Sep 17, 2023·edited Sep 17, 2023Liked by Rick Chen
Thanks Rick.
On the one hand, in an all too common refrain under Wilcox they came out flat as f-ck and were thoroughly outplayed by an FCS team for more than 1/3rd of the game. Luckhurst missed another FG from the right hash, the DBs were exposed by big receivers, the D-line repeatedly failed to get their arms up into passing lanes to knock balls down, and, just like the week before v Auburn (and if we’re being honest, really the ENTIRE 6+ years of the Wilcox era) the O stagnated on multiple drives when they really could have given themselves much needed breathing room with a bear paw on the throat of an opponent.
OTOH, that FCS team is pretty good, the team made noticeable adjustments, and controlled the game from mid-2Q on in a workmanlike win.
There’s no clarity, though, and barring some unexpected leap or an A-ha moment by Sammy Jax where he just gets it and the game slows down, I can’t help but feel this team is going to continue to plod along in rock fights, maybe stun Wazzu, and be playing at the Rose Bowl with a 5-6 record, hoping for a win to gain bowl eligibility.
Exactly how I felt. Another game that’s really hard to use to gauge the overall state of team. Idaho is not a punching bag FCS patsy, and I’m super jealous of their quarterback. I could see them doing really well the rest of the way in the Big Sky. He was really poised and showed very good decision-making and timing. On the Cal side, the ability of both sides of the ball to adjust when what what they were doing wasn’t working was an encouraging sign after last week. Regardless of your opponent, 31 unanswered points is a big deal.
He knows Brohm’s system well from Purdue. Not saying Plummer was any great shakes, and he too struggled with accuracy. I think Sammy Jax will be a solid P5 QB eventually, but right now, a steady hand that can move the chains consistently would be nice.
I think we root for a barn burner of a P12 season, absolute chaos, must watch TV, with hopefully a team (or two) surviving the gauntlet to make the CFP as well as a national championship.
And then we root for the subsequent years to be absolute busts. Snooze fest football. Make em regret breaking up the P12. The ACC is not a good long term home for us, so we need to root for whatever outcome invites nostalgia for a west coast focused conference. Maybe the above scenario pushes ACC to expand on the west coast, or maybe the networks end up regretting the break up of the P12 and push teams back in that direction in the next round of realignment. But whatever happens, we need media executives to regret breaking up the P12.
So this season, I am rooting for all the P12 teams in all non-conference games. And then in conference, I am probably leaning towards WSU and OSU running the table for the simple fact that maybe they can play their way into an ACC invite, giving us a west coast pod.
To your original point, I was originally not a fan of Deion, but he is showing how quickly the media landscape can change for a team in this new era of transfer portal and NIL.Traditionally, rebuilds would take years, if not decades. But now you can do it in one season. This will hopefully slow down realignment a little bit. The lack of parity in college football was what was pushing the media executives to lean towards super conferences. Anything that invites parity will upend that model. And Deion taking a 1-11 team to nationally relevant in the span of months is the definition of parity.
The thing about both Wazzu and OSU was not their competitiveness. It’s ALL about TV ratings. And we must play this game until the NCAA grows a pair and/or the administration figures out that athletic and academic reputations are complementary and free is up from media corporations dominance
I’m really torn. The degree of hype that ESPN has been giving Colorado is getting on my nerves, particularly since I think they struck one of the biggest dominos that led to the PAC-12’s demise (though I’ll never hate them the way I hate U$C and UCLA). On the other hand, it’s objectively better for us in the short term if more teams go bowling.
I like Sanders, he is everything I wish Wilcox was. Sanders could have sat back and been a paid talking head for ESPN, Fox or CBS but he decided to actually challenge himself with a second career as a CFB HC. He did a great job at JSU and he is doing a very good job at Colorado right now.
He has the ability to recruit (players and coaches) and inspire. It's easier to do when you are an NFL Living Legend HOF Player. Why did the #1 recruit in the country go to FCS Jackson State (which had a horrible record prior to Coach Prime taking over) when he could have gone to ANY FBS program? Because Coach Prime was going to coach him; it was that simple. No one else in coaching has his cred with the kids.
Cal has their share of transfers as well. It’ll be interesting to see how many of those kids actually graduate, let alone do so from Boulder.
That said, it took 3-weeks and a 1-11 program is now instantly relevant, something Wilcox has been unable to do, and will continue to fail at, in 6+ years.
Right now, I’d take the relevancy, even if it meant accepting some kids you normally wouldn’t. Only way the program survives in the next realignment.
I'm sorry, but this is like saying Trump couldve sat back and been a paid talking head for Fox News, but he decided to challenge himself with a second career in politics. (Or you know, game a system to stoke your massive ego and promote your family.) Any comparison between Prime Time Neon Deion and anything Cal football affiliated is completely moot. I'm also a Deion fan (I lived in Dallas for a few years as a kid and became a Cowboys fan just before he arrived), and I'm enjoying him being on the scene because it's fun. But its just strange and offbase to make any comparison to him and Wilcox or Tedford, or maybe even anyone in the history of college football thus far. It's pretty much moot.
Why is pretty much moot? It isn’t at all like Trump, IMO.
If trump were like Deion he would have started his political career as a mayor for a small and impoverished town in West Virginia coal country, turned the towns culture around and brought back jobs before leaving it for higher office as a senator.
Deion started his head coaching career at a small HBUC and was successful and then moved up to a bigger school that hadn’t won in decades and it wasn’t a blue blood.
If Deions career was similar to trumps, it would have meant Deion went directly from the NFL Network to coaching Alabama or Ohio State.
It's obviously not a perfect analogy but its a decent analogy relating the stories of supremely narcissistic "outsiders" who hijacked the national stage, with the end game being their egos. Hell Deion was even hostile towards the media! ( with that whole how dare you call me Deion bit). And the whole thing about starting at Jackson State.. that's part of the whole gaming of the system. Fund your own campaign by bringing your own 5 star athletes into a sub-FCS conference. The whole thing was a sideshow from start to finish. Just think of that and currently Boulder as stops on the campaign trail, and the story hasnt completely been written. It'll be fun to see how far he goes. I suspect that it could be a house of cards and when the Buffs lose one and then another, we'll see if he can keep the team motivated or if it falls apart. Since we dont play them, I'm rooting for him but not out of genuine fondness but the spectacle of it all.
Deion said on Game Day yesterday that they had the highest team GPA in (IIRC) the history of the program last spring. So either he's lying or there's some major chicanery going on with professors
Also, depending on how the finances work, there may be enough post-season money to save the Pac (through reconstruction) if the money stays in instead of following the teams out.
I have great admiration and respect for Coach Prime. I want him to win, not just for him, but for his kids, and to stick it in the eye of the old school bullshit of college football.
Yeah, Pac too strong in its swan song. But we don't play Deion this year and maybe will never play him while he's at Colorado. Things are already quite broken so let him break all the things.
Maybe, but what he has done this year is going to mean even better players will come to CO through the portal next year. He's made believers out of kids in college football.
CSU is way better than their ranking. And Norvell is a solid coach. Remember, he was the HC at Nevada when they beat us. He's the first coach that figured the press defense could shut us down because of our O-line situation. Every team that played us and beat us after that game watched that film and used the same defense.
I’m sure it’s been explained elsewhere, but is Ott on concussion protocol or something?
1st Quarter: I was taking the Lord’s name in vain and ready to join the “Fire Wilcox” bandwagon. Felt better after the second TD. A bit nervous that Idaho was still moving the ball in the second half.
Apart from wanting to see the Idaho coach take an anti-anxiety med, I could not stop wondering:
1. How good Idaho is?
2. How can we possibly compete with most of the conference, doomed though it is, opponents ahead of us?
Free bye week for Ott to just heal and avoid injury. Plus got our other backs some reps.
Idaho is a top-10 FCS team. Not surprised a P5 team (even Cal) finally clamped down, but they can get FBS wins. I think that QB will get some interest in the portal if he enters it.
Based on what I've seen so far, I expect more middling. Pre-season I guessed our floor was around 4 with our top at 6. We have 2 now. Furd still looks awful and ASU is currently getting pummeled by 'No. To reach 6, we needed to beat Auburn and pull off an upset against a currently-ranked team. We already failed the first and I haven't seen any significant opportunity yet for the second.
Great line that sums up the last several (too damn many) seasons of Cal (Fuck"Cal Berkeley") football = "So tired of middling"! Says it all. Here we are dissecting shit efforts / results by poorly preforming, poorly coached, probably sub-talented (due to lousy recruiting) teams. Wilcox is accurate when assessing things, but damn it, you're the head coach!!! Do something about it! Coach up your team!!! Pull off an upset for Christ's sake!!! We're hanging in, so reward us with something worth waiting for!!!
According to play-by-play guy Guy Haberman, Wilcox said Ott was cleared by the medical staff to play, but was held out because he hadn’t practiced much this week.
He seemed a little caught off-guard in the press conference last week when someone asked him if they'd tried to coach Ott to not hurdle, only offering that they certainly dont teach players to hurdle, and something to the effect of "now we know what can happen." Which, after the North Texas close call, would be some real negligence by this staff. Then a couple days later Spav said they do explicitly tell players not to. Hard to say. But my belief is Ott was concussed and Wilcox did the right thing in limiting him in practice and keeping him out of the game, possibly out of a guilty conscience, regardless of whatever medical clearance there was. (Talk to Tua last year about medical clearance).
What will it take to turn the UW game into a rockfight? I'm assuming that's our best chance. But we do have three or four capable backs if we can block their quick and massive line.
That is a great question. Penix is the real deal and so are his receivers, we won't have the luxury of coming back from a deficit like we did yesterday. I don't think we will wear down that Huskie DL like we did the Vandals line as the game progressed. Better start out fast with that run game. Our QB has a way to go to get good at his job. He reminds me a little bit of Dorian Thompson Robinson, started out running around real fast and zipping passes all over the place and then settled in to an experienced QB after his first year. So what to do? Run it, keep the ball away from the dawgs, have more QB run plays? Heck, I don't know. We have speed, and some power, we need to use it more. I do love our running backs. Almost always gets back to the OL doesn't it. I also think our defense will do a good job, especially against the run, but the Huskies will make a bunch of pass plays, they are just so darn good. Yesterday was fun, I like how the team did not give up after that first quarter.
I think if we lost that game, you could safely conclude he would be done after this year. The team wouldn't be able to recover and fan apathy would only get appreciably worse. As much as I like Wilcox as person and as a representative of this program, I have less confidence he has the meddle to turn this program around. The body of work is just too large at this point. He would basically need to follow the Rich Brooks arc. Brooks arc was made possible by a lot of Nike cash, which Wilcox will never see. You are who you are. If and when we move on from him will largely depend on the new chancellor and how quickly they turn the page on Knowlton. A new AD likely means a new head football coach or at best a very short leash. And now that a handful of major donors are largely underwriting the next decade of Cal Athletics at least, the expectations and how these decisions are made will change.
Agree! Slight footnote that this team could be really good if only we had a real QB. But, the CFB landscape is dotted with sorry ass teams that would be good if only for XYZ thing…
Or Sturdevant. I think our QBs will grow as the season progresses, so I'm actually less concerned than most. What has stood out to me so far about our offense and limits our QBs is that we really don't have an explosive or particularly reliable counterpart for Hunter. That's impacted our ability to go downfield and Hunter's ability to get open consistently.
Not doable unless there were such a clause. You think the guy that gave him an extension, because we might lose him to Oregon’s straw man offer, would have the foresight to include a performance clause?
While Wilcox has been stagnating at Cal, UO, OSU, UW, Wazzu, CU, U of A AND USC have ALL re-booted their programs to higher levels than the Bears ever saw and are on the upswing. Stanford and ASU are beginning a full rebuild, but I'd bet green money that Wilcox will STILL be putting up middling results in Berkeley once Sparky and the Tree start to show signs of life.
I don't think we'll hear anything but Deion Sanders this week. The media hagiography has gotten out of hand. The comeback against Colorado State was impressive but boy I wish they would have held on to pop the CU balloon.
The Buffs are entertaining but I wouldn't say they're good at this point. They can throw but can't run or defend, sort of like most of Dykes' Cal teams.
I do volunteer work for a non-profit on the Peninsula. This week the whole company was offered free tickets to the 9/23 Furd game against Arizona. So yeah, $20 was definitely too much to pay!
uh no, definitely not the intent. just commenting in support of im33's decision to walk away from the game as he thought $20 was too much to pay to see Furd play (which i interpreted to mean not a good value).
Side note: does Stanfurd have anything resembling a functional online community like we do? I see the old standby had the same fate as CGB, but I haven’t found an alternative where I can watch misery is real-time like I can here.
Washington is gonna be tough, no two ways about it. But, UNT is better than most thought, Auburn is turning out thus far to be better than most believed, and Idaho was definitely better than they were given credit for. I think our team may not have looked great thus far, but we have played some decent teams. UW beat Boise State, who has turned out not to be that good this year. They beat Tulsa and they just beat a mediocre Michigan State team which has been without its head Coach who has been mire in controversy and scandal. Might we have a redux of the lightning game (which I attended)? Btw, College Football News FBS rankings as of 4 hours ago: UW 6, Auburn 27, Michigan State 45, CAL 47, Boise State 54, Tulsa 97, North Texas 120...Idaho is FCS 10. So, UW has beat teams ranked 45, 54 and 97 by good scores. We beat #120 UNT by a good score and should have beat #27 Auburn but for our kicker and some bad calls by the refs, even though it was not our best game by far. I think UW is way over ranked because of the yards their offense is putting up against mediocre teams. They really haven't played a decent team yet. Does that mean we will beat them? I don't know. I just know we will test them better than any team they have played thus far. And if our defense plays 60 minutes like it can and if J5 can throw the ball effectively, then I like our chances for an upset. Pumping sunshine!!
Well, that's good enough for me. Appreciate the point of view. Got to stay positive. I sure hope we can put consistent pressure on Penix, that guy is good.
I agree with you on that. Cal and furd are competing with so many universities which are diploma mills. To win you have to have with good QB's, O linemen, DB's first. It's hard with Cal and Furd having such high academic standards for incoming athletes.
Thanks Rick.
On the one hand, in an all too common refrain under Wilcox they came out flat as f-ck and were thoroughly outplayed by an FCS team for more than 1/3rd of the game. Luckhurst missed another FG from the right hash, the DBs were exposed by big receivers, the D-line repeatedly failed to get their arms up into passing lanes to knock balls down, and, just like the week before v Auburn (and if we’re being honest, really the ENTIRE 6+ years of the Wilcox era) the O stagnated on multiple drives when they really could have given themselves much needed breathing room with a bear paw on the throat of an opponent.
OTOH, that FCS team is pretty good, the team made noticeable adjustments, and controlled the game from mid-2Q on in a workmanlike win.
There’s no clarity, though, and barring some unexpected leap or an A-ha moment by Sammy Jax where he just gets it and the game slows down, I can’t help but feel this team is going to continue to plod along in rock fights, maybe stun Wazzu, and be playing at the Rose Bowl with a 5-6 record, hoping for a win to gain bowl eligibility.
Exactly how I felt. Another game that’s really hard to use to gauge the overall state of team. Idaho is not a punching bag FCS patsy, and I’m super jealous of their quarterback. I could see them doing really well the rest of the way in the Big Sky. He was really poised and showed very good decision-making and timing. On the Cal side, the ability of both sides of the ball to adjust when what what they were doing wasn’t working was an encouraging sign after last week. Regardless of your opponent, 31 unanswered points is a big deal.
The big question is what Idaho players would we like to poach?
Their QB and some of those WRs.
And on the other hand, Stanford lost to Sac State
If that's who you want to compare us to. Unfortunately, Stanford is an awful football team that is rebuilding under a first year coach.
We're in year 7 under a below-average HC.
No lies there.
He knows Brohm’s system well from Purdue. Not saying Plummer was any great shakes, and he too struggled with accuracy. I think Sammy Jax will be a solid P5 QB eventually, but right now, a steady hand that can move the chains consistently would be nice.
I find Our American Cousin to be formulaic and tedious.
Romeo and Juliet ? I thought Booth was performing the Scottish tragedy. He was very much “in the moment.”
Mitch Leary told Frank Horigan that Booth had panache. ;-)
With the implosion of the P12, are we rooting for or against Deion…I think against…
Thoughts?
I think we root for a barn burner of a P12 season, absolute chaos, must watch TV, with hopefully a team (or two) surviving the gauntlet to make the CFP as well as a national championship.
And then we root for the subsequent years to be absolute busts. Snooze fest football. Make em regret breaking up the P12. The ACC is not a good long term home for us, so we need to root for whatever outcome invites nostalgia for a west coast focused conference. Maybe the above scenario pushes ACC to expand on the west coast, or maybe the networks end up regretting the break up of the P12 and push teams back in that direction in the next round of realignment. But whatever happens, we need media executives to regret breaking up the P12.
So this season, I am rooting for all the P12 teams in all non-conference games. And then in conference, I am probably leaning towards WSU and OSU running the table for the simple fact that maybe they can play their way into an ACC invite, giving us a west coast pod.
To your original point, I was originally not a fan of Deion, but he is showing how quickly the media landscape can change for a team in this new era of transfer portal and NIL.Traditionally, rebuilds would take years, if not decades. But now you can do it in one season. This will hopefully slow down realignment a little bit. The lack of parity in college football was what was pushing the media executives to lean towards super conferences. Anything that invites parity will upend that model. And Deion taking a 1-11 team to nationally relevant in the span of months is the definition of parity.
The thing about both Wazzu and OSU was not their competitiveness. It’s ALL about TV ratings. And we must play this game until the NCAA grows a pair and/or the administration figures out that athletic and academic reputations are complementary and free is up from media corporations dominance
The irony is that WSU actually has very good TV ratings!
But everything else about their profile is not so good. Small local market, low attendance, middling academic profile, middling Olympic sports, etc.
I knew it was something snobby and short of media’s criteria.
I decided to root for Pac12 in all non conference games this season
Not USC or UCLA. Colorado joined the list when it bailed. Yes to everyone else.
I’m really torn. The degree of hype that ESPN has been giving Colorado is getting on my nerves, particularly since I think they struck one of the biggest dominos that led to the PAC-12’s demise (though I’ll never hate them the way I hate U$C and UCLA). On the other hand, it’s objectively better for us in the short term if more teams go bowling.
Good point on the death blow. As always, fock SC and UCLA, but there was still a path to saving the P12 until the Buffs bolted.
Sanders is an a$$. I'm rooting against him.
I like Sanders, he is everything I wish Wilcox was. Sanders could have sat back and been a paid talking head for ESPN, Fox or CBS but he decided to actually challenge himself with a second career as a CFB HC. He did a great job at JSU and he is doing a very good job at Colorado right now.
He’s a far better coach than Wilcox, and it’s not close. Instilled a winning culture in 6 months that Wilcox hasn’t done in 6+ years.
He has the ability to recruit (players and coaches) and inspire. It's easier to do when you are an NFL Living Legend HOF Player. Why did the #1 recruit in the country go to FCS Jackson State (which had a horrible record prior to Coach Prime taking over) when he could have gone to ANY FBS program? Because Coach Prime was going to coach him; it was that simple. No one else in coaching has his cred with the kids.
And academically he got any one into Colorado he wanted. 50+ transfers? That's obscene. Diploma mill. . .
And Cal had the second highest number of transfers in the Pac12 this offseason. So are we a diploma mill now as well?
Cal has their share of transfers as well. It’ll be interesting to see how many of those kids actually graduate, let alone do so from Boulder.
That said, it took 3-weeks and a 1-11 program is now instantly relevant, something Wilcox has been unable to do, and will continue to fail at, in 6+ years.
Right now, I’d take the relevancy, even if it meant accepting some kids you normally wouldn’t. Only way the program survives in the next realignment.
Remember where Colorado was last year? Prime is basically doing what Tedford did for us in 2002.
I'm sorry, but this is like saying Trump couldve sat back and been a paid talking head for Fox News, but he decided to challenge himself with a second career in politics. (Or you know, game a system to stoke your massive ego and promote your family.) Any comparison between Prime Time Neon Deion and anything Cal football affiliated is completely moot. I'm also a Deion fan (I lived in Dallas for a few years as a kid and became a Cowboys fan just before he arrived), and I'm enjoying him being on the scene because it's fun. But its just strange and offbase to make any comparison to him and Wilcox or Tedford, or maybe even anyone in the history of college football thus far. It's pretty much moot.
Why is pretty much moot? It isn’t at all like Trump, IMO.
If trump were like Deion he would have started his political career as a mayor for a small and impoverished town in West Virginia coal country, turned the towns culture around and brought back jobs before leaving it for higher office as a senator.
Deion started his head coaching career at a small HBUC and was successful and then moved up to a bigger school that hadn’t won in decades and it wasn’t a blue blood.
If Deions career was similar to trumps, it would have meant Deion went directly from the NFL Network to coaching Alabama or Ohio State.
It's obviously not a perfect analogy but its a decent analogy relating the stories of supremely narcissistic "outsiders" who hijacked the national stage, with the end game being their egos. Hell Deion was even hostile towards the media! ( with that whole how dare you call me Deion bit). And the whole thing about starting at Jackson State.. that's part of the whole gaming of the system. Fund your own campaign by bringing your own 5 star athletes into a sub-FCS conference. The whole thing was a sideshow from start to finish. Just think of that and currently Boulder as stops on the campaign trail, and the story hasnt completely been written. It'll be fun to see how far he goes. I suspect that it could be a house of cards and when the Buffs lose one and then another, we'll see if he can keep the team motivated or if it falls apart. Since we dont play them, I'm rooting for him but not out of genuine fondness but the spectacle of it all.
Deion said on Game Day yesterday that they had the highest team GPA in (IIRC) the history of the program last spring. So either he's lying or there's some major chicanery going on with professors
They don’t know that. They are just assuming that because they don’t like Prime.
I’m rooting for him. So many people were hating on him and rooting for him to fail before the season started.
That’s fair. The more wins for the P12 the better it is for the rest, I guess.
More Pac12 teams in the bowl game gets us more money too
True!
Also, depending on how the finances work, there may be enough post-season money to save the Pac (through reconstruction) if the money stays in instead of following the teams out.
I have great admiration and respect for Coach Prime. I want him to win, not just for him, but for his kids, and to stick it in the eye of the old school bullshit of college football.
Pac 12 refs sure came to play on national tv…flags every play by the Sonny Dykes crew.
Might be entertaining to see Deion pummel the Big 12 without us having to receive a pummeling.
He's not going to pummel Washington, USC, Oregon, etc.
Yeah, Pac too strong in its swan song. But we don't play Deion this year and maybe will never play him while he's at Colorado. Things are already quite broken so let him break all the things.
Maybe, but what he has done this year is going to mean even better players will come to CO through the portal next year. He's made believers out of kids in college football.
CSU is way better than their ranking. And Norvell is a solid coach. Remember, he was the HC at Nevada when they beat us. He's the first coach that figured the press defense could shut us down because of our O-line situation. Every team that played us and beat us after that game watched that film and used the same defense.
Against!
Side note:
I’m sure it’s been explained elsewhere, but is Ott on concussion protocol or something?
1st Quarter: I was taking the Lord’s name in vain and ready to join the “Fire Wilcox” bandwagon. Felt better after the second TD. A bit nervous that Idaho was still moving the ball in the second half.
Apart from wanting to see the Idaho coach take an anti-anxiety med, I could not stop wondering:
1. How good Idaho is?
2. How can we possibly compete with most of the conference, doomed though it is, opponents ahead of us?
So tired of middling.
Pray for us.
Free bye week for Ott to just heal and avoid injury. Plus got our other backs some reps.
Idaho is a top-10 FCS team. Not surprised a P5 team (even Cal) finally clamped down, but they can get FBS wins. I think that QB will get some interest in the portal if he enters it.
Based on what I've seen so far, I expect more middling. Pre-season I guessed our floor was around 4 with our top at 6. We have 2 now. Furd still looks awful and ASU is currently getting pummeled by 'No. To reach 6, we needed to beat Auburn and pull off an upset against a currently-ranked team. We already failed the first and I haven't seen any significant opportunity yet for the second.
Pac seems to be going out with a bang.
Idaho already DID beat an FBS team . . . they destroyed Nevada.
Feels like a “Time-Out” pre-school style for the leaping.
Great scene....Sinner Man...
Was cleared to play, but they did the right thing to keep him out for this one.
Great line that sums up the last several (too damn many) seasons of Cal (Fuck"Cal Berkeley") football = "So tired of middling"! Says it all. Here we are dissecting shit efforts / results by poorly preforming, poorly coached, probably sub-talented (due to lousy recruiting) teams. Wilcox is accurate when assessing things, but damn it, you're the head coach!!! Do something about it! Coach up your team!!! Pull off an upset for Christ's sake!!! We're hanging in, so reward us with something worth waiting for!!!
Not going to happen. His contract is binding.
Yeah somebody needs to drop some Xanax in Eck's $5 Bigger Bag at Wendy's. Dude won't last long with that kind of hypertension.
Seriously, he reminds me of Madden, but without the known longevity.
I was always sure Madden was going to collapse any second.
According to play-by-play guy Guy Haberman, Wilcox said Ott was cleared by the medical staff to play, but was held out because he hadn’t practiced much this week.
He seemed a little caught off-guard in the press conference last week when someone asked him if they'd tried to coach Ott to not hurdle, only offering that they certainly dont teach players to hurdle, and something to the effect of "now we know what can happen." Which, after the North Texas close call, would be some real negligence by this staff. Then a couple days later Spav said they do explicitly tell players not to. Hard to say. But my belief is Ott was concussed and Wilcox did the right thing in limiting him in practice and keeping him out of the game, possibly out of a guilty conscience, regardless of whatever medical clearance there was. (Talk to Tua last year about medical clearance).
Honestly, Cal felt like an academic bargain and I was excited to go only because the football team, coached by Mike White was going places.
Football gods said, “ Ha.”
Fun Fact: Did not know much about Cal until Junior year of H.S.
You have links to that?
What will it take to turn the UW game into a rockfight? I'm assuming that's our best chance. But we do have three or four capable backs if we can block their quick and massive line.
That is a great question. Penix is the real deal and so are his receivers, we won't have the luxury of coming back from a deficit like we did yesterday. I don't think we will wear down that Huskie DL like we did the Vandals line as the game progressed. Better start out fast with that run game. Our QB has a way to go to get good at his job. He reminds me a little bit of Dorian Thompson Robinson, started out running around real fast and zipping passes all over the place and then settled in to an experienced QB after his first year. So what to do? Run it, keep the ball away from the dawgs, have more QB run plays? Heck, I don't know. We have speed, and some power, we need to use it more. I do love our running backs. Almost always gets back to the OL doesn't it. I also think our defense will do a good job, especially against the run, but the Huskies will make a bunch of pass plays, they are just so darn good. Yesterday was fun, I like how the team did not give up after that first quarter.
Penix and he's about as good as Kaleb at USC.
At about halfway through the 2nd quarter I began thinking that I needed to start scouting other head coaching prospects like Norvell.
You got a couple years…
I think if we lost that game, you could safely conclude he would be done after this year. The team wouldn't be able to recover and fan apathy would only get appreciably worse. As much as I like Wilcox as person and as a representative of this program, I have less confidence he has the meddle to turn this program around. The body of work is just too large at this point. He would basically need to follow the Rich Brooks arc. Brooks arc was made possible by a lot of Nike cash, which Wilcox will never see. You are who you are. If and when we move on from him will largely depend on the new chancellor and how quickly they turn the page on Knowlton. A new AD likely means a new head football coach or at best a very short leash. And now that a handful of major donors are largely underwriting the next decade of Cal Athletics at least, the expectations and how these decisions are made will change.
Agree! Slight footnote that this team could be really good if only we had a real QB. But, the CFB landscape is dotted with sorry ass teams that would be good if only for XYZ thing…
Or Sturdevant. I think our QBs will grow as the season progresses, so I'm actually less concerned than most. What has stood out to me so far about our offense and limits our QBs is that we really don't have an explosive or particularly reliable counterpart for Hunter. That's impacted our ability to go downfield and Hunter's ability to get open consistently.
Agree 100%. He checks so many boxes, but right now wins and bowls are the biggest ones and those aren’t his strong suits.
Not doable unless there were such a clause. You think the guy that gave him an extension, because we might lose him to Oregon’s straw man offer, would have the foresight to include a performance clause?
Wazzu went into Ft Collins and hung 50 on this Rams team? Yikes, folks.
And WAzzu lost to Idaho last year. Idaho beat Nevada last week 33-6. They are a good team.
Idaho lost to WSU last year on 9/3/22 24-17.
And they obviously didn't need his help.
Cal is 21.5 point underdogs at UW...
The Justin Wilcox era - get excited, Cal Berkeley Golden Bear fans.
A coach in his 7th year versus a coach in his 2nd year. A 5 year head start and he is still a 21.5 point under dog.
While Wilcox has been stagnating at Cal, UO, OSU, UW, Wazzu, CU, U of A AND USC have ALL re-booted their programs to higher levels than the Bears ever saw and are on the upswing. Stanford and ASU are beginning a full rebuild, but I'd bet green money that Wilcox will STILL be putting up middling results in Berkeley once Sparky and the Tree start to show signs of life.
I wonder if we’ll hear anything about Deion Sanders, err I mean Colorado, on ESPN this week.
I don't think we'll hear anything but Deion Sanders this week. The media hagiography has gotten out of hand. The comeback against Colorado State was impressive but boy I wish they would have held on to pop the CU balloon.
The Buffs are entertaining but I wouldn't say they're good at this point. They can throw but can't run or defend, sort of like most of Dykes' Cal teams.
Ad nauseum
09/17/23: Airing tonight on 60 Minutes (Season 56, Episode 1): University of Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders. check your local listings.
Headline: (Cal) Berkeley Tackles Vandals, Still Creates Mess
And we benched Ifanse against Auburn why???
A fumble that wasn’t really a fumble
He’s great for college football. I’m kind of Deion hater, but can’t deny what he’s doing. Talks the talk and walks the walk.
It's a great game to WIN when we allow them NO POINTS, and score ALL the points after we get frustrated.
Should’ve stayed to see those Sac State Hornets!
Had to be surreal to see the team he built edge out a win over his new team. Oski’s curse for going to the Dark side?
I do volunteer work for a non-profit on the Peninsula. This week the whole company was offered free tickets to the 9/23 Furd game against Arizona. So yeah, $20 was definitely too much to pay!
>>> suppose (sic) to be impressed . . . ?
uh no, definitely not the intent. just commenting in support of im33's decision to walk away from the game as he thought $20 was too much to pay to see Furd play (which i interpreted to mean not a good value).
I wonder how Bob feels about this. He must be conflicted.
But also no instant messiah, as some predicted. Hard to win in football.
Especially with no NIL. It’s gonna take him some time to be competitive.
Hoisted by his own petard!
Side note: does Stanfurd have anything resembling a functional online community like we do? I see the old standby had the same fate as CGB, but I haven’t found an alternative where I can watch misery is real-time like I can here.
The Gate 13 podcast guys are solid. Have the same vibes as us, just a group of friends talking about and watching the team they love.
CFB Reddit game and post game threads
Looooove it! Absolutely looooove it!
Stanford has the resources to decide this is unacceptable.
Washington looks like a potential playoff team. It’s gonna take an monumental performance to defeat them.
Washington is gonna be tough, no two ways about it. But, UNT is better than most thought, Auburn is turning out thus far to be better than most believed, and Idaho was definitely better than they were given credit for. I think our team may not have looked great thus far, but we have played some decent teams. UW beat Boise State, who has turned out not to be that good this year. They beat Tulsa and they just beat a mediocre Michigan State team which has been without its head Coach who has been mire in controversy and scandal. Might we have a redux of the lightning game (which I attended)? Btw, College Football News FBS rankings as of 4 hours ago: UW 6, Auburn 27, Michigan State 45, CAL 47, Boise State 54, Tulsa 97, North Texas 120...Idaho is FCS 10. So, UW has beat teams ranked 45, 54 and 97 by good scores. We beat #120 UNT by a good score and should have beat #27 Auburn but for our kicker and some bad calls by the refs, even though it was not our best game by far. I think UW is way over ranked because of the yards their offense is putting up against mediocre teams. They really haven't played a decent team yet. Does that mean we will beat them? I don't know. I just know we will test them better than any team they have played thus far. And if our defense plays 60 minutes like it can and if J5 can throw the ball effectively, then I like our chances for an upset. Pumping sunshine!!
Well, that's good enough for me. Appreciate the point of view. Got to stay positive. I sure hope we can put consistent pressure on Penix, that guy is good.
Let’s make lightening strike twice. Go Bears
Ours is a rookie. He just needs some game experience, which will come with a price.
So he is playing by the same rules as the rest of CFB and trying to win.
Exactly. Cal is now the outlier.
I agree with you on that. Cal and furd are competing with so many universities which are diploma mills. To win you have to have with good QB's, O linemen, DB's first. It's hard with Cal and Furd having such high academic standards for incoming athletes.
In today's college football, they really belong in the Ivy League.
I agree with you on that. It also goes with so many diploma "factories" in college football and we have some in the soon to be gone, PAC 12.
Link an article or else this is just internet rumors and hearsay.