It's not wins. Cal football is nationally known for a lack of fans and overall interest. Cal consistently draws some of the lowest TV ratings in the country, falling short of several top-tier G5 teams. Relegation is coming soon, my friends. E$PN and F0X are not going to bring Cal to the Power 2. Mark my words.
Ha! You are so funny. It's not all hopeless as even schools like Alabama and Michigan and Texas have somehow survived despite having no fans and being nationally famous for having no interest in their programs. Don't despair. Instead, take your ridiculous absurdities and your marked words and hang out somewhere else. The rest of us just saw the biggest and best ESPN College Game Day of the year and sold out stadium play on national television and thoroughly dominate Miami for 3/4ths of the game. Jealous trolls fall flat. Go Bears!
Mildly off topic, but I wanted to call attention to the Cal Band director’s twitter post talking about how a giant subwoofer has been place directly in front of the band for piped in music, which has been causing both hearing damage and disruption to performances. These are the sorts of unforced errors we need to avoid if we hope to survive the next round. We need our alumni plugged in.
My email to Knowlton three years ago addressed the problem of ultra loud canned music. His carefully worded response basically said this was what the younger generation wanted and to go pound sand. Fast forward a few years and the problem is even worse.
To me it’s not even the volume of it that’s the worst. It’s the frequency of it. And the resultant relegation of the CalBand and student yell leader. An absolute travesty. Everyone who gives a damn, please keep writing the Assistant AD, the AD, and Chancellor.
Here's the band director's full tweet: "For the third game in a row, a massive subwoofer has been placed on the field directly in front of the @CalBand. Despite being on wheels and repeated complaints of headaches and tinnitus after every game, it apparently must be placed at this very specific location directly beneath our conductor’s podium. Combined with the speakers above, sounds levels consistently peak over 100 decibels before we’ve played a single note. This is neither respectful nor healthy. @CalAthletics must do better."
This is inexcusable. Whoever is in charge of the game day experience at Memorial needs to be replaced.
For all the Cal band alumni who participate here in W4C (there are many of you I know), if the band alumni leadership have not already done so it would be a good lobbying tool to get a rough idea of how many Cal Band (great!) alumni are Cal donors. I suspect it is a much higher percentage than the overall general percentage of of alumni donors. If the university is truly trying to develop all funding and alumni giving, showing the high percentage Cal Band alumni donors may be more motivation for university leadership to push for better cooperation with the band and DJ alliances.
There can be a happy marriage of the old and the new, but that’s a lot less likely if the person in charge of plonking the DJ in the middle of everything is not interested in getting the DJ, band, and mic people working together
Hopefully our new chancellor can guide us to a more stable future than our previous ones. Eventually the relief at dodging the Beavs' fate will wear off and the trade-offs in our arrangement will become more apparent. (Ever the naive optimist, I bought my hoops ticket to Duke since we're here.)
Great points. While I’m very proud of “our” Nobel Prizes and distinguished alumni, this does little for school spirit. Over the past 15 years I’ve heard folks say “My kid hopes to go to Clemson (or Baylor or Oregon, etc.)”. Why? One factor is they watch TV and see students having FUN, school spirit and pride! There was a time when I told someone I went to Cal and they replied, “Oh, you mean UCLA?” Most likely due to basketball and—occasionally—football. Go to YouTube and watch an old clip of Tedford’s teams playing U$C, UDUB, etc. Absolutely electric! It is NOT a zero sum game where you need to trade Nobel Prizes for athletic excellence. We can hope that Chancellor Lyons agrees and sets the course for a bright future—and fun—future! Go Bears!
George: You are absolutely right! Stanfurd has managed to go to THREE ROSE BOWLS since 2000 AND have faculty win Nobel Prizes and other distinguished awards. There is even a sprinkling of Nobel Laureates at FUCLA and U$C and you rarely hear anybody at any of those schools say that academics and athletics are incompatible. I just hope that Lyons is the chancellor that can make this all happen.
Nick: Very good (and sobering) article. Our administration can never again be asleep at the switch with regards to athletics. FUCLA and U$C were absolutely ruthless when they decided to begin the process of blowing up the PAC-12 for their own selfish ends and we can never be caught flat-footed by this again. The only excitement on campus can't be the first week in October as we all wait to find out if any of the faculty have won Nobel Prizes. As a die-hard alum, I am proud of our academic AND athletic accomplishments and, to be perfectly honest, we would be AWFULLY BORING if we became a west coast version of the University of Chicago.
Unpopular opinion on this blog, but Cal needs to drop a significant number of Olympic sports and redirect those resources to football and men’s basketball. Its obvious those two sports are the only ones that matter to TV networks/realignment and sports like gymnastics, aquatics, field hockey, etc are just making Cal vulnerable to becoming Oregon St.
I think the general opinion is that Olympic sports (especially those not considered "core" to ACC) need to translate success into outside funding (like a scholarship endowment). I think Cal alumni have been much better at opening their pocketbooks in the NIL era.
I really would like to find a way of getting national Olympic sponsors (such as those corporations donating for TV add benefits) of contributing towards schools that have traditionally funded a lot of Olympic athlete development (Cal plus others).
That opening...wow. I'm a Dickens fan big time, but that opening, so perfect. We should absolutely have sympathy for our Beaver friends. We fought with them and against them for many generations. My wife did her MS at OSU and it's a fine little college town with excellent graduate programs in the sciences. It's a shame what has happened to them.
I'm glad the Bears won and looked like they were having fun. Nothing changes in my view that Wilcox is a 6-6 coach perpetually.
Yeah that was my point. He had so much potential and it wasn't just the issue at Cal he was underutilized. He's not doing anything in Corvallis either.
Yeah, I was so totally psyched about him and sad to see him go, but clearly it wasn't a Cal issue. For a guy who turned down Alabama, who has all the measurables, there is something not working in his work ethic or health or performance. Too bad for him. Local boy. Richmond boy. Best of luck, Jermaine.
A local boy, Byrne, from Carmel, here in the 831, is a Portal transfer from OSU, got into a dust up with his some of his previous, Beaver teammates. I can only wonder what was said. But, yeah, I have seen local talent get siphoned away from regional schools like Cal. Local recruits always help build buy-in from local communities, which are then more likely to watch or attend games.
I was also perplexed that the defensive starters were still playing in the middle of the 4th quarter. Even during a blowout win, Wilcox can still find a way to make bizarre in game decisions.
Two things: he wanted, and I’m sure the players, DC and defensive position coaches wanted, to finish off OSU with a shutout. Second, Cal has a bye week this week, so extra time to recover for the next game.
Wilcox couldn't really win on a couple of decisions for this game-- if he pulls the defense, people will pile on even if backups didn't lose (too many) points, same re the decision to go for the early FG vs TD-- if he hadn't put high percentage field goal points on the board then and we missed TD conversion, people would have piled on about going for TD. I kind of felt for him on these decisions...
It's not wins. Cal football is nationally known for a lack of fans and overall interest. Cal consistently draws some of the lowest TV ratings in the country, falling short of several top-tier G5 teams. Relegation is coming soon, my friends. E$PN and F0X are not going to bring Cal to the Power 2. Mark my words.
The ratings this year for Cal have not borne this hypothesis out.
Ha! You are so funny. It's not all hopeless as even schools like Alabama and Michigan and Texas have somehow survived despite having no fans and being nationally famous for having no interest in their programs. Don't despair. Instead, take your ridiculous absurdities and your marked words and hang out somewhere else. The rest of us just saw the biggest and best ESPN College Game Day of the year and sold out stadium play on national television and thoroughly dominate Miami for 3/4ths of the game. Jealous trolls fall flat. Go Bears!
Excellent point.
Trolls gonna' troll.
Are your TV ratings based on this year's national broadcasts, or last years hardly-anyone-in-the-East had Pac12 Network games which Cal was buried in?
Excellent point.
Now that we have made a deal with a bigger devil, we're seeing a ratings boost.
What is Cal to "Dr. B"? I'm thinking the doctor needs his own medicine.
Thank you my friend. Good stuff!
Come for the Dickens, stay for the wicked unfinished line, and fight for the underpants gnomes of college football.
Still all in.
Great article.
Mildly off topic, but I wanted to call attention to the Cal Band director’s twitter post talking about how a giant subwoofer has been place directly in front of the band for piped in music, which has been causing both hearing damage and disruption to performances. These are the sorts of unforced errors we need to avoid if we hope to survive the next round. We need our alumni plugged in.
My email to Knowlton three years ago addressed the problem of ultra loud canned music. His carefully worded response basically said this was what the younger generation wanted and to go pound sand. Fast forward a few years and the problem is even worse.
To me it’s not even the volume of it that’s the worst. It’s the frequency of it. And the resultant relegation of the CalBand and student yell leader. An absolute travesty. Everyone who gives a damn, please keep writing the Assistant AD, the AD, and Chancellor.
Here's the band director's full tweet: "For the third game in a row, a massive subwoofer has been placed on the field directly in front of the @CalBand. Despite being on wheels and repeated complaints of headaches and tinnitus after every game, it apparently must be placed at this very specific location directly beneath our conductor’s podium. Combined with the speakers above, sounds levels consistently peak over 100 decibels before we’ve played a single note. This is neither respectful nor healthy. @CalAthletics must do better."
This is inexcusable. Whoever is in charge of the game day experience at Memorial needs to be replaced.
For all the Cal band alumni who participate here in W4C (there are many of you I know), if the band alumni leadership have not already done so it would be a good lobbying tool to get a rough idea of how many Cal Band (great!) alumni are Cal donors. I suspect it is a much higher percentage than the overall general percentage of of alumni donors. If the university is truly trying to develop all funding and alumni giving, showing the high percentage Cal Band alumni donors may be more motivation for university leadership to push for better cooperation with the band and DJ alliances.
There can be a happy marriage of the old and the new, but that’s a lot less likely if the person in charge of plonking the DJ in the middle of everything is not interested in getting the DJ, band, and mic people working together
Hopefully our new chancellor can guide us to a more stable future than our previous ones. Eventually the relief at dodging the Beavs' fate will wear off and the trade-offs in our arrangement will become more apparent. (Ever the naive optimist, I bought my hoops ticket to Duke since we're here.)
Great points. While I’m very proud of “our” Nobel Prizes and distinguished alumni, this does little for school spirit. Over the past 15 years I’ve heard folks say “My kid hopes to go to Clemson (or Baylor or Oregon, etc.)”. Why? One factor is they watch TV and see students having FUN, school spirit and pride! There was a time when I told someone I went to Cal and they replied, “Oh, you mean UCLA?” Most likely due to basketball and—occasionally—football. Go to YouTube and watch an old clip of Tedford’s teams playing U$C, UDUB, etc. Absolutely electric! It is NOT a zero sum game where you need to trade Nobel Prizes for athletic excellence. We can hope that Chancellor Lyons agrees and sets the course for a bright future—and fun—future! Go Bears!
There’s no reason why promoting
Cal vs Oregon 2006 is what locked me into this fandom never to escape. Those environments were electric as you said. I yearn for those days again
To be fair, very few of Tedford’s players won Nobels.
Alex Mack will win Nobels in due time.
Didn’t say none!
George: You are absolutely right! Stanfurd has managed to go to THREE ROSE BOWLS since 2000 AND have faculty win Nobel Prizes and other distinguished awards. There is even a sprinkling of Nobel Laureates at FUCLA and U$C and you rarely hear anybody at any of those schools say that academics and athletics are incompatible. I just hope that Lyons is the chancellor that can make this all happen.
It does not stop there.
Michigan, Duke, Wisconsin, Texas, et cetera.
Nick: Very good (and sobering) article. Our administration can never again be asleep at the switch with regards to athletics. FUCLA and U$C were absolutely ruthless when they decided to begin the process of blowing up the PAC-12 for their own selfish ends and we can never be caught flat-footed by this again. The only excitement on campus can't be the first week in October as we all wait to find out if any of the faculty have won Nobel Prizes. As a die-hard alum, I am proud of our academic AND athletic accomplishments and, to be perfectly honest, we would be AWFULLY BORING if we became a west coast version of the University of Chicago.
Hear, hear.
Small quibbles on the Efficiency Report. The line should be -
10 drives, 4 touchdowns, 5 field goal attempts (5-5), 1 punt, 4.4 pts. per drive.
I assume that you don't count the final possession of the game, if the winning team has it merely to run out the clock.
I intentionally left out the final drive because I judged it to come in garbage time.
Indeed. And my count also excludes the final possession that ends the game. My point is that you missed a drive that ended in points (FG).
Unpopular opinion on this blog, but Cal needs to drop a significant number of Olympic sports and redirect those resources to football and men’s basketball. Its obvious those two sports are the only ones that matter to TV networks/realignment and sports like gymnastics, aquatics, field hockey, etc are just making Cal vulnerable to becoming Oregon St.
College athletics must be available to all sports: male and female. Cal and its ADs have done a fantastic job of meeting that challenge.
I think the general opinion is that Olympic sports (especially those not considered "core" to ACC) need to translate success into outside funding (like a scholarship endowment). I think Cal alumni have been much better at opening their pocketbooks in the NIL era.
I really would like to find a way of getting national Olympic sponsors (such as those corporations donating for TV add benefits) of contributing towards schools that have traditionally funded a lot of Olympic athlete development (Cal plus others).
That opening...wow. I'm a Dickens fan big time, but that opening, so perfect. We should absolutely have sympathy for our Beaver friends. We fought with them and against them for many generations. My wife did her MS at OSU and it's a fine little college town with excellent graduate programs in the sciences. It's a shame what has happened to them.
I'm glad the Bears won and looked like they were having fun. Nothing changes in my view that Wilcox is a 6-6 coach perpetually.
I was surprised to see Jermaine Terry still playing for Oregon State. I thought talented players all transferred
Um well he’s not talented.
Yeah that was my point. He had so much potential and it wasn't just the issue at Cal he was underutilized. He's not doing anything in Corvallis either.
Yeah, I was so totally psyched about him and sad to see him go, but clearly it wasn't a Cal issue. For a guy who turned down Alabama, who has all the measurables, there is something not working in his work ethic or health or performance. Too bad for him. Local boy. Richmond boy. Best of luck, Jermaine.
Side note:
A local boy, Byrne, from Carmel, here in the 831, is a Portal transfer from OSU, got into a dust up with his some of his previous, Beaver teammates. I can only wonder what was said. But, yeah, I have seen local talent get siphoned away from regional schools like Cal. Local recruits always help build buy-in from local communities, which are then more likely to watch or attend games.
I was also perplexed that the defensive starters were still playing in the middle of the 4th quarter. Even during a blowout win, Wilcox can still find a way to make bizarre in game decisions.
Two things: he wanted, and I’m sure the players, DC and defensive position coaches wanted, to finish off OSU with a shutout. Second, Cal has a bye week this week, so extra time to recover for the next game.
Wilcox couldn't really win on a couple of decisions for this game-- if he pulls the defense, people will pile on even if backups didn't lose (too many) points, same re the decision to go for the early FG vs TD-- if he hadn't put high percentage field goal points on the board then and we missed TD conversion, people would have piled on about going for TD. I kind of felt for him on these decisions...
I'm pretty sure he just wanted to see them play a full game for once.
Wilcox must also be jaded by our 4th quarter meltdowns.