enough to save the two women’s sports as well and thus not running afoul of Title IX.

This is not right. It’s time for supporters of women’s athletics to pony up. You’re already HEAVILY subsidized by men’s football and basketball. That’s more than enough. You want to keep those sports, you pony up whatever additional dough is needed.

Jason spoke below in a comment about how we should mend Title IX instead of ending, and I agree in concept that there should be some protection of women’s sports. But Title IX is so far from where it should be that I think starting over is the right way to go.

Title IX should only apply to public funds. Of course, it should insist that the funds be split equitably. But that should be the end of it. All private schools (assuming no public funds) should be able to do what they please. All public schools should be able to do what they please with private donations, per donor’s instructions. You might get me on board that any ticket sale money that exceeds the costs of a program (and let’s not kid ourselves, that means men’s football and basketball) at a public school should be split equally between the other men’s and women’s sports, but in my mind, the scope should be limited to public funds and most definitely should not apply to private donations.

As for baseball being cut, while it’s very disappointing to me, times are tough and I don’t know that I can justify keeping it, knowing what it means to the rest of Cal, both athletically and academically. Here’s hoping that better times allow us to bring it back in the future (hopefully without running afoul of Title IX again).

(Written by kencraw)

The New York Times has an article up about the cuts of sports at Cal. In it, it states:

The elimination of two women’s teams — lacrosse and gymnastics — threw the Cal athletic department out of compliance with the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX. Without the five teams, the university, based on numbers it provided, will have to add 50 spots for women and eliminate 80 spots for men to meet Title IX requirements.

The reason is that if you cut even ONE women’s sport, you’re now forced to match the men/women ratio of the athletic department to the ratio of the student body. If you don’t cut a women’s sport, you can use a couple of different methods that allow for some inequity.

This is absolutely ridiculous… Let me show you how. Cal cut 5 sports:

Men’s Rugby: 63 men
Men’s Baseball: 36 men
Men’s Gymnastics: 19 men
Women’s Gymnastics: 13 women
Women’s Lacrosse: 25 women

That’s 118 men cut and only 38 women cut for those who don’t want to do the simple arithmetic. And somehow doing this is a violation of not letting women participate in sports?

Or lets look at it a different way, like on a sport by sport basis. Cal already had one more women’s sport than men’s sport, 14-13. With the cuts it’ll be down to 12-10 in favor of the women, where the only men’s only sport is Football and women have Field-Hockey, Softball and Volleyball as women’s only sports.

This is an injustice. There’s no other way to say it.

By any basis besides equal participation, a crummy way to judge things if there ever was one (what do you do if no women want to participate? Men can’t do things just because women aren’t interested?), there’s no way to justify this sort of thing. Whether we’re judging by opportunities for participation, by dollars spent, by number of sports, the men are getting the shaft. They bring in effectively all the dollars and they don’t have all the sports that the women do (you don’t think there are men who would like to play Volleyball?).

As a quick aside, I suspect the way this is going to be resolved (since it’s clear, albeit in an unstated way, from the article that the wheels are in motion to sue the university) is that with the dollars raised, both women’s sports will be retained, as well as the baseball team. That will allow the University to avoid the wrath of the unfair and keep the sport that from all indications in the one doing all the fund-raising (baseball). (Sucks to be Men’s gymnastics)

But the pragmatics of how the university will avoid this mess aside, this is a travesty and an injustice.

Title IX must go!

(Written by kencraw)

It used to be that I didn’t care a lick about recruiting. Then I got a fun little job reporting on games for an organization that was mostly focused on recruiting (Rivals/BearTerritory.net). The more I learned, the more I realized just how important recruiting was. Make no mistake, the coaching and the game planing are very important, but if you don’t have the raw talent, teams like USC are just going to bowl you over. They’ll be bigger, faster and stronger and no amount of creative game planning will overcome their sound game plan built around the fact that they’re bigger, faster and stronger.

So that’s why it’s so important that Cal continues to bring in very good recruiting classes. Last year was awesome, with the #11 class and two 5-star players (OK, we lost one later). To follow it up with a #17, means that we’re going to have a very talented team in a couple years. (Remember that recruits don’t become the heart and soul of the program until they’re upper-class men and really don’t have much of an impact for at least a year.)

To re-enforce the point, wonder why 2008-2010 were such rough years… look no further than recruiting from 2007-2009:

2007: #22 in the country, 3rd in the conference*
2008: #34 in the country, 7th in the conference
2009: #42 in the country, 6th in the conference

(*Note that 2007 was based more on the number of recruits at 26 and less on star ranking, with only 5 4-stars)

Not all that great, particularly when you compare it to 2004-2006:

2004: #22 in the country, 4th in the conference*
2005: #9 in the country, 2nd in the conference
2006: #19 in the country, 4th in the conference*

(*Note the inverse of the previous one for 2004 and 2006, these were smaller classes with a high star-ranking that was 4th in the conference only because teams with big classes loaded up on lesser talent (UW in 2004, UCLA and Arizona in 2006))

Point being, it’s really good news to see us up in the recruiting rankings where we used to be back in the heart of the Tedford era, and to be there for 2 consecutive years.

Now for some specifics on this class:

There’s two things I look for in a good recruiting class, the number of highly talented players with good physical characteristics (do they have the frame to be a good O-line guy, etc.) and how balanced the class is. It doesn’t do any good to bring in 4 tight ends and no defensive guys. That lack of balance will hurt down the road.

Going further, the team is allowed to have 85 scholarship players. That works out to just under 4 complete teams (22 players (11 offense, 11 defense) x 4 is 88). Since, minus redshirting, you get a player for 4 years, it means that in a perfect world, your class should pretty well reflect a complete team. Let’s see how this team stacks up:

QB: 1 (Kyle Boehm)
RB: 4 (C.J. Anderson, Brendon Bigelow, Darren Ervin, Daniel Lasco)
OL: 2 (Jordan Rigsbee, Matt Williams)
TE: 1 (Richard Rodgers)
WR: 1 (Maurice Harris)

DL: 5 (Todd Barr, Puka Lopa, Brennan Scarlett, Mustafa Jalil, Viliami Moala)
LB: 3 (Jalen Jefferson, Nathan Broussard, Jason Gibson)
DB: 5 (Joel Willis, Kameron Jackson, Stefan McClure, Jordan Morgan, Avery Walls)

While it’s not perfect balance (last year was better) it’s pretty darned good. The two weak spots are WR, which isn’t as bad as it seems because there are a few guys (McClure, Ervin, Lasco) who Tedford mentioned might either play some or be moved to wide receiver, and OL, which if you ask me is the glaring weak-spot. The good news is the two we got look like monster recruits. Nevertheless, if we could substitute RB recruit or two into a OL recruit, it would definitely help the balance of the class.

Don’t under estimate the value of the large set of recruits at DB and RB though… those are two spots where we’ve lost a lot of talent to graduation and they cupboard needed to be refilled, particularly at RB where injuries have really hurt. It would be awesome if Bigelow or Ervin could make the sort of instant impact that Best or Lynch made their true-freshman years.

As for individual guys that just wow, top of the list is Moala, who is a 5-star over on Scout (as a quick aside, I always use Rivals rankings… it’s a loyalty thing) even though he’s a 4-star on Rivals. He’s a monster guy and ready to play nose guard right away at 326 lbs and supposedly is going to be able to walk into the weight room in August and instantly set the bench press record for Cal at 490.

Stefan McClure is another one that jumps out, being very versatile, being one of those rare talents who can both be a smothering corner and tackle like a linebacker (while Tedford compared another recruit to Syd’Quan Thompson, this guy’s tackling skills make me think he’s more like Syd).

The other two defenders who really stand out to me are Jason Gibson and Brennan Scarlett, both because of their versatility. Tedford called Scarlett a predator like Kendricks, yet he’s a defensive end who can rush hard from the outside, despite the fact that he’s being compared to a linebacker. Gibson is just the opposite, a linebacker who played a lot of DE in high school and his film looks great. The way Pendergast likes to mix things up, these will be two guys who will allow for more complex blitz and coverage packages that will keep the opposing QB’s guessing.

Moving to offense, the odd-ball of the group of standouts is quarterback Kyle Boehm. He’s ranked as the #7 QB in the country but is only a 3-star, having lost a star over the winter. It’s really odd and perhaps because he was doing a lot of running as a QB in his senior season. But his video looks really good throwing the ball. Tedford had lots of good things to say about him.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the two offensive line recruits look like monsters. Matt Williams is enrolling early and is a JC transfer (it’s pretty rare JC guy’s get a 4-star ranking). He’s 6-7 and 285 and just looks like someone who could add 50, heck even 75 lbs of muscle and still be limber and fast with the size of his frame. Jordan Rigsbee is no slouch himself ranked the #9 guard in the country out of high school and at 6’4″ 275 should be only a year away from being ready to play.

As you can see, there’s a lot to be excited about. Lot’s of talent that’s eye-poppingly good and pretty good balance. Where there wasn’t balance, it was because Tedford was after some new-found depth at defensive back and running back. While the O-Line shortage is probably the most disconcerting, the two guys we got look awesome. Overall it looks really, really, good.

Go Bears!