(Written by kencraw)

I knew that what I needed was to get Cal football out of my mind to get some emotional distance.

Of course, having a win over WSU makes it easier to come back, but I think it wouldn’t have mattered. I would have been ready either way at this point.

http://excusemeformyvoice.com/blog/?p=4216

Apparently that wasn’t as true as I thought. The USC Game re-sucked the life out of me. I just wasn’t expecting that sort of loss. I think I would have been ready for a low scoring but close loss. I also think I would have been ready for a low scoring but multi-score loss because the Cal offense could get nothing going. I might have even been ready for Cal losing a multi-score, but high scoring affair loss (at least the offense would have shown some promise).

But I was not ready for the blowout.

Thinking back to the last time I was so disheartened this long, the worst part of the end of the Tedford era was when the team just wasn’t competitive against the best teams. When Cal would go play Oregon, Stanford, USC or Washington and just get crushed like an FCS team gets crushed. From first snap to final whistle the team just didn’t have the players or the scheme to compete.

What has been so uplifting about the Wilcox era until last Saturday was we could walk away from the game thinking that with a couple changes, or perhaps a couple of good recruits (like perhaps a 4-star QB recruit who delivers on his hype), or even just a few less injuries, that even the worst losses could have gone the other way.

That is not how I felt after I walked out of the stadium early in the 4th quarter against USC. I felt like Cal was manhandled from start to finish and was in no way competitive. And most troubling, it was the Cal defense that looked overwhelmed… something we haven’t seen until the Utah (and that was just glimpses) and now USC games.

And so yet again, I needed to take a step back. Even though I had the equipment in the car, I didn’t record a OTRH podcast. I couldn’t see any value in ranting, particularly considering that’s what my last podcast (OSU) had been.

But I’m back today. (more to come shortly)