We Are All Classless

Posted by: Avinash on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Blogpoll remains the same. Come on guys, more input!

One last Washington State topic before moving onto the Terps: The so-called classlessness of Jeff Tedford. Wait, WHAT?

Even Cal fans might not remember it because they were too busy getting plastered over treesitter hysteria and other assorted madness. Let’s let CougCenter revisit this seeming non-starter.

Jeff Tedford is a no-class loser swell guy who enjoys flowers and rainbows, who went for it on fourth down and goal, up 52-3.

Not a big deal. They harp on it once after the game, they’re angry, we all move on, right? Probably just saracastic in the face of a total evisceration.

Well, same article:

Jeff Tedford: Going for it on fourth and goal up 52-7 is the football equivalent of shoving a 10 year old kid out of the way while trying to catch a foul ball at a MLB game. I’ll say it again: classless.

Sigh. What? Okay. Let’s look at the situation.

But perhaps these observations are not satisfactory to Grady. So let’s take a look at the argument he makes.

“the football equivalent of shoving a 10 year old kid out of the way while trying to catch a foul ball at a MLB game.”

Ah, the kids. Don’t you love when writers bring up the kids?

Grady’s argument is flawed. A ten year old boy will never get over this disappointment and will manifest that self-loathing at rage against the system. That is why said ten year old boy will grow up to bag groceries at your local supermarket while consolidating his Stock-X playlist on his Zune. But a Washington State team cannot be terribly disappointed between 59-3 and 66-3, since it still looks lousy to everyone and anyone. And they have Baylor coming up, so they can choose to wallow in existential self-pity about a meaningless touchdown they should have stopped, or choose to look even worse by…losing to Baylor. The scoreboard resets.

And in the long run, these kind of results do matter. For all the wracking about the score, since the broadcast was only locally televised, only a few voters in the AP and Coaches Polls were actually be able to watch the game. If this were the NFL, I might agree that ten knees would be necessary–the only thing that matters is the win and the next game. In college though, style matters–just as a team must beat the strong, they have to rout the weak. When the final votes are tallied, the only thing most coaches will look at are the box scores. 66-3 looks pretty nice, doesn’t it?

Every game counts, and every point matters, even the meaningless ones. Tedford remembers four years ago and he sure does remember last year. There is no such thing as safe. Be bold and ruthless. The message should be clear to the weaker opponents Cal faces this year: If you want us to stop scoring, stop us.

Did you think Jeff Tedford made the right decision for going for it in this situation?

PS: I don’t really have a problem with the PA announcer. The comments he made were pretty funny.



Topics: Analysis, Cal Football, Coaching

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