Cal Coughs Up the Axe to Stanford

It often feels like the world of sports was not very kind to us in 2007. The A's slogged their way to a less than .500 record and a lousy 3rd place finish in the AL West. The Sacramento Kings are pathetic (on most nights). (See: When Can I Celebrate Winning Again?)

And even when I bought tickets to the World Series and flew out to Colorado, the Boston Red Sox had to go out and louse things up by sweeping the hometown Rockies.

But none of that compares to the frustration I have with the Cal Bears. After a 5-0 start that saw the team ranked #2 nationally, the Bears' season has been a disaster, with week after week of disgusting loss after pathetic loss. With the amount of talent on the squad, plus what should be a near-elite coach in Jeff Tedford, the team dramatically underperformed down the stretch, culminating in tonight's stomach-turning 20-13 catastrophe on the Farm at Stanford, which saw the team give up the hallowed Axe for the first time in six years.

The loss, which I hate to admit I watched in its entirety, saw the Bears fall to 6-6, and likely has them going home without a bowl bid for the first time since Tedford took the helm. And even if they back in to some ridiculous, unimpressive, bowl, they don't deserve it, because they stink. They were barely fun to watch even when they were winning, and once they started losing, it was all I could do to simply stay loyal.

I don't really feel like recapping the game here. There are definitely other sources for that, although Sports Blogs Nation's "The Band Is Out on the Field" gave up on the team early, not even making an open thread for the Big Game. Suffice it to say that everything that had gone wrong up to this point was repeated in a microcosm for a painful sixty minutes of football. Injuries to key players. Dropped passes. Getting stuffed at the line. A gimpy, underpowered quarterback. Interceptions in the 4th quarter. No defense when we needed it. A painful, late, grasp at hope. And yes, yet another loss.

It's got me thinking I just might not re-up for season tickets next year. Yes, it's that bad.

This "Hack" Has Two Meanings

In our tech-centered Web world, a hack is usually a bad thing - bringing up images of shadowed evil-doers aiming to break into computers or networks, looking to gain access to things not theirs, or instead, a hack is sometimes seen as a quick and dirty version or update to software - and not a good one at that. But in the world of media and reporting, a hack can instead mean "one who works hard at boring tasks" or "a mediocre and disdained writer" (Source: thefreedictionary.com).

My old editor in chief from days at the Daily Cal in Berkeley, Ryan Tate, has started up a new blog called "The Hack", self-described as "a journalist with delusions of computer science." While the blog's just getting off the ground, Ryan's already posted a few stories of note, including a get rich quick scheme building off my idea of converting .PST files to GMail-compatible mailboxes, a new killer feature for RSS feeds, and 7 suggestions to improve Google Docs.

While he and I overlapped terms at the Daily Cal, from 1996 to 1998, Ryan and I tag-teamed on some of the earliest editions of the newspaper's Web site, saw the paper and its reporters (including the two of us) repeatedly recognized in state-wide competitions, and occasionally clashed politically, as two aggressive, opinionated people working closely together will do. Now that time has healed those wounds, we're both vocally rooting each other on from the sidelines, and I hope this self-proclaimed "hack" keeps his blog on course.

Check it out at http://thehack.webmasher.com/.

At Cal Tonight, The Only "W" Stood for Wet

This evening presented the last home game for Cal football of the season, against one of our most hated conference rivals, USC. What should have been one of the most hotly-anticipated games of the season was instead a battle of two lower-ranked Top 25 teams who had better days behind them. Sprinkle in a few sprinkles, and some more... and then some more... and we ended up having a soaking wet evening that wrapped up with Cal doing what it seems to always do in these big games. Losing.

Around 3, my wife and I put on our Cal gear, grabbed our tickets and headed to the car to make our way to Berkeley. It was misty in Sunnyvale, but not sprinkling all that much. The further north we drove, up 880, the more it started to rain, never letting up. As we walked to the game, after grabbing BART at the Ashby Station, our umbrellas were out, and we were debating if we should have donned our ponchos right away.

Getting into the stadium, we saw more than 70,000 fans in all colors of poncho - from the Red and Gold USC fans, to the blue and other colors of Cal fans. I reached into my bag only to realize we had two ponchos, but one white (for my wife) and one orange - a shade too close to red for my own good in a quite hostile crowd. So for the full game, as I jumped up and down and yelled from my seat, the rain poured down, dripping from the bill of my cap. My shoes had turned dark with precipitation, and as I would slap my hands to my saturated jeans, the would spray with water. My Cal jacket, hanging damply at my sides, could be wrung out at the elbows and wrists, not exactly keeping me dry.

But the game went on.

Cal scored first, going up 7-0, before letting the Trojans tie the game up 7-all at the end of the first quarter. A few frustrating drives later, it was 14-10 USC at the half, as the rain continued to fall, and many fans considered whether they should trust their better judgment, giving into the elements and going home. Many did.

And the rains kept coming.

The second half started with USC getting the ball, and driving down the field, stopping short of a touchdown, but putting 3 more points on the board, taking a 17-10 lead. Cal struck back with a touchdown of their own, making it 17-all to end the 3rd quarter.

But we were already gone.

While I was willing to play the part of a human puddle, my clothes stuck to my body and the slight wind keeping me all too cool while cheering on the Bears, the elements proved to be too much for my wife. Her jacket, covered by a poncho, with a sweatshirt and blanket besides couldn't overcome Mother Nature's assault, and we had already made our way back down to the BART station to return home. After two full years of A's season tickets, and at four of Cal football games, we had finally found one that saw us leave well before the game's conclusion.

But the game went on.

As we drove down 880 South, we hit the dashboard, frustrated, as we listened to USC's march down the field to gain the lead 24-17. We gnashed our teeth as Cal looked to come back, only to throw another interception, effectively giving up the game. We rolled our eyes as time expired, and the Bears were handed their 4th loss in 5 games, sending the rest of the valiant fans who had stayed behind home with feelings of frustration and emptiness, as another Saturday came and went without the Bears fulfilling their potential.

For our family, we're now at a crossroads. The A's season long behind us, lingering only as memory, the Cal home schedule complete, we're done for the year, barring a special one-off to see the Kings in Sacramento, the Sharks in San Jose, or maybe another 49ers game. But for now, we're on hold. We can put our ballcaps away, dry our clothes, and hope 2008 brings better news. 2007 left us with the occasional sparks of excitement, but far too much loss and frustration.

The rain didn't help.

Inexplicably. Inexcusably. Ineptly. Sigh...

The Associated Press recap of today's 31-28 loss for Cal against Oregon State carried a nice keyword: "Inexplicably", as in "With his receivers covered, Riley inexplicably tried to scramble for the score."

Among 64,000 fans this evening, we saw Cal charge back in the final minutes to give us hope for today's game after a full regulation of hope mixed with frustration, only to have it "inexplicably" torn away from us, as a freshman backup quarterback, starting his first NCAA game, snuffed out our chances for a national title in one simple misstep.

As I noted this morning, I feared Cal was in for a surprise. They'd ridden high, undefeated so far, to the #2 ranking in all the land. But I felt the emperor had no clothes. As elsewhere, number 1 LSU lost, the chance was there for the Bears to back into the #1 ranking, if they could just hold on and win at home against the Beavers. But they couldn't do it. They were trailing in the first quarter. They led by one point at the half, and fell behind quickly, again, in the 3rd quarter. After a brief 21-20 lead, they watched Oregon State put on 11 points, taking a 31-21 lead, helped along by two critical Cal fumbles, an interception, and a successful goal-line stand by the Beaver defense, which Cal could not match.

As time ran down on the clock, Cal charged back, making it 31-28 with less than three minutes to go. And we got the ball back! At our own 5 yard line, "The Drive" started, as redshirt freshman QB Kevin Riley powered the Bears down the field with the final minutes turning to the final seconds. The end zone was in sight, and if unsuccessful, we could always tack on an easy field goal to send the game to overtime. Right? Wrong. Riley "inexplicably" tried to run for it himself and was stopped well short, when an incomplete pass would have saved the game.

In the space of an afternoon, a story was lost. The hopes of the tens of thousands of us at Memorial Stadium, no doubt compounded by the hundreds of thousands of Cal fans outside the stadium, for the team to reach the #1 position in the country for the first time since our grandparents were roaming the campus, were dashed, "inexplicably", by a bonehead scramble from a poor kid who will likely be thinking of his alternatives for decades to come.

Now, instead of an undefeated team possibly in the BCS hunt for a national title, Cal is one of many 1-loss teams, and falls back into the Pac-10 race, headed for a showdown with USC in early November. While we will, for sure, be cheering our butts off for that game, we've "inexplicably" been forced to lower our hopes and face reality. This wasn't the year.

#2 Cal Is Hours Away From Kickoff

Cal, fresh off a bye week, and sporting a lofty #2 national ranking, is all set to take on the Oregon State Beavers this afternoon at 4 p.m. at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. The last time we saw the Bears, they had squeaked out a challenging victory against the Oregon Ducks, catapulting their #6 poll position to where they are today. Since then, many an upset has befallen the college football leaderboard, including an utter collapse by USC against Stanford. Now, the nation's eyes are on Cal, and whether their so-far undefeated season will take them to a national championship berth, or if it will become unraveled on the way.

Being an "Old Blue" Cal alum, we keep expecting this dream to come crashing down at any moment. I know Cal is a great football team. It has excellent speed, and some well-known individuals, starting with DeSean Jackson, supported by Justin Forsett, Nate Longshore and a host of leaders on defense. I've seen them consistently win. But just as I feared Cal was overrated at the #6 spot, my anxiety is increased as they've continued their ascent. When I see the play to play struggles or a soft quarter, it's all I can do but hold my head in my hands and hope that outside of the stadium, nobody else sees what I see - a spotty defense and an offense with big playmakers but inexact consistency.

Couple in my pessimism with news that Cal quarterback Longshore is still hobbling after an ankle injury at Oregon, meaning the backup quarterback might see play today, and my stomach starts to turn. Just when we were taking the world by storm, too!

The Beavers are not to be underestimated. In the last few years as a season ticket holder, they have surprised me with their offense, and they've taken some games from the Bears where they shouldn't have. They're no longer the Pac-10 basement dwellers of years gone by, but instead a formidable opponent not to be taken lightly. I hope Cal is ready, and doesn't expect to get a "W" simply because of the logos on their jerseys and what it says in the paper. After all, the game always starts out tied, 0-0.

In a few hours, we'll be in Berkeley, clad in the blue and gold, yelling our lungs out for our Cal Bears to put the pounding on the Beavers and keep progressing up that evolutionary ladder. We'll hope for the best, challenge on every play, and try to keep that little voice in our head quiet for just one more week.

You can follow along on Excuse Me For My Voice or The Band Is Out on the Field. Game time is 4 p.m.

Cal's Huge Win Over Ducks Validates Us

On Friday, I mentioned that my wife and I had a big decision to make - go see the A's battle the Angels on Saturday (in turn missing the Cal game), or stay home and watch Cal take on Oregon on TV. We stayed home, and it turned out to be a great decision, as Cal won out a barn-burner against the Ducks by a 31-24 margin, and the A's continue to lose, falling 3-2 near the end of their miserable season.

Cal, going into the day ranked #6 overall, flew to Oregon, ranked #11, and in front of a national television audience on ABC/ESPN, the team battled and battled, falling behind early, and never giving up. Despite being down 10-3 at the half, they forced four turnovers, eventually winning after the Ducks fumbled the ball on the 1 yard line in the closing seconds of regulation, as it went into the end zone and out of bounds for a touchback, returning the ball to the hands of the Bears, who knelt down and took the win. (See: Excuse Me For My Voice for one rundown)

While we gnashed our teeth and feared the worst among other Cal fans at The Band Is Out on the Field, Cal's stars came through in the second half, with DeSean Jackson scoring two touchdowns and amassing more than 150 yards receiving, Justin Forsett ran for more than 100 yards, and the Bears are now among the nation's elite teams, sporting an unblemished 5-0 record, while the #3, #4, #5, #7, #11, and #13 teams all went down to defeat. This sets up a near-guaranteed rise for Cal in the polls, quite possibly as high as #3 overall when the new rankings appear over the weekend.

As for the A's, who we neglected today? Even though they appear to have given up on the last few games of the season, we'll head their way after church tomorrow to say goodbye for the last time this year. Hopefully, they can wrap up the home schedule with something new and different - a win.

East Bay Sports Conflict Forces Big Decision

You have to love situations like this. Kristine and I have tickets to see the A's wrap up their home schedule this season against the LA Angels this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But a high-profile, nationally-televised college football game between Cal and Oregon, two teams in the top half of the week's AP poll, is set to start at the same time as Saturday's contest, forcing us to decide: do we watch the A's finish up in person, or do we stay home and watch the big event on TV?

Tonight, the A's play at 7:05. We'll be there for sure, urged on by a fan-friendly fireworks show.

On Sunday, the A's play at 1:05. We'd have to rush over from church to make it, but we might, as it's the last of the season.

But Saturday! Oh what to do with Saturday? The A's game starts at 1:05 p.m., while the Cal Bears take on the Oregon Ducks at 12:30 p.m. on ABC. Even while in the car on the way to the A's game, I would be missing one of the biggest Cal games of the year, behind only Tennessee and USC.

You could say it's a win-win, but to any true sports fan, it's really a lose-lose. Stay home to watch Cal, and I miss a day in the sun with the A's, and tickets I already paid for. Go to the A's game, and I don't get to see the Bears get challenged, on what's been a strong 4-0 start with potential for momentum. And don't tell me to TiVo the Cal game for later watching. There's no way the A's won't show the Cal/Oregon highlights on the JumboTron Saturday, so I'm doomed.

Should be a tough call, all the way to kick-off... er... first pitch... no wait. Kick-off. I think.

Could Cal Football's #6 Ranking Be All Wet?

Given the steady drip-drip sounds outside, thanks to an early Fall rainstorm moving through the Bay Area, it seems possible that Saturday won't feature the open sky sun we've become spoiled with every week. With Cal's impending 3:00 p.m. contest against Pac-10 foe Arizona looming Saturday, the prospect opens up that the game might be played in less than favorable conditions - with 50,000 or more fans dodging the elements, ourselves included.


Google's Weather Forecast for Berkeley this Weekend

With the young season three games old, Cal has achieved an impressive #6 national ranking in the AP poll, led only by USC, LSU, Florida, Oklahoma and West Virginia, schools better known for their year-in, year-out football prowess than Cal, despite a good run for my alma mater the last four years or so. And for those of us "Old Blues", who haven't historically demanded much from the school's athletic programs, we're certainly conflicted in how to feel - torn between thinking a national anti-Pac-10 bias doesn't give us the respect we deserve, and our own eyes deceiving us as we find fault with the team, be they "unimaginative on offense" or displaying a defense unable to shut down a good team.

Frankly said, we're not used to this kind of pressure. So used to seeing Cal fail when the big play is needed, or losing a big game, there's a certain part of us that is waiting for the inevitable slip-up, expecting the team to screw up, so we can then point fingers at our prior doubt and prove our unique insight.

In fact, the debate is raging on The Band is Out on the Field and Excuse Me for My Voice over whether the team's secondary or quarterback are up to the challenge of moving beyond their week one win against Tennessee and challenging the traditional leaders, or even taking on their Pac-10 colleagues. With USC looming in the distance, we're already watching the Oregon Ducks and how they've started out strong - and we all remember how Cal lost in the desert at Arizona last year, significantly damaging their Rose Bowl hopes.

That we're ranked #6 overall is great. Our games get mentioned on SportsCenter, and photos from our games show up in Sports Illustrated. But as season ticket holders, while we cheer on the success of good plays, we curse those that don't go our way, and we're biting our nails as we anticipate just what could go wrong. As the rains come down, we think about how just the slightest thing could upset this squad and force their season to slip out of their fingers. Whether we're surrounded by gloomy skies and precipitation or we find the skies cleared, we'll be rooting on our squad and crossing our fingers in hope that, finally, they reach their full potential and make us proud.

Cal Opens 2007 Season With Tennessee Drubbing

Ahhh.. September. The start of the college football season, with Saturday treks to Berkeley, donning of Blue and Gold, and cheering on of one of the country's best football teams.

This year, rather than some simple patsy setting up game one for an easy Cal victory, the 12th-ranked Golden Bears were tasked with taking on the 15th-ranked Tennessee Volunteers, who had spanked Cal last year 35-18 in week one, in a contest that was even more wide open than the final score indicated. This year, the team didn't fade, but responded in a big way, scoring in the opening minutes, never trailing, and walking away victorious by a 45-31 margin.


The Scene on the Field After the Big Win
The game, nationally televised on ABC, started at 5 p.m. Pacific, and didn't end until after 9 o'clock, after accounting for 76 points of offense, and nearly as many TV timeouts. But the nearly 73,000 of us there to root on the Bears and the Volunteers didn't mind the game's length, or even the ridiculous lines to get food and drink amid the human throng. (For a good example, getting two $5 Diet Cokes took me from 3 minutes before half-time, through half-time and five minutes into the third quarter)

With last year's game fresh in our minds, combined with national comments questioning the Pac-10 conference's toughness, yesterday's contest was more than a game - it was time for revenge, to represent the conference, the school and the program. This was a time to let those from ESPN to the SEC to know Berkeley isn't just a town for washed-up hippies and well-meaning tree-huggers, but a team to be reckoned with.

After the Bears elected to kick off, Tennessee's quarterback was rocked by a sack, forcing a fumble into the hands of a Cal defender, who ran 44 yards for the early score. After some more back and forth drives, Cal Heisman hopeful DeSean Jackson returned a punt an electrifying 77 yards to make the game 21-14. The amazing thing about his return was not just his shaking and jiving away from defenders, but that he did it even with the entire stadium expecting him to, as the Cal student section and Young Alumni yelled "DeSean Jackson!!!! DeSean Jackson!!!!" when he took the field.

Cal went to the locker room at halftime up 10, leading 31-21, having scored by way of defense, special teams, and offense (three times) by the end of the second quarter, giving the cannon (a Cal tradition after every Bears' score) plenty of work.

As the third quarter began, Cal received, and took their first drive back to the end zone, opening up a 17-point lead at 38-21. While Tennessee managed to pull within 7, at 38-31 later on, they could get no closer, as Cal added on one more touchdown, and wound down the clock as the capacity crowd went crazy deep into the night in Berkeley.

Four hours of football nearly erased a year's worth of bad memories and frustration, and has the Bay Area buzzing again about these Cal Bears and what they could do this year - as many are already looking ahead to the team's match with USC later this year as a game that could have more than the Pac-10 conference title on the line. Regardless, we will be back in our seats, working hard to lose our voice, and cheering on the Bears.

(Additional Recaps: Narduzzi Nation, The Band Is Out on the Field, Yahoo! Sports)

Cal vs. Tennessee Today: We're Excited

With the A's falling out of contention, our local sports focus just may gradually move toward that of our California Golden Bears football squad, who kicks off the 2007 season today, in a much-awaited, nationally discussed, game against the Tennessee Volunteers.

For the third consecutive season, Kristine and I have season tickets, and will be donning the blue and gold, pumping our fists in the air along with Oski, yelling "Cal Band Great!" and telling everybody around us who cares to listen how much we hate Stanford, regaling them with tales of victory and defeat from the decade gone by - even as my own memories become less and less relevant to today's students and fans. After all, it was 10 years ago that I was entering my junior year at Cal, and 12 years ago that I first started attending classes at UC Berkeley. That means some of this year's freshmen were in first grade when I was attending my first political science 1 lectures. Scary.

Cal, largely expected to challenge the national leaders in football last season, opened with a dud of a game against Tennessee, a 35-18 flop that put their season in dire straights early on, reducing expectations. Eager to avoid a similar fate for the second consecutive year, the university has called on fans to swarm en masse to Memorial Stadium today and overwhelm the Tennessee squad and its fans with sheer noise, in hope of contributing to victory. In fact, early reports say the school will distribute no fewer than 50,000 megaphones for fans to pierce the eardrums of the hated Volunteers, when they are on offense.

We're excited to get it started. We're ready to revisit "The Play" from 1982. We're ready to debate AP Top 25 and BCS Rankings again. And despite the A's quasi-dramatic win last night, we're almost ready to focus elsewhere. Unlike last season, when we would see both the A's and the Bears on the same day, we've already sold our baseball tickets and are headed straight to Cal.

Follow along at Sports Blog Nation site The Band Is Out On the Field and wish us luck! Go Bears!