Marshawn, Pile Driver
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As a Bills fan, I can’t watch the end of this clip. It’s just too painful. But from the looks of it, Marshawn seems like the first real Tedford offensive star. Now only if Kyle Boller could stop getting placed in awful situations and Brett Favre’s legs could fall off.
And of course, I’m always happy to see Gus Johnson again. “HOLY MACKEREL!”
IT’S A BOY! [California Golden Blogs]
Gus Johnson Was Born To Announce 15-14 Games In Buffalo [Awful Announcing]
Gus Johnson NFL Week One [YouTube]
Bullish About the Dogs–A Look into Louisiana Tech
Every week, I try to interact with fans of Cal’s upcoming opponent to get an idea as to what to expect (Tennessee was Week 1, Colorado State Week 2). Every week, between the madness, the homers, and the trolls, useful information comes out. I post this in a weekly installment. This week the opponent is the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. Here are the ruminations from Bulldog Barks and Bytes. (If you haven’t already, buy your tickets!)
You’re coming off a strong showing against Hawaii and their Heisman candidate Colt Brennan, and nearly knocked them off on the final play. What are the big positives you can take from that game into Memorial Stadium?
Positives are that our coach is willing to win. That was shown the drive before our final TD when we ran Dennis Morris on 4th down. It has been along time since we have had a coach that is willing to do what it takes to win. Going on 4th, going for two, and bringing the Blitz consistently throughout the game.
The team played with lot more heart than we saw all last season. With that attitude, we know we have a chance against anybody.
Let’s See the SEC Pull This Awesomeness Off
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I say we just send these two guys on the road to Autzen, and hook them up with some pimped out speakers, and confuse the audience into thinking they’re attending a Vanessa Mae concert. Better yet, why not just send a string quartet out for halftime? Everyone outside the Pac-10 already looks down on us anyway. Might as well go all out in our artistic snobbery and intellectual superiority. Eat our Nobel Prizes, SEC.
Speaking of Vanessa…
My dear, you are welcome to rock those strings all night long. Even if you’re wearing silky red.
Cal Fight Song [YouTube]
The Bears Are Roaring (Blog Reactions to Colorado State)
Hydrotech: “Oh yes, the air up there. Longshore wasn’t off. Yes, his balls were 1 to 3 feet too far out in front of our WRs on deep balls, but that’s because of the air up there. Cut Longshore some slack. It’s hard to adjust to thinner air. Think about it, Longshore has been practicing in thicker air pretty much ALL HIS LIFE. He has years of muscle memory built into those arms based on thicker air. And then, in a matter of a day he’s supposed to magically adjust to the thinner air, put 1% less power into his deep ball throws, and be expected to put the ball on the money? No. Let’s not complain that Longshore was off. Let’s not say that Longshore doesn’t have any touch either. Cause I know 90% of people reading this have been saying that Longshore has the best touch and deep balls than most quarterbacks in the nation.”
California-Colorado State, Live
I’ll start off the live blog around kickoff. Hang in tight fellas.
11:04–I have to give props to the Rams for actually bringing an actual Ram across the field. I think we’re a long way from bringing bears, although Knut would have been a great possibility a few months ago. Oh well.
11:10–Mmm, a 3 and out. I never like when games start off this way. Three quick passes is the last way you want to go early on.
11:13–Colorado State follows up with their own 3 and out, and then hang a punt right past Desean at the one. Tit for tat so far.
11:15–Ahh, a Chick-Fil-A commercial. There aren’t too many things I miss about living in the south, but Chick-Fil-A was the holy grail at any mall. You’ll have to take a look when you head down there.
11:18–As expected, a slow start by the Cal offense. Only one deep downfield lunge to the tight end, which was broken up. Looks like Tedford is just waiting for the CSU defense to break before attacking, because most of our throws have been very…passive.
11:24–Very quickly, Colorado State attacks with Kyle Ball, who seems to be running pretty well on the Cal defense. If the offense has been slow, the defense has been bending like paper-machete. Not exactly a promising start, but Cal’s defense is notorious for these slow starts.
11:27–Touchdown, 7-0 CSU. I’m not panicking quite yet; that was a really good offensive possession, mixing aggressive off-tackle runs with play action. Concerned, not panicked.
11:32–And Desean decided to take matters into his own hands…77 yard flip for the score, 7-7. Way to take the steam out of Colorado State’s sails.
Back to Normal–I Hope (Cal-Colorado State Soliloquy)
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After the exhausting buildup for the past several months to last week’s game, Colorado State is a welcome relief this weekend. It’s peaceful up in the mountains, so we’re sure the Bears will lay back at Fort Collins, do their annual drubbing of their two pushovers on the schedule, and move onto the Pac-10 action. Or they will drive us crazy.
Yes, it’s a bottom-dweller in I-A, but sometimes you need a pushover to ease tensions. It’s probably the reason Ohio State plays six versions of the Akron Zips every year, the reason Texas beats up on Ball State, the reason Florida routs the Eastern Michigans of the world. It’s exhausting and devastating work building up to rivalry games and the prospect of crushing losses. Sometimes it’s just too much to handle. Either that or they’re just a bunch of pussies. Just like us.
Nevertheless, bizarrely there is a teeny measure of revenge to be gained from this game. Four years ago the Rams came into our stadium and beat us. Yes, you heard me. The same team that would overwhelm USC in triple OT several weeks later laid this collective egg. Pretty embarrassing, and it shows how far this program has come. I’m not sure Tedford cares about such vagaries, but I’m sure the man might carry a chip. I’ll find out tomorrow morning.
And if I can wake up, I’ll be liveblogging this game. If only I can find CSTV.
Ramming It Home–A Look Into Colorado State
Obviously, the foray into Vol Nation last week to preview the Tennessee game was the biggest step this fledging blog has taken into the mainstream. Some of them might have been obnoxious homers, but hell they were confident. It was infectious, and it was definitely foreign territory. The last time I was that confident in a team was the ’95 Magic, and look what they did to me.
Contrast that to RamNation this week, where people are saying things like ” Yeah, Cal will probably kill us, but… at least I’ll have a beer in my hand while being there to watch it.” and “It’ll be a fun year with low expectations.” These aren’t exactly a resolute lot of fans, but I guess losing the way they did last week will do that to you.
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Needless to say, approaching them for a preview of the Colorado State game wasn’t as daunting. Here’s a sample of their responses for Saturday.
I only caught snippets of the Colorado game last week, but you played
them tough before falling in OT. What are the positives you can take
from that game that will help you try to stymie the Bears?
I’m still stinging over that loss. The players didn’t lose the game,
the coaches did. For the fourth time in five years, it comes down to
virtually the last play of the game, and the coaches don’t make any
bold decisions in the fourth quarter when one more score would have
won the game.
They could have used play-action on 1st down any time in the 4th
quarter and hit Kory Sperry or JW, probably for a big gain, but they
chose not to. They played not to lose instead of playing to win.
…
But…it is what it is… you make your own breaks, and we didn’t
create any in the fourth quarter. Stanard could have brought more
pressure on Hawk Jr., because when he did we either got a sack, a
tipped ball, or forced a bad throw. And Hammer could have certainly
thrown a little more on first and second down to keep the Buffs
off-balance and not allow them to stack 8 or 9 guys in the box. Heck,
they couldn’t cover Kory Sperry all game.
With that said, I thought Bell, Sperry and Hanie were outstanding
(except for Hanie’s INT). Our O-line, D-line and LBs were decent to
semi-good (though we need to create more pressure). Our secondary
needs some help, and our special teams are atrocious. I think we can
give Cal a good game if we control the clock and pound them with Bell,
Sperry and occasionally hit a deep ball. But if our special teams
stink like they did on Saturday and we don’t get some early stops on
D, it’s going to be a long game.
At Least He Won’t Be Standing Out Too Much
Cal football is in full swing these days, and I’m happy–these are the best months of college, chilling on Saturdays, an event at hand, and the possibilities of craziness endless. For most people. Who aren’t me.
But let’s move from our dreamy weekends to the interesting realities lying ahead. That’s right, I’ll be talking about college basketball for a brief second, because there just seems to be this unwritten rule that every time a seven foot Chinese star migrates to our team, I just have to blog about it. Consider it morbid curiosity, or if you want a more respective term, subconscious Confucian fusion. But it’s time to meditate.
– Xu “Max” Zhang, a 7-3 center from Yantai, China, has signed to play with the California men’s basketball team this season, Golden Bear head coach Ben Braun announced today.
The tallest player in school history and only the fourth seven-footer ever to play at Cal, Zhang only began playing basketball when he was 15, but by the time he graduated from high school in 2006, he was selected to China’s high school all-star team.
The Bears Are Roaring (Leftovers from Cal-Tennessee)
So I said I’d write up some analytical thoughts…but the Cal football blogosphere seems to already be a thousand steps ahead of me. It makes my job easier to focus on the mundane and the sublime, and turn over the analysis to them. Here are my remaining thoughts, mostly directed toward the inconsqeuential.
—The Mic Men stink. Again. They weren’t as bad as last year for one reason–they had a girl. I’m tired of these fools. They don’t get the fans fired up (I swear half the students thought this game was a great place to take their date), they don’t get the student section noticeably fired up. I’ve been at these games for three years. They’re just there. Tedford has to subtly insert messages to them to help get the fans rowdy. Only when that girl took the Mic did any noise get generated. And it was mostly for the wrong reasons. (Don’t even get me started on the stupid chants these guys start up; I’ll get to that in a later column–we have a few weeks until the Pac-10 schedule starts).
–Since the UC will never get rid of Rally Comm (not until our students/alumni/fans learn how to generate proper noise), then I have to suggest changes to the way things are now.
—One immediate improvement would be to make it all chicks (like that awesome Cal girl in the 3rd, oh the puns just come so easy). Of course I’d never let the Cal cheerleaders do anything but wave those pom poms and do whatever it is they do, but get some hotblooded female who loves her wide receiver slants and I’m raring to go.
—Hand it over to that third string football players who are redshirting or can’t play and wants to contribute it in some way. There’s always a Sarunas Jasikevicius to be found. Better yet, send Sarunas over here. He’ll get the crowd hyped up in a hurry.
—Feed them copious amounts of beer before kickoff. Either they will make awesome war-like chants, or get fired. Or both. It’s a no-lose situation.
–You know your fanbase has a lot to learn about football when they start up the Wave in the 4th quarter. I hate the Wave. Every self-respecting sports fan does. I’m a little worried that our success is slowly morphing our fans into a mini-USC base–people who are just there to entertain themselves. This Wave crap didn’t start until last year when we were crushing Oregon. This time it was happening during a still undecided seven point game. This thing is an epidemic. It must be extinguished.
–Whoever was running the music needs to be fired. What the hell is this, a baseball game? Get us music that pumps up. Doesn’t anyone know who Iron Maiden or Europe is anymore?
(Although that Village People bit cracked me up. Add in the Michael Jackson halftime band march and we have all the fodder you could possibly need for the entertainment values of this game. I’m sure Tennessee fans were very amused.)
–By the way, what was up with those Tennessee pom-poms? Did they do that at Neyland last year? Or was it just to give the old alumni who could afford the trip an opportunity to do something?
Now onto real football analysis.
Rocky, But on Top–Cal-Tennessee Recap
In a word? Satisfying.
This game was utterly satisfying, considering all the hype, the motivation, the stakes. I felt the anxiety growing in the pit of my stomach as early as Thursday, and it just grew more stark as the hours rolled by. It wasn’t fear of Tennessee, although I knew there was a good chance we could lose. It wasn’t even that our BCS chances could get busted off the gap, with a tough road schedule looming. It was more of a nervous, giddy excitement; our team would finally get a chance to prove we belonged with the best. And we did.
Everyone shrugged when Cal was passed over for the Rose Bowl in 2004, because no one really believed we belonged in that class just yet. And those beliefs were justified by the Volunteer pounding at Neyland. Now finally we can take the monkey off our back, and stop pointing to broken pinkies and bizarre playcalling. In spite of this, in spite of that…for years, these people have said you show up on Saturday and the better team wins (just ask Michigan. HA). Tennessee was the better team last year, and Cal returned the favor this year. Simple as that.
And it was a typical Cal game–shaky defense, powerful offense, and a few “Wow” plays that all of us have been seeing with greater frequency with each passing year in the Tedford era. I’m not exactly certain this had the fingerprints of all-around excellence like the Oregon/UCLA games did last year, but it was pretty close. Considering how long we’ve been waiting to prove that we’re worthy of national respect, this was definitely a big first step in that direction.
We’ve entered a whole new ballpark. Cal has firmly stamped themselves as a fixture on the college football landscape, and entered the era of legitimacy. I’m just glad I was there to be a part of it, to show that we did indeed belong.
Even if there were guys outside the stadium yelling “Bears love trees”.
(I have more analytical thoughts, but I need to sleep. I’ll share them tomorrow.)
Just for a treat, for those of you who missed the best (or just want to see it again), here are some awesome Cal highlights, thanks to Our Sturdy Golden Bear. I could watch that punt return all day long.
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Desean Jackson 77 yard punt return for TD vs. Tennessee [YouTube]
