20 Comments

As a '79 Cal Biz School alum, I agree with others that Cal needs to focus on getting to a winning record AND a winning record against Pac 12 schools before we mourn a new and more circuitous path to the Rose Bowl. Come on people, the last time Cal was in the Rose Bowl was 1959. That is 63 years ago people. And WriteforCalifornia had a statistic that shocked me a few weeks ago - Cal is the only Pac 12 football team to never have a winning Pac 12 conference record since the Pac 12 was created in 2011. Let's be honest, our goals should be competitiveness in the Pac 12 (or whatever Power 5 conference we join) and an overall winning record. Otherwise, Cal should just go a conference like the Mountain West, where we could possibly achieve these two goals. RoseBowlBeforeIDie is not in my foreseeable future.

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Not like our athletic department sets goals anyways. With Starkey leaving and losing our white whale, the Rose Bowl, it does feel like we have entered a new era.

My dad also went to Cal and he was a huge fan, who passed his disease onto me. When I was younger, he used to question whether we'd go to a Rose Bowl again, and I just thought that was ridiculous. I just assumed you take enough swings and eventually you walk into one. Welp, his concern was indeed valid. Sorry, pops.

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The rose bowl died in 2004

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I used to care. It was our goal. Lately it seems so far away that I don't even care.

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Are you kidding me? What path? With the exception of a few years under Tedford we never had a chance. Let’s focus on a winning record first.

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Cal's unattainable goal has now become a game in Oklahoma or Florida, or in a dome in Indianapolis, in mid-December.

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I stopped caring years ago. The minute the Rose Bowl made exceptions to the Pac-10 Big 10 champ to accommodate the BCS, the magic was over. They’ve been trying to do this weird hybrid bowl/kind of playoff abomination for too long. Going backwards to the old politicking and AP Poll and Coaches Bowl winners system was never happening so just bite the bullet and make it a normal playoff like every other sport.

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Dec 3, 2022·edited Dec 3, 2022

Cal has to actually win some freaking football games for any of this to matter, which they have not done for the last 50 years.

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As it stands we might not even make it to the Rose Bowl during the regular season for much longer.

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Are you kidding me? What path? With the exception of a few years under Tedford we never had a chance. Let’s focus on a winning record first.

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Dec 2, 2022·edited Dec 2, 2022

Rather than again beat the drum of how this sleeping giant (or a frog in a pot, if you prefer that metaphor), in the face of tectonic changes in college football, needs to finally wake up, I want to instead listen to older blues mourn the loss of the traditional path to the granddaddy of them all. This sucks for all Cal fans, but especially for them. This is sad.

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