Tedford Tournament of Champions: Cal 2004 vs. Cal 2007
In case you’re unsure what this is all about, we’re seeing what team WhatIfSports.com determines is the best Tedford-led team of the six teams he’s coached. I simulate the games, and determine the winner of the series after around forty-fifty simulations. Usually it’s conclusive enough to determine who the winner is after at least 20. Usually.
Here are the first Round Results:
Cal 2005 4, Cal 2002 1
Cal 2007 4, Cal 2003 0
Pretty one-sided so far, hopefully things tighten up in this round. It’s been pretty bland so far.
We’ve gotten through the preliminaries of our imaginary little tournament. Now it’s time for the Final Four! Place your bets! First up is inarguably the monster Cal 2004 team, which was dominant in all phases of the game–great QB with good receivers, amazing running attack (and Marshawn was just getting his feet wet as a backup on this team), and one of the most powerful defensive attacks Strawberry Canyon has ever seen (even though it wasn’t the best defense in the conference that year either).
Against this, Cal 2007 can offer….um, better punt returning abilities? Barely?
Vote your predictions in the poll in the sidebar. Is Cal 2004 running away with this one, or is there an upset in the making?
The OC (Examining Frank Cignetti, Part I)
We’re inching towards kickoff–and by inching, I mean baseball season sucks. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be eyeing several key points of Cal’s 2008 season, culminating with the crucial quarterback battle. I’ll start by discussing our new offensive coordinator and what his playcalling and personality at Fresno State was like.
Frank Cignetti’s record at Fresno State and the offensive prowess of those teams he coordinated speak for itself. But stats can only tell how talented the team was, not how good of a playcaller he was. I inquired on the FSU message boards and got conflicting responses on how good Cignetti really was as a playcaller. You know, things like this:
“He left more because of family pressure than anything else. Had it been up to him he would have stayed. He liked working for Pat Hill and he liked living in Fresno and coaching at Fresno State.”
“Cignetti’s offense may not have been innovative but it was effective and the Dogs were successful under him. I don’t know how he is outside of football but on the field he had a winning product and really isn’t that all that matters?”
“Really? I thought that if anything, if you want to get a sense of the usual playcalling during the Cignetti era, you don’t watch tape of the Dogs versus USC ’05 or versus Virginia ’04. I regarded those games as total aberrations and out-of-character. I’d be happy to be proven wrong, though.”
Uh. Okay. A whole lot you can learn from that, and that’s that nobody from Fresno agrees on how good Frank Cignetti is.
Thankfully though, a few people wrote more cogent opinions. The best answers I got were from the poster JADogs05, and his responses are after the jump. Questions in bold, my comments are italicized, his responses are in normal font.
What type of offense did Cignetti run while he was at Fresno State?
Tedford Tournament of Champions: Cal 2002 vs. Cal 2005
As we discovered last week, Cal 2003 was no match for the offensive potency of Cal 2007 in the Whatifsports.com simulator. This team didn’t need much impetus in flatout overpowering its way to a sweep. This led us to our next match in the series, a showdown between the 2002 and 2005 teams. How would Tedford’s inaugural team perform against the impressive Cal 2005 defense and the blossoming Marshawn Lynch?
Results are after the jump, but vote in the sidebar and see how your predictions match up with the actual results!
Dining in Hell: Cal-Michigan State Preview
Eight weeks to kickoff. A tantilizingly short eight weeks. Thankfully while we have a long and warm summer to bask in before we get there…oh wait, you mean this damned city is currently undergoing frigid fifty degree weather? That students are wearing sweaters instead of sundresses? That everyone is cold and implacable to one another instead of warm and welcoming?
No wonder Baron Davis is heading out of the East Bay. Environment is everything. Weather likes this makes me wish for global warming.
Anyway, back to the biz at hand. Remember when I did those previews during the season about what to expect from each game? Yeah, it’s time to start doing those again, because no one really paid attention to them during the season. Print these out and take them to the games with a ball-point pen, so you can note how wrong our interviewers were about what to expect.
First off is our opening tilt with Michigan State. After all the Michigan-Cal doublespeak from the last post and the indignant chatter it set off between Wolverines and Spartan fans, it only seemed appropriate we start there. I recently contacted Scott from Enlightened Spartan (if you’re curious to what he looks like, here are some of his glamour shots) to talk about the upcoming season opener, and here are his responses, completely unedited. Well…the images were my doing.
Note: I have a preview of Cal’s side of the story that’ll appear on Enlightened Spartan eventually. I’ll let you know when it’s up.
1. How similar is Michigan State’s 2008 team looking to its 2007 team? Is the roster mainly intact or are there and fundamental lineup changes that leave you frittish about what to expect for starting day?
The Big Green Machine will ride it’s A-1 Abrams into Berkeley with probably its strongest team on paper in 10 years. The ES will be there with ’em; notably, the ES watched every home Cal game (minus the Big Game) from 1977-1983 while growing up in Suisun City, Calif. Them were lean years, but the ES looks forward to returning as an adult and maybe pissing in Strawberry Creek after we kick your tails on August 30.
Similar? Yes. Different? Yes. OK. Like any other squad, we’ve had some graduations, some drop outs, and some academic advancement – and other guys just eating too much pizza and getting fat. If there was any spot that gets the ES jittery, it would be at wideout. Our All-American receiver, Devon Thomas, was the first wide receiver selected in the NFL draft after a record-setting year… but he wasn’t even on the Spartan radar after the 2007 Spring Game. So, can these other “who are theys?” – BJ Cunningham, Mark Dell, or Deon Curry – make the same leap to greatness? Unlikely, but not out of the question. Bottom line, MSU will have one of the best-skilled and experienced QBs in the Big Ten, and unless he can find a go-to guy at receiver, there will be lots more running plays to #23, Javon Ringer.
Cal is Michigan is Cal
I don’t think Cal fans ever have to worry about Tedford leaving, regardless of the Monday Morning QB chatter. As far as I can tell, this might as well already be the Ann Arbor of the West. Plenty of hippie chatter, good public education, inferiority complex to football factory schools, unseasonably bizarro weather, etc. etc.
Not to mention the not-too-subtle uniform changes.
I don’t think anyone has to worry about Tedford is going. Without anyone noticing, identities have converged. In little over six years, we’ve become Wolverines in all but name. Let’s hope he doesn’t merge into Lloyd Carr.
Can He Still Ghost Ride?
In the grand tradition of smooth public relations, Marshawn Lynch’s vehicular saga concludes on a Friday afternoon. Marshawn has issued a public statement, pleaded guilty to “failing to use due care towards a pedestrian,” and received a whopping $150 fine. The only punishment of any consequence is that Marshawn has to surrender his brand new New York drivers license (NY has nothing on the Cali licenses, I can attest) for an indefinite period of time (perhaps until the Bills make the playoffs).
We’ll have to wait and see how this will affect any potential lawsuits by the victim. While Marshawn has admitted to the traffic infraction, his statement denies that he had any reason to believe he’d been involved in an accident or knew he’d hit anyone. And so far, neither the D.A. nor the victim have surfaced any evidence to the contrary. Between that and the ambiguous nature of the victim’s alleged injuries, I’d guess we can expect this to settle pretty quickly, albeit for significantly more than $150.
As a final comment on all this, I’d like to respond to the statements of a lot of sports commentators who have harshly criticized Money for not speaking publicly on this matter until today. In hindsight, it’s easy to see why silence was the best policy. People tend to forget that once a defendant speaks publically on a matter, the statements can’t be taken back. If Marshawn had waived his constitutionally-protected right to remain silent and said something to the media that ended up not jibbing with the evidence, this could have blown up in a serious investigation. As it is, Marshawn held his tongue and can now pay his fine and go. I understand why the media hates when people don’t talk to the media. But in this case, there was nothing to gain by speaking publicly, and I applaud Marshawn for doing the smart thing.
Tedford Tournament of Champions: Cal 2003 vs. Cal 2007
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Time doesn’t allow us to do everything we want. But the Internet allows us to manipulate space and time and come with all sorts of fanciful solutions for that.
Whatifsports.com is one of the best and worst sites in the world. On one hand it’s a virtual goldmine for settling questions like “Would the 18-1 Patriots have beaten the 17-0 Dolphins?” or “How good were the 72-10 Chicago Bulls?” or “How badly would the 1927 Yankees have pounded this year’s San Francisco Giants into the ground in a seven game series?”. On the other hand….I can’t stop using it. This is like sports on crack. Must stop.
But just recently, they did something that was perfectly Calpliccable. They added in a college football feature. So I thought a fun extension of the earlier “favorite Tedford team” question would be the following: If we faced them off against one another, which Tedford team would outlast the others (I also entertained the notion of putting the 2004 team against Holmoe’s 2001 team, but I wasn’t terribly interested in simulating twenty 65-0 games)?
Of course, there are some dramatic changes from, say, a regular football playoff. This was only to determine a true champion, not how good a football team the others were, so I extended each faceoff to a best-of-seven game series. We’re going to assume this tournament lasts…4 months and they play each other once a week or something. Draw your own reality.
A few other things for the first round.
- Weather conditions are variable for the first round, but I kept the conditions the same for the next one (it’s way too hard to randomize weather, and there seems to be little effect on the game result except it’s a little sloppier).
- These games are taken out of a sample of about twenty or so games, where it was decisive enough to figure out who was the better team. Only in a case or two did I have to extend it beyond that to figure out who won the series, so the results seem pretty decisive.
So the seedings are as follows.
#1 2004 team and #2 2006 team get first-round byes for being the teams with the best record.
Leaving us with the following faceoffs.
We’ll start with the Cal’ 07-Cal ’03 faceoff. Who will triumph? Don’t cheat; the results are after the jump, so vote in the sidebar before you proceed. Cheaters will be forced to watch a terrible terrible video. Worse than any Rick Roll or 2 girls 133 cups.
BREAKING: Cal Starting Quarterback Announced
Given all the buzz behind Nate Longshore and Kevin Riley, Jeff Tedford has made a surprise decision about who his quarterback will be at a special 9 am press conference early this morning.
Profiles in Courage: Meet the Berkeley Treesitters
When there were about forty of them, we couldn’t really describe them in great detail, but now their numbers are dwindling, I can provide now excellent and possibly fictitious descriptions of the remaining hippies in the trees. Since these treesitters have decided to adopt names that the Mole People would be embarrassed to utilize for aliases, I will go ahead and make up my own names and thoughts. (The California Golden Blogs are providing you with round-the-clock Pullitzer coverage of the trees; I will provide you with my Colbertesque spin).
Meet Dumpster Muffin. A reject for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Dumpster Muffin’s powers consist of liberal self-loathing and banshee screaming. And she scream a loud one my friends, she scream very loud. Unfortunately, Frylock could never get along with her during test screenings, because her ravings distracted him during his particle smashing experiments and prevented him from discovering a new neutrino. So she ended up in the trees, and is probably growing a little moldy from all the sunlight exposure. The screams of compassion grow only louder as the days move along.
Next up are the bug twins, Millipede and Cricket. Don’t have much to say about them–way too generic. I guess the dude named himself Cricket because he loved making irritating noises at night, and the chick Millipede…uh…um…is the most beautiful bug in the world? Those profiles were easy enough. Let’s move on.
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Ayr is some Scottish town, but I assume these people have never looked at a globe other than to stab it with a knife and paint it with a “No Blood for Oil” slogan, so I will assume he adopted his psuedonym from the famous Mexican telenovela, Alegrijes y Rebujos. I’m confused because it appears most of the stars are kids. Are they really marketing soap operas to kids in Guadalajara? No wonder they’re all sneaking across the border–they want their Saturday morning cartoons!
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Speaking of cartoons, we haven’t even mentioned the rambunctious Squirtle. Squirtle is a water-type Pokemon, very good for extinguishing firetypes like Charmander or Vulpix. However, put it up against electric types and you’d better be prepared for some serious shockjobs. Clearly, this particular Squirtle was outcast from the Squirtle Squad because he lacks the inherent awesomeness of any of his counterparts and the requisite shades. Also his water attacks need some serious replenishment, considering the liquids he ended up throwing last week.
Finally we have Compost and Skunk Boy, which seems to be a battle to the bottom of who wallows in more self-pity. I can’t even get into Compost’s story, which just feels depressing even if I don’t know a single thing about him. Skunk Boy clearly must be inspired by Chuckie’s persona Stinkie in the Mega Diaper Babies episode of Rugrats, where his biggest superpower is…the power to stink.
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Small creatures can make a difference; is it Skunk Boy’s turn? Who knows what his shitbucket will be capable of when all is said and done.
Marshawn to Plead
While I was watching the ridiculous finish of the Croatia – Turkey match, news broke that Marshawn Lynch will plead guilty in his hit-and-run case. Not at all a surprising result. It’s definitely in Marshawn’s best interests to put this business behind him. Then we can go on associating the terms “Marshawn,” “Hit” and “Run” with Oregon ’06 rather than May 31st in Buffalo.
According to the D.A., there was only one passenger in Marshawn’s SUV at the time of the accident. It’s not yet clear what charge(s) Marshawn will cop to or what deal he’s struck with the D.A. This quote sounds encouraging to me though:
“This, at its worst, is a vehicle and traffic misdemeanor. In the hierarchy of criminal conduct, this is certainly in the bottom third.” -Erie County D.A. Frank Clark, June 20
I for one wouldn’t necessarily divide the spectrum of criminal activity into only three categories, but the point is taken. The D.A. sees this as a boneheaded decision rather than a serious crime. Not being one to tear down my idols, I’m happy to accept that interpretation and leave speculation about why Marshawn may have fled the scene to others.
Marshawn is expected to give a statement next week, and I’m sure there will be plenty more to say at that juncture.
