(Written by kencraw)

I’ll have more detailed thoughts later as well as a full review of the game but I just wanted to get some quick thoughts out on the following topics:

• This loss has very little impact on the Bears in the Pac-10 title hunt
• The Beavers are better than we give them credit for
• The Beavers did everything I said they needed to do for the upset
• While it was a tough loss, I’m full of optimism
• Finally, the difference in the blog versus message board content is why I’m a fan of blogs

First of all, ignoring for a moment any concerns that Cal won’t be good enough to win their big games coming up, Cal still controls their own destiny in the Pac-10 and they’ve got their main opponent coming to Berkeley. Yeah, the National Title hopes seem pretty dashed at this point, but did anyone really think that was a shoe-in? I always saw it as a pipe-dream and I’m not too concerned that it seems to over (although with all the losing this year it might not be as over as everyone things… but I digress). The short term goals for Cal have always been a Rose Bowl and upgraded facilities. Both of those hopes are still very much alive, at least by the numbers.

But I think what really bothers soms is not that mathematically things are fine, their fear is that the Bears aren’t a good enough team to win the games they need to win to get to the Rose Bowl. I think that’s just foolish.

As I said in my previews both here and in Rivals, the Beavers are a pretty good team, just a mistake prone one. If you look at how they competed with everyone so far, and they’ve played some very good teams, it was their turnovers and mistakes that killed them, not their lack of talent. They’re not a Stanford or a Washington State or even an Arizona or Washington talent wise. Sure, they don’t have the talent of Cal, but they are well coached and have enough talent that a couple lucky bounces of the ball puts them in the hunt with just about anyone.

And all of those bounces went the Beavers way yesterday. In my previews I said the Beavers needed to do two things to win: 1. slow the Cal rushing game. 2. not make mistakes. Guess what? That’s exactly what they did. They had only 1 turnover, and it came at one of the best spots of the field for a turnover, if there is such a place. It wasn’t deep in their own territory, giving Cal some free points and it wasn’t deep enough in Cal territory to be missing out on some guaranteed points. As for the rushing game, having a new QB for Cal played right into their defensive hands, particulary their load the box philosophy, and Cal wasn’t able to stretch the field like Longshore would have done and as a result they weren’t able to control the flow of the game.

So when one puts together that the Beavers are a pretty good team and that everything went their way, I think we shouldn’t fear that the Bears aren’t any good. In fact, call me full of optimism for the future. Riley showed me a lot of positive stuff yesterday and the young guys who continue to get playing time due to injury continue to impress. Even if this season doesn’t turn out as we hope, the future is bright if you ask me. 2008 and 2009 look even better (lone unproven area: receivers).

But back to 2007, Cal took a dangerous Pac-10 team who got all the bounces and breaks right to the limit… and they did it with a backup QB. Longshore will be back for UCLA, an infinitely beatable team. Cal has proven they can go on the road and win against good teams in the most hostile environment and I give them an 90% chance of returning to Berkeley unscathed after taking down an exposed UCLA and an untested ASU. After a quick romp over WSU at home, the game that will determine the Bears fate will be before us. I’m looking forward to it and thing the Bears have an excellent chance of winning that game. If they do, with the rest of the Pac-10 likely beating up on each other, Cal need only likely win one of the Washington or Big Game to be Rose Bowl bound.

So cheer up campers!

All of that said, I’m frankly proud of all of us bloggers and blog commentors this morning. While there was the ocassional doom and gloom sentiment, for the most part people had perspective enough to not do what the message board freaks are doing. There’s been no stream of deleted comments about literally feeding Riley to the lions, firing Tedford (or one’s favorite scapegoat assistant coach) or denying all belief in the God who has spurned up. Call me proud to be Cal blogger this morning:

Full of optimism despite a very tough and heart breaking loss and proud to call all of you fine gentlemen (and ladies) my compatriots.

(Written by jsnell)

Oh, Kevin Riley. We laughed when you commandeered the Enterprise’s engine room and sang “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen” as the ship spiraled down into planet Psi 2000. We felt the pathos when you were poisoned for being one of the last living people to see Kodos the Executioner. And we wept when you failed to throw the ball away at the end of the Cal-Oregon State game.

Wait, I’m mixing up my Kevin Riley trivia here.

This Kevin Riley is not the occasional Star Trek navigator of my youth, but rather the redshirt freshman who was forced to take over the Cal offense today. And while I think it’s fairly safe to say that if Nate Longshore played this game (and was healthy in doing so), that Cal would have won it easily, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Kevin Riley lost it.

Yes, Riley’s brain-cramp at the end lost the game. But he had managed to maneuver Cal to the doorway of victory, something that had seemed impossible not five minutes before. For Cal to come all the way back after Jahvid Best’s fumbled kickoff return put OSU up by two scores required about 10 improbable things to happen. Riley was one of the reasons that nine of those things happened. Sadly, the tenth didn’t happen and the Bears lost.

For example, Jahvid Best. When he lined up to receive the kickoff I actually thought to myself, “God, I hope he doesn’t try to win the game singlehandedly here.” I’m not saying that it was what he was trying to do, because perhaps he wasn’t, but the end result is that he fumbled in absolutely the worst possible situation and it’s a miracle that the game wasn’t over then and there.

There was some bad officiating in the game, but in the end I’m not sure it affected the outcome. A bogus late-hit call cost Cal 15, but OSU might have scored anyway. One long Oregon State run should have been called back due to some egregious holding, but the refs swallowed their whistles. I can’t say I think the officials did a good job, but I don’t think Cal’s loss can be laid at their feet whatsoever.

I’d complain about the lameness of Cal’s failure to score on four straight runs on first and goal from the 2 yard line, but in the end Cal forced an OSU punt, got the ball back in Beaver territory, and punched it in, so that was a wash.

Who can I praise? Justin Forsett ran really well, especially considering that the Beavers had to know he was going to bear the brunt of the offensive load. The Cal defense performed decently, I thought, and gave up two first-half scores directly as a result of offensive misdeeds. The defense’s one major failing seemed to be a complete lack of a pass rush. The wide receivers deserve some praise for making plays for their shaky quarterback.

I’ll heap some scorn on the fans, who giddily cheered the LSU defeat. Hey, I was happy LSU lost too, but my frame of mind was much more that we would be next, not that we would be #1. Guess some other Cal fans are also fans of pre-hatched chicken counting.

But in the end, I’m not quite sure what more can be said. Cal’s starting quarterback couldn’t answer the bell. The redshirt freshman QB who replaced him probably ended up playing better than he had any right to, especially in the last five minutes of the game. Yes, if he threw the ball away Cal could kick a field goal and take it to overtime, and he blew that. But this defeat was not an orphan: it had a thousand fathers.

I will say that in all my years of watching Cal football, I’ve never seen a game end like this. We literally stared, stunned, not believing that it was over. What a terrible way to end — and just moments after everything seemed so promising.

On the bright side, no more silly talk about national championships. Can we all agree that Pasadena is a prize well worth shooting for?

(Written by kencraw)

Sorry this has taken so long to post. As I said in an earlier post, I’ve been pretty beat the last couple weeks since the trip and while I occasionally can sneak in a blog post or two from work, I couldn’t sneak in this one because of all the pictures… makes it pretty obvious to the boss I’m not working. 🙂

I left Roseville (suburb of Sacramento where I both live and work) on Friday at 1 PM after having come home from work (as a quick aside, I thank God daily I have a 5 minute drive to work… I literally just have to drive around the block to go to work.) to get packed up and ready to go. The plan was to meet my brother in Vacaville who was coming with his room-mate from the Bay Area.

They were running a bit late so I got a chance to checkout the new children’s play area that substitutes for the old Nut Tree. Boy was I impressed. Not only did they have the old train back in business, but they also had a mini-roller coaster and a bunch of other kid/toddler friendly rides. For those with little kids who are looking for a good mid-trip stop, this place is as great as the Nut Tree ever was.

In any case, the bro arrived around 2:30 and after having a late lunch at Fentons (yes, it’s the same as the one in Oakland) got on the road around 3:30 PM. The trip up to Oregon was pretty uneventful, sans getting a call from a good friend who had just found out he was having a boy. Other than that, we knew we had to give Oregon credit for rolling out the red carpet for the Cal fans visiting including setting up replica cities of where us Cal fans grew up:

We arrived in the booming metropolis of Cottage Grove, a town where we could get a good deal on a Holiday Express room, at 10:30 PM. Despite being twenty miles from Eugene it was sold out because the Ducks were playing. Luckily my brother’s roommate was a Oregon alumni and knew to book the room early.

Despite my pleading, I couldn’t talk my companions into waking up at 5:00 AM and heading over to Eugene for the GameDay festivities, so we hit the sack without having to set an alarm. We work up just in time to catch the show on the in-room TV and checkout the creative signs. I was glad to see that “Les Miles – More Tedford” got to a prominent spot on the field and was very visible.

But we did make it over to Eugene well before game time. After my brother did a left hand turn from the right lane to get into the parking lot, thereby cutting in line of about 200 Ducks fans, we found our way to the press parking lot:

From there we headed over to the GameDay site which was just across a small creek from both the stadium and the press parking lot:

The setup for the GameDay show is pretty simple. They’ve got a big field behind a raised stage where they shoot the show from:

Of course at 10:00 AM the show was long since over so all we got to see was the left over trash:

And the left over signs:

My brother and I aren’t sure if the sign shown has the same impact when it’s being held by a woman, but oh well, it was the only big sign left behind.

After we left there, we headed over to the training facility for the Oregon football team. On our way there, guess who we ran into:

Continuing on to the practice facility, on game days they convert the facility to be a large pre-game lounge:

They cover up the field with a roll out surface so that they can setup tables and booths without harming the high grade artificial surface:

In addition to concessions and a band, they also had TV’s setup all over the place to watch all the other football action around the country:

Of course, taking a step back and looking at the facility as it is used during the week, it’s clearly an awesome setup that attracts a lot of recruits. The one aspect I found odd was all the billboards around the field. Maybe they take them down mid-week, but if they don’t, I can’t see how it won’t over inflate the ego’s of the players on the billboards. I made sure to take a picture of all 6 of them:

And if billboards aren’t your style, you could always go for the inflatable duck:

After I was done touring the practice facility I headed up to the pressbox to get settled in and say hi to a lot of the guys I hadn’t seen since last season:

Down on the field, it was not long before the Cal band showed up:

After the teams came out of the field, I saw a sight that was definitely worth taking a picture of… my only fear was that my camera would break in half trying to take a picture of this much power in one frame:

After the pre-game warmups the Oregon band came out onto the field. At first it seemed like they were going to pull a Stanford as they came out in a very disorganized sense. Luckily any fear of that was quickly erased when they dropped into regular formations (I call this one the ‘subscript “O”‘… I guess I can’t change lenses as quick as I hoped):

Then they did the team entrance:

Finally they did the national anthem and they had this pretty neat setup with banners:

At this point I had to put down the camera and cover the game, and we know how well that turned out. The lone aspect of the game worth writing about here was the end. Usually the normal sequence of events for a reporter is to make their way down to the field about 5 minutes before the game is over so that they can be on the field for post game interviews right after the game. I got so caught up in the game that I completely lost track of time and that my cohorts had left.

At that point, I figured it was better to hold out to the end of the game so that I didn’t miss what happened in transit. I did that and then did my best bulldozer impression fighting my way against the exiting crowd. Luckily Crawford’s are well suited for this kind of activity. It also helped that it was a dejected crowd that was willing to make a hole.

While I wasn’t able to get to the field before all of the players had headed into the locker room I was able to get to the press staging area for post locker room interviews (that’s where the meaty interviews are). This was the lone area where I was unimpressed with Oregon’s facilities. They had just the one press interview room that was used by the Oregon reporters. Us Cal reporters did our reporting out on the field which was very difficult with the Cal fans left around us celebrating. It was pretty hard to understand what Tedford was saying amongst all of the “Tedford! Tedford! Tedford!” chants.

After going back up to the pressbox after the interviews, which were moved into the tunnel to give us at least SOME sound isolation, I made my way to campus where my brother and roommate were waiting for me. The path from the stadium to the campus takes you through this wonderful grove of oak trees:

And then across a foot bridge across the Willamette river:

And the river itself (this picture would have been 10 times as awesome if I had my tripod with me):

From there the 3 of us went to dinner and then back to our hotel room. In the morning we got up at a leasurely pace and got on the road around 10:00 AM. We stopped in Medford to go to the original Harry and David store (my brother is a big fan of their pears) and then to get lunch. We went to the Black Bear Diner in Medford just across the freeway from Harry and Davids which was a big mistake. We literally waited 45 minutes for our food.

We got back on the road around 2 PM and made it back to Roseville around 7 PM for congratulatory high fives with my boys who were too small to make this trip, but I’m sure will be accompanying me on future trips when they get older.

(Written by kencraw)

I was channel surfing this evening when I came across the Hawaii at San Jose St. game on ESPN. It was early in the 4th quarter and SJ St. was up 35-21. Could this be the final nail in the coffin for the final non-BCS team that still has a shot at a BCS game? I mean, I’m fairly confident that Hawaii will trip up at some point this season and won’t be able to pull a Utah or Boise St. but it’s always nice to see that happen sooner rather than later.

So I got pretty excited.

Well I don’t know what SJ St. had done earlier in the game to be up in the 4th quarter (actually, I do: 4 Hawaii interceptions), but what I witnessed was one of the most pathetic yet predictable collapses in recent memory. How does 3 and out, give up a surprisingly easy TD, 2 and fumble, give up a surprisingly easy TD and then completely lack the ability to get in field goal range before going to OT where you give up another surprisingly easy TD and then throw a INT two plays later, sound to you?

I wish I hadn’t seen it at all because I hate getting my hopes up only to see them dashed in a, and sorry for lacking better vocabulary but these are the most appropriate words, pathetic yet surprisingly easy and predictable collapse.

(Written by kencraw)

Yesterday was the final day of the court hearing before Judge Miller to decide the fate of the Cal training center. Here are links to the articles I’m aware of:

• SF Chronicle article by Carolyn Jones
• AP article at SFGate.com
• ABC/KGO article
• CBS article
• Daily Cal article

Sadly, Chris Avery has not put up one of his excellent articles on the final day of the hearing and it looks like perhaps he wasn’t there. UPDATE at 9:10 PM 10/12: Turns out Mr. Avery was just taking his sweet time to write his wrap up article… I’ve never done that 🙂 .

There’s nothing in those articles that we didn’t already know because the seventh and final day of the hearing was closing arguments. In other words they were just saying what they had said before in summary form. The only thing I noticed in the closing arguments was a slight change in emphasis for the plaintiffs spending more time on environmental issues like the trees and the indian burials (how long do we have to listen to this crud) and less time on the two versus one building stuff. That says to me that the plaintiffs are less confident in their previous strategy and are looking for new avenues to emphasize and hopefully (for them) win with. More UPDATE at 9:10 PM 10/12: I find it very interesting that Mr. Avery’s article give a completely different feel about the issues, much more reflecting the previous points that I had heard from earlier in the hearings. One of two things is true: One, Mr. Avery has a very different take on things than his peers in the media or two, the media is obsessed with the stupid Oak trees and things like Indian burials. Call me crazy but I tend to lean towards number two.

The only other interesting things is some of the quotes that came out of it that you can find in the articles. The one that I thought was the most interesting was the sophmoric statement by tree-sitter lawyer Stephen Volker:

Volker said he would accept the offer to replace mature trees with saplings only if the campus would agree to put 3-year-old trees on the field for their next football game.

What interests me about that quote is it is the first time in all of the proceedings we’ve heard the lawyers for the plaintiffs lose their cool. So far to date they’ve been very tempered making their arguments like good lawyers should. However, once the University brought in its lead lawyer from the firm it hired who was much more biting in his comments, there’s finally a crack in the lawyer’s good behavior. Perhaps the University should have done this earlier as to get the plaintiffs riled up earlier and let Judge Miller see their true colors.

In any case, there won’t be a ruling for a minimum of two weeks because Judge Miller has given both sides that time to submit their final briefs and arguments. It seems clear that it’ll take her a minimum of a couple more days after that to parse the final documents and write her decision. That puts a decision at the earliest the week of the WSU game around the 1st of November and more likely the week of the USC game. At the rate this is going, I’d prefer the ruling to be held until the Monday after the USC game to prevent any further issues at the stadium, particularly during the USC game which will likely still be a HUGE game despite USC’s stumbling against Stanford last Saturday.

More UPDATE at 9:10 PM 10/12: Some final thoughts on Mr. Avery’s article… I’m glad to hear the University lawyers make clear to the judge that the City has no right to tell the University what to do or where to build its facilities. All they can do is ensure that the EIR was complete so that the UC Regents, yes the Regents not the City, could make an educated decision on the project and follow all of the laws associated to the APZ. The city has no right to tell the University that Golden Gate fields is a better place for the facility. Finally, it’s stupid to nitpic the EIR to death when the Regents are going to make the same decision after those nitpics are resolved. Hopefully the judge was listening to all of this because the University’s lawyer summarized for Mr. Avery what we’ve all known to be the case:

Some CEQA lawsuits have resulted in rulings by judges that particular items in an EIR had to be improved.

He said that if that happened, UC could follow the judge’s instructions to amend those items – and to hold public hearings about the changes if necessary, and to then recertify the EIR.

We asked whether – in that instance – it would be harder for the plaintiffs to file or support a subsequent lawsuit. Olson strongly agreed, but said he fully expected plaintiffs to sue again on whatever grounds could be developed.

Hopefully Judge Miller will see the plaintiffs for the obstructions they are and won’t let that happen.

(Written by kencraw)

It’s that time of the week where I can let loose and give my prediction for the Bears upcoming game.

But first, and I’m sure you all needed reminding of this, let’s look at Cal’s last game and whether my prediction was accurate. While I’m sure you’re all willing to grant me a moment of crowing about that, I feel obligated to remind everyone that I not only picked that score in my pre-game prediction, but also in my August season predictions AND also all the way back in my post Spring practice predictions on May 10th. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! 🙂

OK, down to business…

OSU is a hard team to predict because you never know which OSU is going to show up. Is it going to be the OSU that upsets a pretty good USC last October, or the one that got crushed by both Boise St. and Cal earlier in the same year? The same trend continues this year with them laying down a woodshed beating of Utah, the same team that took UCLA to their own woodshed out back, as well as Arizona and a 61-10 beat down of Idaho State but also getting creamed by UCLA 14-40 (if one ever needed a proof of the ridiculousness of A>B>C arguments, there’s an ideal candidate OSU>Utah>UCLA>OSU, and each of the games were blowouts) and a 3-34 loss to Cincinnati that would be very troubling if Cincinnati wasn’t 6-0 with a victory over Big East darling Rutgers and ranked 15th.

I mostly stand behind what I said in my Rivals article, that all of OSU’s hopes rest on a dominating run defense and playing a mistake and turnover free game, with two additions/clarifiers (as a quick aside, writing an article is a much more difficult proposition than a blog post because it needs to be concise with only two or three themes at the most and must tell a “story”… none of these asides or anything… so I often have to leave out aspects that I would include in a blog post):

1. OSU will have to successfully defend the passing game of Cal. Last year Cal demolished OSU by going over the top and beating them through the air. They didn’t have to beat their run defense. OSU needs to not only have a dominating run defense but they can’t have a repeat of last year’s pass defense. If for some reason Longshore doesn’t start that may be just what OSU needs, or it may turn out that they get burned just as bad by Riley. In either case, Cal is too balanced to be beat by OSU’s usual strategy of loading the box like it’s a telephone booth outside a frat house and challenging the offense to beat them with all of the heat coming. OSU will have to do better than that, particularly with Longshore behind center.
2. OSU’s run defense isn’t as good as the numbers indicate. While I think they are a good run defense, perhaps the best Cal has seen so far, there’s two big pieces of misleading info in OSU’s impressive 43.3 yards per game allowed. First, the offenses they’ve faced are only rushing for 125 yards per game themselves. While that’s not horrible, it’s kind of mediocre and a good run defense should be able to shut them down. Second, OSU has gotten a ton of sack yardage which subtracts from the run total. The worst example is that Arizona had 84 yards of rushing that shows up statistically as 9 yards because of the 75 yards off of sacks. Without the sacks, OSU would be giving up 80 yards per game, which although still good, isn’t nearly as impressive considering they did it against teams rushing for 125 yards per game. Said another way, if OSU holds Cal to the same 2/3rds of their average rushing total that they held their other opponents, Cal will still get 140 yards on the ground. So, while I still think this is a key to OSU having a shot at the upset, what I’m saying is that I don’t think it is as likely as both my article and the numbers suggest.

So, yes, I’m predicting a Cal victory but I’m going to revise my pre-season prediction (21-16) and predict a 31-16 victory.

(Written by kencraw)

Just a quick self congratulations to Jason and I: We’ve reached 100 posts! …and it only took 66 days to do so.

Here’s to hoping that we’ll be toasting our 1000th post in a couple years and still going strong.

(Written by kencraw)

I don’t know anything beyond what other reporters are reporting (I haven’t been going to the press-conferences this year), but it seems from what I’ve read that Longshore is going to start. In fact, I think the only reason there is any doubt is because Tedford loves playing mind games with his opponents. But just to be comprehensive here are the various words on the street:

Jonathan Okanes – CC Times:

Tedford said he may have quarterback Nate Longshore do a little more in practice today. Longshore has just been participating in the mental side of practice since suffering a sprained ankle against Oregon. I asked Tedford how much Longshore would have to test out the ankle before Saturday’s game against Oregon State.

“It’s getting better every day,” Tedford said. “We just don’t want to have a setback. He’s taken every mental rep. He’s calling every play. He’s staying ready.”

Chris Nguon – Rivals:

Longshore took a handful of reps early in practice and seemed to step into throws just fine.

Despite his ankle still being a little sore though, Tedford mentioned that he expects Longshore to be ready come Saturday.

“His ankle is getting better everyday,” Tedford said. “We just don’t want to do something stupid to set him back again.”

Rusty Simmons – SF Chronicle:

coach Jeff Tedford still isn’t sure whether he’ll be able to play against Oregon State on Saturday.

“He’s making progress,” Tedford said. “It’ll go right up to game time. We’ll see; I really have no idea.”

Tedford said pain and mobility will both be taken into account. The biggest problem the iffy right ankle can cause a right-handed quarterback is planting and pushing off the foot on throws.

Longshore, who maintains he’ll be ready, appeared to handle all of those aspects OK. After gingerly walking down the stadium steps to get to practice, Longshore showed off his footwork to Tedford while the rest of the team stretched.

Longshore was a little hesitant on some of his drops, but he threw crisp passes. He had been throwing regularly, but he got his first five snaps with the first-team offense in nearly two weeks.

My guess is that not only will Longshore start, but that we’ll have no idea he was ever injured once he takes the first snap. Tedford has been really conservative with injured players the last couple years after too many players were hampered by injuries for the whole season when rushing back too quick in his first few seasons as head coach. As such, he spends a lot of time telling everyone how unlikely it is that players will be playing when they’re pretty likely to be starting. I will say this, if Cal opens up a sizeable lead and Longshore is experiencing any pain, we may get our first real glimpse of Riley. Let’s hope he looks better than he did in his VERY limited action to date (and I want to be clear that it is unfair to judge him on so few throws).

(Written by kencraw)

I had intended to write a Oregon trip recap blog post with pictures and stuff from the trip including a bunch from the GameDay site. I didn’t have the energy for that either. Are people still interested in that or is it too late? I’ll do it tonight if I get sufficient comments desiring it.

(Written by kencraw)

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

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

(Written by kencraw)

Down in the USC loss good for Cal post a new commentor asks about the LA Times article about Stanford’s excellence in academics for their football players that has been generating a lot of discussion lately.

I’ve got a bigger point to make but first the important qualifier about Cal: The 52% number is not reflective of what Tedford is doing today and has nothing to do with the recruits that Tedford brought in. Basically, the graduation rate measures the percentage of a 5 year window of recruits that should have graduated by now. This year’s number grades whether those who were recruited in the 1997-2001 years have a degree at this point. In other words, every recruit from that time period that dropped out of school before Tedford took over in 2002 is counted against this year’s number despite the fact that the current staff has never known them and they may not have been involved with the program for a full decade. Metrics that measure the current status show Tedford’s staff is doing an excellent job both recruiting smart, high academic achieving kids (GPA of this year’s recruits was around 3.50) and ensuring that these kids are graduating. In fact he’s doing so well that there’s reason to believe that Cal will have a better number than Stanford when the official numbers finally get around to measuring the current batch of players in a decade or so.

I have a lot more details about that if people are interested but that’s not what I wanted to comment on so I’ll leave it at that.

My point is why should we care about the graduation rate in the first place? Before everyone gasps, let me explain. I’m a huge pronent of the NCAA’s century old position that college sports are about college students who happen to play sports instead of sports players who happen to go to college. I think that’s exactly how it should be. However, despite my understanding that there has to be some quantitative metric to determine whether schools are following through on the NCAA’s mission, I’m completely unconvinced that graduation rate is the right metric.

When I went to college as a regular (albeit nerdy) student, did the University or the Engineering department care if I couldn’t cut it at school and had to drop out? Not really. In fact, many schools pride themselves in their relatively high drop out rate because it is a “badge of honor” for those who graduated that they accomplished something special. Something most other people couldn’t. Something that even a majority of those who were admitted to the University, much less the general population, couldn’t accomplish. So on principle alone, why is it a bad thing if football players are similarly as unsuccessful at graduating from the University as their general population peers?

Going back to the University lauded in the article, Stanford, their graduation rate for their football team was 93%. That’s pretty good by any measure. But it loses some of its meaning without a comparison to the general student body. I tried to find numbers for that for a similar time frame at Stanford and had very little luck finding something about the general student population amongst the sea of athletic links and the fact that Stanford as a private University is not required to report these things like Cal a public University does. I did find one number that might prove helpful: Black students at Stanford have a 90% graduation rate in a study concluded in late 2006 (what years the study measured was not mentioned in the article). Seeing as how that same article points to black students doing extremely poorly at other Universities and generally speaking the percentage of black students on a football team is dramatically higher than that of the general student population it seems a safe, albeit long reach, assumption to suggest that Stanford has a very low drop out rate across the board and it has nothing to do with the football program that their number in above 90%.

Looking at Cal’s lowly 52% for their football players (see above caveat), when one finds that general graduation rates are far lower (I found numbers all over the map depending on what they were trying to meaures from the low 40’s to around 75%), all of a sudden the 52% doesn’t seem as horrific as it would otherwise.

The point of all of this is that I think the NCAA needs to find a different way to judge athletic programs and their academics. I think the NCAA should be trying to ensure three things:

1. Entrance requirements for athletes are acceptably proportionate to the general student body
2. Student Athlete success rates during their playing years are close to that of the general student body
3. Graduation rates are similar to that of the general student body

While the NCAA makes no attempt at regulating #1 on this list, and I personally find that to be deplorable, they do at least make an attempt at #2 with their academic eligibility rules that require students be passing a reasonable load of classes each semester (or whatever) to be able to play sports. Nevertheless that’s a very low bar to clear and is not really a measure of the program but instead a restriction on individual player. #3 is the lone area where percentages are actually measured and they are done in such a way that they do not accurately reflect the current status of the program and do not take into account the rigors, or lack thereof, of each University.

I’ve been glad to hear that changes are being made to how the NCAA measures student-athlete academic performance and I want to make sure I give the NCAA full credit for it’s goals and the effort it is making to improve in these areas. That said, I think the current system and even the future system that is in the process of being implemented are using the wrong metrics to measure each University’s performance.

(Written by kencraw)

For those who aren’t as fortunate as my brother and uncle and won’t be at the UCLA game (and that includes me), you’ll be well taken care of on TV with an ABC broadcast, assumably in HD. The only remaining game without television coverage at this time is the Washington game which I’m sure will get picked up during the normal TV cycle two weeks in advance.

(Written by kencraw)

…Running Wolf does his best to amaze me.

SFGate.com has a short article about Running Wolf filing papers to recall Mayor Tom Bates. His complaint is that Bates is “too conservative” and is cracking down on the homeless, has too strong ties to developers and the University, including support for high-density housing.

Talk about cutting off the hand that feeds you, Running Wolf!

Let me get this straight? You’re trying to recall the Mayor who is the only reason that your precious tree-sit has continued on. Without his efforts to have the city bank-roll this lawsuit and get around the posting of a bond, money you and your cadre of protestors could NEVER raise, those trees would have been cut down 9 months ago. But nope, that’s not good enough, is it? It’s not good enough that he refused to settle with the University despite significant concessions. He’s still in bed with the University as far as you’re concerned, right?

Let me put this to you, Running Wolf, in words simple enough for you to understand:

YOU’RE A COMPLETE CRACKPOT IDIOT!

Unbelievable.

(Written by kencraw)

I said earlier that the USC loss was bad for the Pac-10. I still believe that. It’ll hurt, albeit slightly, the Pac-10’s reputation as we lose a marque program at the top of the rankings. The more marque teams we have towards the top of the rankings the better for our national reputation as a conference.

But national reputation is only a small aspect of what Cal fans should care about. Really we care about how the Bears do, not how the Pac-10 does. So, the question remains, is the USC loss good for Cal? Danzig points to an article at Addicted To Quack where the author suggests the loss is good for Oregon, is the same true for Cal?

While I wouldn’t have phrased it the same way they did, I think it’s mostly accurate, with a few glaring errors. Basically, there are two ways to get to a BCS bowl game: win the conference or get an at-large bid. Computing the at-large possibilities is nearly impossible because it’s a delicate balance between the BCS rankings and the specific bowls and what teams appeal to them, so I’ll ignore that aspect at first and come back to it.

The simple way to end up in a BCS bowl game is to win the Pac-10. Anyone with half a brain can tell you, every time your main competition for the title loses, it increases your chances of winning the crown. In that sense, there is no doubt: USC losing is good for Cal. It sets up two situations. 1. If Cal loses to USC, it only takes one other USC loss for Cal to still win the conference. 2. It ensures that with a USC victory, Cal could lose up to two other games and still beat USC for the title. There’s too many permeatations at this point to deliniate them all, but the short matter of it is that if Cal beats UCLA, ASU and USC, it seems pretty unlikely that Cal won’t win the conference. Those teams, along with Oregon, are likely to lose one more and I just don’t see Cal losing to OSU, UW AND Stanford, which is what it would take for our 4 competitors to beat us out in that scenario. So, every way around the block, a USC loss, is good for Cal.

Going back to the at-large bid, there are two scenarios that likely get Cal to a BCS game (note that undefeated means we win the conference, so isn’t included here):

1. The Pac-10 champ goes to the BCS championship game and Cal has two or less losses: People often bring up the 2004 season as why a two-loss team wouldn’t get an at-large bid. What those people forget is that we have an additional BCS bowl these days now that the BCS championship game is separate from the 4 BCS bowl games (originally it rotated between the 4). That additional bowl added two at-large spots. Additionally, 2004 was a year where there was a non-BCS team that qualified for a BCS spot. That doesn’t look to be the case this year clearing up a 3rd spot that was not available in 2004. Add in that Notre Dame is already not BCS eligible and I’m confident that a two-loss Cal will go to the Rose Bowl if the Pac-10 champ goes to the BCS championship game. Now that I’ve laid all the ground work, this is the lone scenario that the USC loss hurt. There’s probably only 3 teams with even a remote shot at the title game, Cal, USC and Oregon. Oregon is a long-shot although winning out, including beating USC, would do it with key losses from teams like Ohio State (and Cal). Since this scenario assumes it isn’t Cal in the BCS title game, a USC loss means the most likely candidate for a Pac-10 BCS title game just lost a good portion of their shot at it. Saying it again: this is the one area where USC’s lost was bad.
2. No Pac-10 team in title game, Cal only has one loss: The reason to differentiate this one from above is because in this scenario, the Pac-10 champion will go to the Rose Bowl (since they didn’t go to the title game). This hurts Cal because the other three BCS bowls have a lot less interest in Cal than the Rose Bowl does. My thought is that it’ll likely take a one-loss Cal to get a bid to a non-Rose Bowl BCS game. This scenario didn’t take a hit, because it has nothing to do with USC. It has everything to do with Cal only losing one more game and somehow not winning the conference crown despite that.

So there we have it. 2 ways to get there that break down into 3 scenarios. One scenario just got better, one scenario just got a bit worse (although it should be noted that a one-loss USC was BCS title game bound before they lost to UCLA) and a last scenario that is unaffected. Personally I think the good scenario out-weighs the bad because more than anything, I want Cal to win the Pac-10 with out that stinking “co” to be at the front of the Champions part.

Final answer: yes, it was good for Cal.

(Written by kencraw)

Well, despite the massive fears of all involved, Cal held on to its lead over Ohio State, although the size shrunk dramatically, in the polls and moved up to the #2 spot with USC losing. Almost as notable is that Stanford got 4 votes (which is any combination of 4 25th place votes up to 1 22nd place vote that adds up to 4). While of course they don’t deserve a ranking based on their overall performance to date including blowout loses to ASU and UCLA, it just goes to show how big of a ripple the upset of USC sent through the rankings. For the last 4 years the closest Stanford ever got to a ranking was the opponent’s ranking next to them on the scoreboard.

(Written by kencraw)

As much as I’m a happy guy that USC got knocked off by Stanford, it was bad for the Pac-10. While it SHOULD mean that the Pac-10 is so strong from top to bottom that even one of the worst teams can beat one of the best teams, that’s not the way it is seen across the nation. It’ll be seen as “the Pac-10 is soft”.

Going across town to the Rose Bowl, UCLA laid an egg against Notre Dame. In fairness to UCLA, although it it something that no one outside of the Pac-10 will ever know, UCLA played most of the game with a walk-on freshman QB who was playing in his first meaningful situation. His turnovers were what pretty much sunk UCLA. Nevertheless, across the nation, this will be seen as “one of the ‘better’ Pac-10 teams got beat by the horribly pathetic and winless Notre Dame!?! Those Pac-10 teams… just as soft as we thought.”

So as much as I’m a closet Notre Dame fan (an occupational hazard of being Catholic) and I think UCLA deserves to be stomped on AND I look forward to knock USC off of their pedestal… let’s make sure we temper that joy with the knowlege that his will be a bad thing for Cal and the Pac-10’s reputation across the nation. Said another way, while it’s still a 50/50 proposition, the likelihood of a GameDay visit to Berkeley on November 10th just took a hit.

On the plus side, USC looks very beatable come November 10th in Berkeley and that Rose Bowl is looking better and better.

UPDATE: With Cal and ASU being Pac-10’s only two undefeated teams, the October 27th matchup in Tempe is shaping up to be another big one. (Cal has OSU at home and UCLA in the Rose Bowl while ASU has Washington at home and then a bye, all games that the two should win.)

(Written by jsnell)

Thanks for the birthday present, Jim Harbaugh. And I didn’t get you anything.

(Written by jsnell)

Today’s my birthday. And a Saturday. As always, there are baseball playoff games on. And, oddly enough, no Cal game. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time my birthday and a Cal game have coincided.

Turns out it hasn’t happened since 1990, when I was in college and Bruce Snyder was guiding the Bears to their first bowl appearance since 1979. (Copper Bowl! Lack of an MLK holiday be damned!) On October 6, Cal took care of mighty San Jose State by a single point.

Oddly enough, this is the second October 6 in a row on which Cal has had a bye. Thanks, guys. As the attendees to my 30th birthday party discovered (I spent most of the party rending garments over a horrendous Giants playoff loss to the Mets), it’s best not to mix friendly socializing and my sports obsessions. Yes, I know I have a problem.

So, my birthday and Saturday collide again in 2012. Bye week or conference game? I can wait to find out. (Cal does play at Ohio State in 2012, but that game’s scheduled for September 15.)

(Written by kencraw)

First a link bonanza!

• SF Gate Article
• Channel 11 (NBC) article with video on sidebar
• Channel 7 (ABC) article, also with video on sidebar

The first thing to note is RunningWolf’s insistance on entering the fray. He went and followed the group up into the stadium and up onto the roof of the press box to yell a couple of “points” at the judge as the police told him that he was not welcome. While I don’t think the incident will make any difference in the outcome it further illustrates the lack of respect the protestors have for the law (we didn’t see any Bear fans coming to find her, as a counter point). As I said, I doubt it’ll have any impact, but if it does, it would be in the University’s favor.

Watching the videos, this seems like nothing more than a PR/attention grabbing moment. The judge didn’t look like she was on a fact finding mission or that she was trying to get a sense of the project visually, she looked like she was on a presidential tour of a national disaster. So personally, I think this is a big nothing of a moment. One that will have little impact on the case, at least in principle.

There is one caveat to that. In the big picture, I think that it was a good chance for her to “bond” with the University lawyers and administrators. She saw things on their turf, got to talk with them casually outside the court room. Those are the moments when a personal connection is made, the moments when you realize that the plantiffs are harassing some good people trying to do a good project. That the stadium facilities really are in need of an upgrade and that connecting the gym with the stadium keeps the status quo for the students who already train there, while upgrading the facilities to be safe and meet their needs as student athletes.

All of this shouldn’t matter to a good judge, they should rule based on the law, not personal connections, but I can’t help but think that if this PR show is going to have any benefit it will be in the University’s favor.

No more days in court until next Thursday where final arguments will be heard.

(Written by kencraw)

Chris Avery has posted another one of his excellent articles about the hearing, this one on the 5th day of the hearing on October 3rd. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get a full article from Chris on the bomb scare abreviated day 3 (still no word on who did it) on the Friday of the first week (9/21) or the full day 4 on Tuesday (10/2) although he did have partial reports in the scout.com bulliten boards. Today is of course the site visits by the judge.

As for some personal analysis:

It seems that the UC lawyers are bringing out the big guns and there’s a reason the big guns are called the big guns. John Sanger is well know in laywer circles and is one of those guys who just commands respect in the court room. You can see the different in Chris Avery’s articles by how much the reporting sounds less muddled with lots of points being stated more clearly. This is likely because he was listening to a lawyer who can present things with just that extra bit more clearly and the points drive home.

Also, the more I read, the more confidence I have that the University will prevail. It seems that the pivotal issue is whether the two structures, the stadium and the SAHPC are two separate structures. Before the most recent article it seemed to lean in the University’s favor but there was some doubt in my mind. It is clear that Mr. Sanger has done an excellent job of refuting that contention leaving little doubt in my mind that the University will win on this point.

In addition when looking at the questions the judge is asking, they’re all questions that question the city, not the University:

1. Does Alquist-Priolo even apply to state agencies (like UC)?
2. Does the cost of seismic retrofitting count toward the 50% limit on renovation costs imposed by Alquist-Priolo?

Both of those questions are ones that put the city on the defensive because at worst they keep the status quo for the University (they were planning to abide by APZ and if the retrofit doesn’t count towards APZ limits then the SAHPC would easily fit within 50% by itself).

The lone bad news is that the hearing continues to drag on, with final arguments now coming next Thursday (10/11) with what looks like a minimum of two weeks for a ruling. That puts the earliest ruling at just over two weeks before the last home game, so less than 3 weeks before construction was due to start. If the judge takes the full 90 days to rule, however unlikely that may be, there could conceivably be no ruling until after the BCS has crowned a national champion.

Along those lines, can anyone imagine the press-situation should the trees come down the week of the USC game, with a potential #1 vs. #2? It would be so WAAAAAY over the top in the amount of coverage that I can’t imagine the university would go through with it. They’d wait until the following week after everyone has gone home.