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Two old-timers duel for a spot in the CGB Hall of Fame Elite 8! One is a super nerd, the other is a super athlete. Who will you choose?
Seaborg's road: Upset Justin Forsett, Upset Matt Biondi
Bartkowski's road: Upset Nick Harris, Upset Dante Hughes
Voting ends Friday at noon PT. Click here to view the full bracket.
Also, your first Elite 8 matchup is set! Aaron Rodgers (beat Kevin Johnson 162-118) vs Russell White (beat Andre Carter 152-32) in three weeks...
I did not expect to see Seaborg's name on this list, but I'm not complaining. Katster gives us her take on why he should be in the Hall of Fame.
Okay, I’m cheating a bit, both because I wasn’t around in his heyday and because he’s technically not an athlete. But, on point one, I got to run his slide projector for a presentation he was making in my History of Cal De-Cal and then shake his hand, so it sorta counts.
Anyway, while Seaborg did his undergraduate work at that inferior UC in Los Angeles, he came to Berkeley for graduate work and never left — coming to be one of our biggest fans all the way around. And most importantly, he was chancellor (chancellor!) of the University during both our last Rose Bowl and our NCAA basketball success of the late 50s. He believed that athletics rounded out the academics — he was Chancellor Tien before Chancellor Tien. He never failed to support the Golden Bears through all the lean times after.
And this doesn’t even cover what he did for Cal academically. He’s the discoverer of plutonium, integral to our war efforts in World War II — so integral, they didn’t let him go to Los Alamos, because his work in Berkeley was that important. He was Ernest Laurence’s right hand man on work with the cycletron. And because of all this, he was awarded the Nobel Prize, and then an even greater prize — element 106, Seaborgium.
A university would be lucky to have such a man associated with them.
Plus, as he was known to point out, his surname was an anagram for "Go Bears!" He was the quintessential Cal Bear, and a model for all to follow.
I humbly submit his name for your consideration.
As for Steve, Tightwad Hill recapped his storybook season.
There's no harder player to rate than #17 on our 50 Greatest countdown. Steve Bartkowski is, of course, the only Golden Bear to be picked #1 in the NFL draft. No quarterback in the school's history possessed the arm strength of #10, who was reported by assistant coach Paul Hackett to have thrown a football 100 yards in the air at practices. Few if any players matched his overall athletic ability; Bartkowski was also a magnificent baseball player who made All-America as a 1st baseman in 1973.
In his senior year of 1974, Bartkowski put it all together once he got to work with Hackett, a punchline of a head coach who was nevertheless a gifted tutor of quarterbacks. He convinced Bartkowski to trade velocity for accuracy, and the results were spectacular. Despite playing through the pain of a separated shoulder, Bart led the nation with 2,580 yards passing and earned consensus All-America honors for the 7-3-1 Bears. He topped the 300 yard mark four times (Washington, WSU, UCLA, Stanford); each of those efforts came after the shoulder injury, suffered in a 31-14 upset win over #14 Illinois in Champaign. Bartkowski finished 10th in voting for the Heisman that year, and would almost surely have ranked higher had he received even a modest amount of pre-season hype.