Archive for Cal Football
Inside The Huddle with Tom Schneider
Tom Schneider is familiar to most Cal fans as our finest placekicker in the Tedford era. After getting injured last season and being denied another year of eligibility, he transferred to Northern Alabama to complete his time as a college kicker. He blogged about his experiences as a D-II kicker in the South at his […]
A Nod To the Future: Pac-10 Football in 2009
Fall 2009 is a long way away for a Cal football fan, but it’s really hard for Golden Bears not to be anticipating the possibilities of next season. The Bears have made plenty of runs after the Rose Bowl fiasco of 2004, but there were always good reasons as to why Cal never were able […]
A Very Longshore Engagement
It’s weird to think three of my formative Cal football years have been spent agonizing over the play of Nate Longshore. And the agony was perpetual; he never seemed bad enough to be benched, but never good enough to be lauded. He was the perfect polarizer, someone who eternally frustrated you, yet never seemed entirely […]
And Now We Wait Again: Cal Football Resurgent
Twelve games, fifteen weeks. How quickly the time goes. Football is one of those sports where you can ride the highs but escape the lows without feeling like you’re wasting an epic proportion of your time. If you sense a down year coming, if the season goes south, you can quit it easily and not […]
Inside the Civil War Playbook: Oregon 65, Oregon State 38
Days later, the entire Pac-10 continues to reel from the obliteration of Oregon State’s vaunted defense in the Civil War. With a Rose Bowl berth on the line for Mike Riley’s Beavers, how could the Ducks march into Reser Stadium and torch them in such spectacular fashion? Sample notes extracted from Oregon’s coach-in-waiting Chip Kelly […]
If Only There Were Trees To Cut: The Big Game Experience
So I attended my first Big Game on Saturday, and it was quite pleasant. Figures that I’d go four years of undergrad without attending one Big Game. I even passed on the 2004 one when we all thought we were chomping on roses–probably for the best, since I’d probably have been in a coma after […]
California Soul
(For information on watching The Big Game countrywide or locations of the ten thousand national meetups, click here) It hasn’t been your typical Tedford season. Expectations have been low from the get-go, infused with a brief sense of hope for several games, only to be dashed by our team’s shortcomings and inexperience. No one really […]
Me And The Tree
So, it seems that we at Bears Necessity have been a little dumbstruck by the loss to OSU. Now that my five-day hangover has finally subsided, I’m in a mood to skip right ahead to this week’s Big Game. Earlier this week CGB invited readers to share their fondest Big Game stories. Mine begins way back in 1996, […]
California-Oregon State Report Card
Quarterback: 11-25 for 117 yards isn’t good. But then again, Riley was getting battered around like a pinball for much of the final three quarters. Getting rushed not only from the edges, but in between the tackles, at the gaps, from the sidelines, whatever. Nevertheless, other than the early Tucker touchdown, Riley only had flashes […]
Pac-10 Scoring Trends, 2004-2008
(Scoring offense is points scored by the team, scoring defense refers to points given up, just to avoid any confusion. This is not a competition between how many touchdowns Jahvid Best or Syd’Quan Thompson would score, although that would be sick.) WOOOOOOOOO! Graphs baby graphs! There are some immediate trends you can notice. The powerful […]
