DBD 8.31.10 I got a feelin

Cal kicks things off this weekend:

2010 CALIFORNIA FOOTBALL
Saturday, Sept. 4, 1:07 p.m. (PT)
California (0-0, 0-0 Pac-10) vs.UC Davis (0-0, 0-0 Great West)
Memorial Stadium, Berkeley, CA Live Coverage


TV: CSN California – Jim Kozimor (Play-By-Play), Mike Pawlawski (Analyst), Dan Dibley (Sideline)
Cal Commercial Radio: KGO 810 AM (San Francisco) – Joe Starkey (Play-By-Play), Troy Taylor (Analyst), Todd McKim (Sideline). Each broadcast begins with a 60-minute pregame show, with Todd McKim hosting the first 30 minutes live from Maxwell Family Field adjacent to Memorial Stadium for home games. The postgame show includes reaction from the Bears’ locker room and the “Postgame at the Paragon” program from the Paragon Bar & Cafe at the Claremont Resort & Spa hosted by Lee Grosscup and Kate Scott. ISP Sports/Cal Radio Network Affiliates: KCBQ 1170 AM (San Diego), KESP 970 AM (Modesto), KGIL 1260 AM (Los Angeles), KPRZ 1210 AM (San Diego), KTKZ 1380 AM (Sacramento) [Sept. 17 game at Nevada to air on KCBQ]. Cal Student Radio: KALX 90.7 FM (Berkeley) – Danny Freisinger, Elliott Schwimmer. Sirius XM Satellite Radio: Cal fans can listen to the ISP Sports Cal Radio Network broadcast feed on Sirius XM Satellite Radio on XM channel 195.

CalBears.com: Visit CalBears.com for complete coverage of Cal football, including a live play-by-play update via Gametracker.

water polo (#1) opens vs. UC Davis

The 2010 Cal men’s water polo team, ranked No. 1 in the Preseason Collegiate Top 20 Water Polo Poll, hosts No. 17 UC Davis Saturday (Sept. 4) at 10 a.m., and No. 13 Santa Clara, Sunday (Sept. 5) at noon at Spieker Aquatics Complex. The Golden Bears own a 205-49 (.807) all-time record at Spieker Aquatics since the old Harmon Pool was renovated in 1982. UC Davis, coached by former Cal player and assistant women’s coach Steve Doten (1986-88), will be opening its 2010 campaign in Berkeley. Bear head coach Kirk Everist’s troops feature several key returnees from 2009, including four returning All-Americans – seniors Brian Dudley and Zach White, and juniors Ivan Rackov and Cory Nasoff – plus several other talented performers. Additional major contributors will include junior attackers Charlie Steffens and Luka Saponjic, plus junior goalie Wil Toppen. Cal also welcomes in a freshman class that includes three first-team high school All-Americans (Max Bergeson, Blake Kelly, Jon Sibley) and two international athletes who were members of their junior national teams (Giacomo Cupido of Italy, Perry Short of Australia).

Original CGB content:

Hydro has a new post on 2009 Oregon game

Avinash on Luck & Riley

TnH’s posts on Fan Day (part 1) (part 2).

Demanding 5 million from Nevada and Fresno State.

DENVER — The Western Athletic Conference is demanding a $5 million exit fee by Oct. 25 from Fresno State and Nevada, which are bolting to the Mountain West Conference.

WAC commissioner Karl Benson said the league would sue the universities if they don’t pay up. He also said the league won’t let the schools leave until after the 2011-12 season.

Fresno State and Nevada were informed of the WAC’s hardline stance by letter on Friday. The schools announced Aug. 18 they would join the MWC. Because they didn’t announce their decisions prior to a June 30 deadline required by WAC bylaws, neither school can leave for two years unless the league agrees to an early exit.

Benson said that by leaving before 2012, Fresno State and Nevada would cost each of the remaining WAC schools — Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, New Mexico State, San Jose State, Utah State — $2 million or more.

[1]

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Heisman
It’s week 3 of the preseason and the Cardinals are taking on the Raiders. Leinart has already finished 2 seasons in the NFL, having started in 16 games, and suffered 2 season ending injuries, a sprained shoulder and a broken collarbone, both on his throwing arm. He’s in an open battle for the starting QB role with Kurt Warner, but 3 quick interceptions later the competition is over. Warner is named the starter and over the next two years Leinart is limited to mop-up duty and 1 start. At least he’s still popular with the tabloids who love to cover his wild hot tub parties and $15,000 a month child support battle, an amount that baby mama Brynn Cameron says is only half of what she needs to raise their child. Who knew Huggies were so expensive?

From ESPN magazine (via Uncle Ted):

We ran the stats of every Division I team, looking specifically at the national and conference champions of the past several years, to find out what statistical categories correlate to college football success. Then we set statistical benchmarks for each league to see what’s been required for each conference champion (for example, you better score a lot of points if you want to win the Pac-10; in the ACC, not so much).

It’s an Insider story, but here’s a peak at what it said about the Pac-10:

OFFENSIVE BENCHMARKS
Score at least 30.5 points per game
Have a completion percentage of 58 or better
Average 4.08 yards per carry or better
Post a turnover margin of 0.15/per game or better
DEFENSIVE BENCHMARKS
Hold opponents to 23.8 points per game or fewer
Hold opponents to a 38.74 third-down conversion percentage or less

I think the completion percentage benchmark will be difficult to hit given Riley’s past performance (though I’m not ruling it out) – but I do think the other three offensive benchmarks are eminently reachable, including the turnover margin benchmark, given that Riley doesn’t throw a lot of picks.

Defensive benchmarks could be a little shaky, but that’s why we have Pendergast now, right?

Aftermath from Wilner’s breaking story on Pac12 heading toward N/S split. I thought this commentor had an interesting take:

OS_Beaver says:
August 30th, 2010 at 1:18 pm 79..I now expect the Big 12 to offer the 6 proposed Pac-12 South teams in a few years and become the first 16-team superconference. Way to go Scott, you just made it very likely that the Big 12 message boards will have plenty of people in the coming years suggest they take the best of the Pac-12, and keep the politics easy by just grabbing the entire Pac-12 South with all the best recruiting and geographic advantages. Why not..they would get the cream of the crop athletically and academically in a simple move. Then CA gets access to TX recruiting to further strengthen their position. The 6 "North" schools will become irrelevant if this happens and will lose all their leverage. Their ADs should be considered on hallucigens if they even consider it.

Check out Pac12 Cooler’s proposal on divisional splits.

Says Bush’s Heisman should go to Vince Young if he forfeits it.

If the Heisman Trophy Trust takes back Reggie Bush’s 2005 Heisman Trophy, Texas coach Mack Brown believes Vince Young should get it.

“If they take it away, I think Vince should be awarded the trophy,” Brown said on Dan Patrick’s syndicated radio show on Monday.

“I think you have to go back and really give that choice to the Heisman Trust. If they take it away, I think Vince should be awarded the trophy,” Brown said on “The Dan Patrick Show” on Monday. “Vince was second in the voting, so even if they re-voted I would like to see Vince get it.”

Looks like Akili Smith made it through the offseason and is still with the team as an Administrative Assistant on Offense:

Akili Smith is in his first season with Cal football in 2010 as an administrative assistant for the offensive coaching staff. Smith, who has spent the past two seasons as the quarterbacks coach at Grossmont College in San Diego, was selected by Cincinnati as the third overall pick in the first round of the 1999 NFL Draft and played four seasons with the Bengals (1999-2002). He attended training camp with the Packers (2003) and Buccaneers (2005) before finishing his professional football playing career with the Frankfurt Galaxy of NFL Europe (2005) and Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (2007). Smith played his collegiate football at Oregon from 1997-98 when Tedford was the Ducks’ offensive coordinator. He was the Pac-10’s Offensive Player of the Year as a senior when he set Oregon’s single-season passing record with 3,763 yards and also threw for 32 touchdowns.

“It’s a definite blessing to be able to come to Cal and be a member of this staff,” said Smith upon the announcement of his hiring on March 13, 2010. “I wanted to get into coaching because of my passion for the game. There’s so much more out there for me as far as football is concerned. I want to help these kids reach their dreams and doing whatever it takes to do that. I’m thankful that coach Tedford gave me the opportunity to start my coaching career at the Division I level here at Cal.”

ESPN.com

LOS ANGELES — Southern California receiver Kyle Prater is likely to redshirt this season after injuries slowed his progress during camp.

Coach Lane Kiffin announced the probability Monday after practice, saying he had spoken with Prater’s parents about the 14th-ranked Trojans’ plans for the touted freshman.

Prater was among the nation’s top recruits when he committed to the Trojans last year out of his native Illinois. He enrolled early at USC this year, but his play in training camp has been limited by various lower-body injuries.

YO:

Tomorrow could be a big day for offensive lineman Matt Summers-Gavin. If he is able to do a lot in practice, he may be on pace to play Saturday. But if he is still pretty limited, it would seem his chances of returning for the game are not good. Throw in the fact that Summers-Gavin is supposed to move to right tackle when he returns and hasn’t taken any reps there, it seems the best he coudl do would be to return in a backup role, if he is able to come back at all.

<a href=“http:// ”http://tinyurl.com/2e8lpks" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/2e8lpks" target="new">Interesting video from Behind The Mascot up on youtube shows the Oski part and the Stanfurd Tree part. Oski comes off cool, the Tree people are so arrogant. “We’re the anti-mascot!” So arrogant!

Kaplan looking to sponser ASUC Lecture Notes:

The ASUC Auxiliary and Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions are in negotiations for a commercial sponsorship of the ASUC Lecture Notes Online according to a document given to The Daily Californian Sunday, pending an approval of the sponsorship by the ASUC Auxiliary Store Operations Board.

According to the document, Kaplan would spend a total of $8,000 on sponsorship items, including 10,000 “green” blue books branded with Kaplan identity and sponsorship information, flyers and tabling events at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union. The document also states, “UC Berkeley will work with Kaplan to strategically advance their brand and products to the customers of ASUC Lecture Notes Online.”

Daily Cal blasts recent changes to Berkeley public library:

Background: Voters approved Measure FF in November 2008, providing up to $26 million “to renovate, expand, and make seismic and access improvements at four neighborhood branch libraries�.” The library’s publicity boasted that West Branch had been designated by the city as a “structure of merit.” The library’s own consultants, Noll and Tam, reported that South Branch library appears to be eligible for listing as a landmark “for its association with architect John Hans Ostwald and potentially for its design characteristics.”

14 year old starts school as Cal freshmen, all of you creeps stay the fuck back:

Victoria Campbell had dreamed of coming to UC Berkeley since she took a summer class on campus two years ago. Like many other students, she said she liked the atmosphere of the university and the rigorous curriculum.

But unlike other students, Campbell will take her place among UC Berkeley’s freshman class this fall at the age of 14.

After she completed homeschooling with her parents in 2008, Campbell attended a community college before coming to UC Berkeley for the 2009 summer session. She then continued her education at the University of Connecticut for a year before entering UC Berkeley again this fall.

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING SCIENCE COULD EVER DO FOR US:

At the campus Visual Space Perception laboratory, researchers are studying problems common to 3-D effects used in movies and televisions and are developing technologies to fix such issues on smaller scales. Problems with the delivery of 3-D imagery manipulate the way the eye perceives images and cause people to experience physical discomforts.

According to Martin Banks, principal investigator for the lab and a campus professor of optometry, one of the biggest problems experienced by 3-D imagery is called the “vergence-accommodation conflict,” which has been known to cause headaches, tired eyes, blurry vision and fatigue because viewers are forced to fight their “natural system.”

Sock folding robot is back in the news:

When a lonely sock is missing its match, a robot can now take on the task of finding it.

The same UC Berkeley researchers who developed software allowing robots to fold towels in April have returned to the robotic scene – this time giving robots the ability to pair socks.

Pieter Abbeel, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, co-developed the software with Trevor Darrell, an adjunct associate professor in the same department along with three undergraduate and graduate students.

Although the research is not yet complete, the team did submit the robot to a contest held by Willow Garage – the company that builds the robotic platforms the researchers use – where it won first place, receiving a prize of $5,000.

The cheerleader has left the building.

Uncle Ted with the week-one previews

UC Davis at California (1 p.m., CSN California): The Bears should roll this FCS foe. What’s worth watching? Will quarterback Kevin Riley complete more than 60 percent of his passes. The higher his completion percentage, the better Bears fans should feel with Colorado and a visit to Nevada ahead. Up next: Colorado.

Uncle Ted with some predictions

Freshman of the year (offense): Keenan Allen, WR, California

The touted true freshman won a starting job in camp. Expect him and Marvin Jones to inspire folks to start to saying, “You know that quarterback Kevin Riley ain’t half-bad!”

TMQ, woohoo!

In other scheduling news, Roger Goodell now says the owners want an 18-game regular season slate beginning in 2012, while eliminating two preseason games. TMQ hates preseason games, and those old enough to remember when the NFL had six “exhibition” dates before a 14-game regular season really hate preseason contests. Two preseason games is plenty: This change makes sense. But 18 regular-season games? No thanks.

Sixteen games is plenty for players’ bodies and for spectator interest. Add more, and each individual game will mean less. That’s diluting the product — like pouring water into a bottle of scotch then claiming the taste, and the price, should still be the same. The effect will be worst for losing teams. In the current format, by the time there are six games remaining, it’s hard to care about clubs that are eliminated: In 2009, late-season Rams and Lions games were excruciating. Imagine if this point were reached with eight games remaining! Plus an 18-game season would mean either starting the NFL regular season before Labor Day or holding the Super Bowl after Valentine’s Day.

Regularly, Tuesday Morning Quarterback warns that there is no law of nature that says the NFL must remain so popular. If an 18-game schedule gluts the market with meaningless games, people will start to tune pro football out.

Buy the Haas iPhone app:

The Berkeley-Haas application provides direct access to information on all the school’s programs, including the top-ranked Evening & Weekend MBA Program and Full-time MBA programs. See images and videos, listen to podcasts, read the student blog, and connect with admissions all from directly within the app.

http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2010/8/31/1660853/prescriptive-capsules-for-the#45621874

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA