(Written by kencraw)

Sometimes you just have to embrace who you are… and for me, that means embracing being an Old Blue.  I’ve been a season ticket holder since 1999.  That’s 20 seasons.  I’m running the longest standing Cal Football blog, dating back to 2007 on this site and 2004 overall.  I’ve seen a lot.  I’ve seen the incompetence of head coach who was a great guy (Holmoe) and learn that it’s really hard to keep that in perspective.  “Way to go, HOLMOE!”  That was the chant of 2000.  I saw the rise and fall of the Tedford era.  I watched the Dykes experiment never quite materialize.  I’ve seen year after year of promise mostly evaporate into mediocrity.

But more importantly than anything else, at least for this upcoming week, I’ve seen (often in person) the horrible debacle of what happens when the Bears go to the high desert of Nevada, Utah and Colorado.  Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane, shall we?:

• 10/28/17: Colorado 44, Cal 28.  I predicted a 32-17 win.  My mid-game blog post’s headline: “Disgusted“.  Then I refused to do a post-game analysis.  I just advised everyone to go do something fun with their family instead of brooding.
• 10/10/15: Utah 30, Cal 24. OK, Cal held their own in this one against a superior team.  I predicted a 23-34 loss and afterward argued the Bears ranking should go up after hanging in against a team ranked 18 spots higher than it.
• 11/16/13: Colorado 41, Cal 24. I predicted a 31-20 win.  I finished my live-blog with “Really disappointing game.”
• 10/27/12: Utah 49, Cal 27.  I predicted a 27-13 win.  Afterwards I took a picture of $137 that I was ready to donate to the ‘Fire Tedford’ fund.  And then I didn’t do a lot more blogging that season due to suffering a broken heart.
• 9/10/11: Cal 36, Colorado 33 (1 OT). Hey, Cal won one!  But before we get too excited, I predicted a 31-17 victory.  Afterward, I was impressed with the team’s heart despite the altitude, indicating it wasn’t a win to be too excited about, altitude aside.
• 9/17/10: Nevada 52, Cal 31. I predicted a 45-27 victory.  Interestingly, I didn’t take this one too hard, stating “I’m pretty happy with the current Cal Bear Football Normal. It’s a lot better than the pre-Tedford normal.”   Others weren’t so calm and the Fire Tedford movement was gaining steam.
• 9/8/07: Cal 34, Colorado St. 28. I predicted a 38-13 win.  The game wasn’t as close as the score indicates, the Bears were up 34-14 with 4 minutes left in the game and Cal gave up 2 late garbage-time TD’s. I saw the victory as closely mimicking my prediction.

That’s *every* game during the time of this blog in the high desert.  Before that, the games get pretty few and far between anyway, being before Colorado and Utah joined the conference.

So let’s review those 7 games.  I predicted a win in 6 of the 7.  Cal won 2 of them.  And both of them were against pretty darned weak teams.  Colorado State is never that good and early 2007 was the pinnacle of the Tedford era.  Cal would a few weeks later head to Oregon and beat the highly ranked Ducks in Autzen.  That was a *really* good Cal team before Longshore was injured.  So it’s hard to get too excited about beating CSU at altitude that year.  And then in 2011, Colorado would end up going 3-9 in their first season in the conference (although oddly, the game versus Cal was a non-conference game).  So again, not exactly a great team the Bears beat.

But for the rest of them, time and time again the Bears looked like the better team (one game aside), sometimes significantly so.  Then the Bears go there and not just lose, but get throttled.  If I were to write down the top-10 losses in Cal history that got me most upset, 4 of the above 5 losses would most definitely be on the list.  Those 4 games were maddening, heart-breaking affairs.

Ironically, of the 7 games, the only one where one can argue the Bears played well was one of the losses: the 2015 loss to Utah.

So why am I beating this dead horse so viciously?  Because we need to get it through our thick skulls, that’s why.  Time and again we forget how hard it is to go play at altitude.  It’s *REALLY* hard.  The other team has been conditioning at altitude and is at a significant cardiovascular advantage.  In addition, their passing game has been practicing throwing and catching balls in the thin air.  Our beloved Bears?  Not so much.

So here’s the generic game plan that a high-altitude opponent can use against the Bears: Load up the box and force the Bears to throw the ball.  Also, play tight pass coverage on the line.  Don’t give the opposing QB the short passes he can zip in there.  Make him throw over the top with touch.  They know from years of experience that it is hard to get that touch in the heat of a game with only a day to adjust.

Now, if the Bears had the sort of run game that they could power their way through that, one might have reason to hope.  If the team could find a way to make the defense respect runs both inside and outside, thus forcing the defense to cover at least the whole line well, maybe the Bears could spread the field somewhat.  But last Saturday’s results do not bode well.  The run game was not working with UNC loading the box.  That included the sweeps where Cal had real trouble sealing the edges.

And to make matters worse, it looks like BYU has bulked up quite a bit from recent seasons and has big, tough linemen on both sides of the ball.  I watched the BYU @ Arizona game and I saw a BYU team that over-powered Arizona.  For some reason many people like to blame that on Arizona being exceptionally weak, but that’s not what I saw.  I saw a mediocre Pac-12 team get man-handled on the line.

What is Cal?  A mediocre Pac-12 team with delusions of making it to the upper tier.

Sorry, tomorrow the Bears are going to get man-handled at the line.  They’re going to be unable to do the one thing that would give them a shot: Pass the ball over the top.  The defense will keep the score low to give us some hope.  But in the end, what looks like a close game going into the 2nd half will be a grind it out soul-crushing loss that gets worse every minute of the 2nd half.

Bears lose in a big way: Cal 13, BYU 38 (but only 24 at the end of the 3rd quarter)