Dear Cal, Let's Bear Hug It Out.

Dear Cal,

No doubt it's rare to find a readymade reason to get excited about a match-up of two 7-5 teams that feature offenses that couldn't be more surprised to find the end zone if they woke up with their heads sewn to the field turf. Admittedly, I too found it amusing that the invitation of our two teams to appear in the 2012 Holiday Bowl was also a convenient excuse for you to rehash and bemoan the Longhorns berth in the '05 Rose Bowl at the purported expense of your equally deserving Golden Bears - perhaps the best team Cal has trotted out on the field in a generation as it featured QB extraordinaire and State Farm spokesman, Arron Rodgers.

Even more amusing, the forthcoming feigned vitriol aimed at Mack Brown and alluding to his on-air bequest of voters back in '04 to move Bevo past Oski the bear on the BCS food chain has, for the most part, been in jest with the exception of a few commenters who are finding it difficult to stay classy, even on their way to San Diego.

That said, what do you say we dispense with the frivolity and give this perceived injustice a little discount double-check treatment of its own. Lord knows your therapist is tired of listening to you explain why the color burnt orange makes you sad and how you blame the Longhorns for your pale skin and iron deficient Vegan-lifestyle.

More to the point, isn't it long past time for you to face the fact that Cal's 52-year Rose Bowl drought is not the reason you were bypassed for promotion to Level 2 Programer at Inatech and have never been able to carry on a conversation with the opposite sex without tugging on your ears, looking at your calculator watch and muttering the word for "retreat" in Klingon?

The healing begins after the jump...

If you'll search the furthest recesses of your hungry-hungry hippocampus, you'll remember that it was you that chose to parlay your 1580 on the SAT and research on the mating habits of Red and White Dwarf stars into a fractional scholarship at Cal - the MIT of the West Coast and armpit of pacifism. You could have had a full ride to study the mating habits of blonde stars at a football factory like USC, but no, you chose to matriculate at an institute whose football program is basically the nerdy girl in high school who once managed to get paired up on a science project with the popular jock in school, then watched "She's All That" one too many times, and convinced herself that an invite to prom was immanent only to hear Mr. Stud Britches ask instead to borrow her environmentally friendly car to go to a movie with a hot cheerleader who didn't even know she existed and ironically probably went on to attend the University of Texas.

The truth hurts I know. And even though that nerdy girl can look halfway doable at times and has a tattoo of Pi on her bikini line where the numbers that go way past the decimal point are tantalizing hidden by her Wonder Woman Underoos, I think if you're honest, you'll admit that she was never meant to be the Rose Bowl Queen or even a princess. Sometimes life is about accepting who you are and appreciating that one date your football program had with the Stanford trombonist.

So what do you say you put the "Fack Muck Brown" t-shirt down, put your "Occupy Uranus" t-shirt back on and go settle in for a marathon of "Big Bang Theory" on TBS. At least the nerd scores in that one anyway.

Best of luck in the Holiday Bowl. May a victory over Texas somehow help you find closure if this letter has not. And if Texas should win the day, may your loss be a gentle reminder that the secret to happiness is setting expectations appropriately. If you set them low enough, good things, like a Holiday Bowl invite, will happen.

Okay, let's bear hug it out,
54b