Golden Nuggets: "[A sense of urgency] was spotty all season long"

What if, and I know this might be a difficult concept, Riley is the best quarterback we have? I know it must not have crossed your mind… it must be that all the people calling for Riley last year over Longshore had no idea what they were talking about. I’m sure that Tedford HATES winning, and Sweeney is the awesomest ever—even though we have never seen Sweeney play.

What happened to the spell HB after Best’s injury? How did that become less valuable suddenly? Why did we not see DBo or Isi as the spell HB? I really think Cal’s offense was better with the spell back taking reps, and beyond that… when you have an anomaly such as the 6 series/18 yard production— why not try something new?

Carries given to the spell HB is determined by Gould; if the workhorse looks tired, Gould puts the spell HB in. If Vereen doesn’t look tired, he’s not coming out.

And it all ties in together. The weak pass rush left db’s exposed kept the defense on the field… the weak line didn’t protect Riley, Riley lacked the intangibles, the receivers lacked the intangibles, kept the defense on the field… the inexperienced and inexplicable lb core couldn’t decide who would play outside or inside, so they played confused, and they KEPT THE DEFENSE ON THE FIELD.

You seem to be arguing that Cal would’ve won with a better game plan, but I’m not sure a good game plan would save a team with all the deficiencies and player weaknesses you just listed.

You are only blaming the gameplan because players can’t be fired.

I know it is hard for some of you Cal grads to accept not being the best at everything (one of the best universities in the world, so many noble laureates, blah blah blah). I hate to break it to you, but this team really wasn’t that good. Some people are naturally better at things than others. Other teams were naturally better at football than we were this year. It sucks, I know, but its true. I guess it was hard to accept because of all the preseason hype. We can bitch and complain about it, and try to fuck shit up within the program; or we can accept that this team wasn’t as talented as we hoped and then we can focus on next year.

You win some and you lose some. Try not to go apeshit when we lose some.

A quarterback with a debilitating heart condition that left him wheelchair bound, and in which the wheelchair is electric and only has a range of 7 feet before needing a recharge.

However I would like to raise an objection, as you have asked “true or false” of a clearly multiple choice question.

Uh oh, another one of my Cypress homeboys is saying some interesting things…please forgive the rant below if it’s somewhat unfocused.

My issue with Tepper is that he seems to be blaming the fans for not demanding more, when in fact, Cal fans are, but in the end, the fans are not the ones who are on the field, the players are…

All of the screaming at each other we do, does nothing to improve the play of the team on the field. Only the team is capable of overcoming itself. For instance, there was a big difference in how the 2009 squad raised its game against the Furd compared to how the 2007 group did not. While there were questionable coaching decisions that have been discussed ad nauseum already, at no time did I get the impression while watching the game that the team didn’t give a damn about the end result. (It might well be that they, literally, given Vereen’s struggles and MSG’s concussion, and Syd’s owies that they left everything there…)

I felt the same thing watching the Arizona game the previous week. The players were rising above themselves to show some fight that had been missing at various times throughout the season. While fans desperately wanted Cal to win those games, our demands weren’t going to ensure victories against Zona or The Furd anymore than the yellow jerseys caused our loss to the Beavers.

It is also why, in retrospect, the final desperate minutes, in my mind, of the 2007 OSU game were so amazing, because Kevin Riley’s imitation of old-fashioned John Elway-ish gunslinger was something I don’t think I’ve ever seen compressed into such a small time period. Despite his painful flaws this year, and his lapse at the end that year, it’s hard to deny what a rush that experience was—-he was trying.

Tepper’s comment also makes little sense in that in demanding that a Cal fan demand a national championship flies in the face of the reality that we have no damn control, in the end, whether or not we go to the National title game. Mack Fuckin’ Brown should have taught every Cal fan and player that painful lesson.

It was sad to realize that our 2004 win against Southern Miss, which was an exciting a football game as I’ve ever seen, was somehow devalued because we didn’t blow that team out in the end, even though we had secured the victory and chose not to pile on. That experience taught me that the only way to fellate the poll voters was to hope that Cal went Wazzu on every team and destroy them 66-3 in order to get the attention needed to compete for the national title. And even then, it became a beauty contest that we could never win because our school has never belonged to the inner sanctum of football powers. That’s never, in reality, gonna happen in the Pac-10. Instead, I understand, and Tepper should too, that if Cal goes 12-0, we’ll win the Pac-10, and then, at that point, the chips will fall where they may, and, at worst, we finally get our ticket punched to Pasadena.

I’m sorry Mike, but seeing the Cal Band march down Colorado Boulevard on New Years Day on Channel 5 here in LA in addition to the game, is a memory any Cal fan would take happily and would remember more, IMHO, than a nameless event in some Sunbelt super stadium. Mind you, I’m not trying to devalue the experience of playing for the national title, but given the lack of control it takes to get there, it’s beyond a basic level of desire for the average Cal fan. It is, in a metaphorical sense, a sorority girl dressed up as a Playboy bunny flying into the bedroom of young teenage boy in “Animal House”…

But in the end, what Cal fans “want” is predicated on what Cal players can deliver. I am not going to be ashamed of myself if I see a Cal team lose a game, but I know that the team left nothing behind. On the other hand, I can understandably be frustrated over the Ducks’ loss, or the failure against $c this year, for how badly the team let itself down, much less the fans.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want every Cal player to be Artis Houston, the DB who single-handedly tried to save Cal’s bacon in the terrible final minutes of the 1993 Wazzu game. I could try to sum it up, but instead, I’ll quote from the New York Times game capsule of the game:

At California, it was an emotional week. Last week, the Golden Bears rallied from a 30-point deficit to beat Oregon, 42-41, in the biggest comeback in Pac-10 history. Saturday, they lost to a comeback when Damon Huard threw for two touchdowns in the final 2 minutes 6 seconds to rally Washington to a 24-23 victory from a 23-10 deficit.

California’s Artis Houston made an interception and a fumble recovery, and each time yelled out the name of his brother Cornell, 31, a member of an Army engineering unit who died on Wednesday of wounds in Somalia.

“He talked to my mother a week ago, and he told her to make sure that when we played Washington I did my very best,” Houston said.

(You can read about Artis’ brother in Mark Bowden’s “Blackhawk Down”…he was part of the relief convey that tried to rescue the trapped mission)

For my purposes, I guess I want to know that like Houston, every Cal player was out there doing their best—-and fuck all everything else. They, and we, can’t control it, not as long as Mack Browns of the world live and breathe, not while U$c can buy their guys houses or Hummers or hummers and not get sanctioned. “We do not want men who will lie down bravely to die, but men who will fight valiantly to live.” There’s a reason why that’s inscribed on the Andy Smith bench.

Ok, end rant. Sorry to have gone off…