Archive for Analysis

Spring Forward

Hey All. Since I’ll be posting here on a regular basis, Avinash suggested I introduce myself. For those of you who don’t know me already, I’m a 2000 Cal alum currently living and practicing law in New York. Thanks to Avinash for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and thanks to [...]

Posted by: Tony on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

Black Swans of Cal Football

(As the offseason moves along–four more months to go, WOOOOO!—I’m going to give smarter Cal fans their chance to voice out your opinions. If you want to become a regular contributor or a guest poster, just check this post out for details on what to do.
Today I’m handing it to Tony, a longtime commenter on [...]

Posted by: Tony on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

3rd Down Offense in the Pac-10

Numbers are always fun to look at, and this week I’m going to look at the all-too-crucial third down conversion. While I can’t generate anything as awesome as MGoBlog’s graphs, I can do some basic breakdown of numbers.
The Division I rushing yards per carry ranking is listed in parentheses.

Rushing
3rd and 1-3
3rd and [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Turf Wars Part II: Bears Slowfooted on Grass

Hydrotech pointed out on my first post on turf performance that looking solely at turf versus grass because we have six games at home on turf, and it’s easier to win at home than on the road. Upon further review, I completely agree. I’m guessing a Cal victory achieved at Memorial Stadium is significantly less [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Monday, April 7th, 2008

Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

I conclude this week by talking about grass. No, I’m not talking about the bums on Telegraph, although that would make for great interviewing. Is there something in the grass fields of college football stadiums that slows our players down and eventually knocks our team out?
I bring this up because Cal football is a mysterious [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Friday, March 28th, 2008

Tha1 Plays Decoy (Robert Jordan TD versus TN)

This weekend I went about twelve rounds with Hydrotech from the California Golden Blogs over my playcalling posts (Part I & Part II of his ripostes are here). We both had errors in our logic (I think I said USC was in a 5-2 when it was clearly a 4-2 on the Forsett TD, he [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Which Conference Proved They Were the Strongest?

Who’s the best conference?
This seems to be part of a minimal but growing debate–and by debate I mean chest-thumping–about the Pac-10 (usually USC fans angry at how indifferent southern college football fans are to recent Trojan dominance) and the SEC (indifferent to West Coast bluster, every year). The heat has been rising summer after summer, [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Monday, March 24th, 2008

Repetition Is Bad (3rd and Goal vs USC)

(It wasn’t planned for me to diagram gamefilm about Montgomery the day after he decided to transfer. So consider this summary an unintentional coincidence.)
Now, some of you might think that I was too complimentary toward Tedford in this week’s earlier gamefilm summary. Well, for every good call, there is a bad call, and there was [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

Doing What You Least Expect (Forsett’s TD vs. USC)

Tedford didn’t have too many great moments of playcalling this year (that crazy sheet he held during every game looked like it held the nuclear missile codes)–he had to do to much. But one thing that didn’t really lose substantiality was the art of misdirection (Apologies for the quality of these images, these are from [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Monday, March 17th, 2008

Cal Football 2007 In Numbers: 4th Down

4th Down Offense
T6 ASU 13/19
T14 Oregon St. 9/14
T30 USC 10/17
76 Cal 5/10
T81 Stanford 8/18
T81 Washington 8/18
T87 Oregon 6/14
112 UCLA 4/13
114 Wazzu 7/24
116 Arizona 5/19
4th Down Defense
T-7 Stanford 5/17
UCLA 5/17
T-9 [...]

Posted by: Avinash on Monday, March 10th, 2008