I guess one answer might be that organizing the Gold Out might take organizational resources away from Cal. I’m not sure what the economic cost would be. If a corporation sponsors it, maybe the corporation does all the work and Cal and/or the ATO won’t have to do anything. Who knows?

Another answer might be that this could just be a masturbatory exercise by the fans. Does having the entire stadium wear all of one color actually inspire the team to play better? Or does it just make us feel like we are better fans. Maybe it does help the team, I don’t know, I’ve never competed in a sport at the collegiate level. And my high school experience, I never had an opportunity to compete before a crowd wearing different colors and all one color to judge the difference.

From my personal, limited experience doing sports in high school, I do know that the size of the crowd cheering me on did have an effect. Well, I guess it depended. For certain sports, like cross country and track, you are aware of the crowd and it does have an effect. For wrestling, I could barely pay attention to my coach yelling stuff at me from the sidelines let alone people in the crowd. But that might be a symptom of wrestling.

I think football would fall more into the camp of cross country and track. It takes place over a long period of time and you have opportunities to focus on the crowd.

If the bottom line here is helping the team win, it would seem to me having a larger crowd would be more likely to effect that bottom line than what the crowd is wearing. But maybe other people who have competed at the collegiate level before crowds of different sizes/different clothes can chime in.

have we given any thought into the possibility of offering Al Bundy a scholarship? I’m pretty sure he has 4 years of eligibility left since he started working for the shoe store right out of high school. He scored 4 touchdowns in a single game for Polk High.