CGB Hall of Fame: (1) Justin Forsett vs. (8) Mike Silver

Results from the Previous Round

Justin Forsett beat out 16th-seeded Jerome Randle 81-37, while Mike Silver eeked out a slim victory over 9th-seeded Daymeion Dante Hughes, 54-43.

(1) Justin Forsett

Justin Forsett Extended Highlights Part 1 (via ronenlish1)

When Marshawn Lynch left for the NFL following the 2006 season, there were some Cal fans who wondered if Justin Forsett cold handle the role of Cal's # 1 running back. Sure, he was great as Lynch's backup and and as a quintessential "change of pace" back during the Beast Mode years, but how would he do as Cal's feature back?

Just fine, thank you very much. Forsett rushed for 1,546 yards and 15 touchdowns as a senior, which led the Pac-10 and tied for the best single-season total in Cal history. On top of all that, Forsett was a second team Pac-10 All-Academic selection. Forsett finished his Cal career with 3,220 rushing yards and was a valued member of teams that won 35 regular season games and three bowl games. These days, he is a member of the Baltimore Ravens.

Back in the day, danzig wrote one of the classiest tributes ever on this site, dedicated to Forsett (included in the post are his noted highlighted reels), chock full of emotion and memory. Here's the best of that post.

1) He's a great all-around guy: ALL fans love him. Great work ethic, high character, good morals, never got in trouble and patiently waited behind Marshawn without bitching about it. There are so few heros in life, but he's one of them.
All his life he's been told about the body he doesn't have... the speed he doesn't possess... to accept that he wouldn't go far... and he said to all of them... "F*** that, I don't give a shit what you think!!" (Actually, he probably would've have said, "Excuse me sir, I beg to differ" but...). To make it even more improbable, Ty Willingham yanked his only D-1 scholarship at the last minute, but he still became a star at Cal... I bet Ty is sorry now. His story is downright inspirational and I demand a movie be made about him immediately! Hey Hollywood, cancel that sequel you're about to make and do this instead: The Truth Laid Bear: The Justin Forsett Story. But if it shows up on Lifetime I'm going to F*ing kill you guys.

2) He's the son of a preacher man: And so am I. PKs (pastor's kids) don't have what you would call 'normal' upbringings. Pastors are incredibly strict with their kids because the kids' behavior reflects on the Pastor and the church itself. There are only two varieties of PKs... the ones that grow up to be upstanding role models in their communities and the 'rebels' who embrace all evil (I'm the latter). In short, it's tough to grow up as a PK and PKs the world over have somewhat of a kinship that grows from that. "Genesis says don't be spilling no seed"

3) He's got skillz: Admit it, sometimes when Marshawn was bogging down in a game or fumbling, we all secretly whispered to ourselves, "PUT JUSTIN IN !!!" When announcers said that he could be starting anywhere else in the country... they weren't kidding. He was an outstanding running back with accolades too long to list here. He's got moves and knows when to just run downhill. He's chocked my head full of great game memories...I'll miss him so much...sniff, sniff. (tearing up).

(8) Mike Silver

Michael Silver On NFL Draft, Race, Gene Upshaw, Cal Sports (via zennie62)

Besides being an acclaimed journalist for Sports Illustrated and Yahoo, everything you need to know about Mike Silver is summed up in this interview:

Which school should we reserve our primary hatred for, USC, the Furd or UCLA?

"That's a very tough question that I wrestle with often. First of all, UCLA isn't even in the conversation. They're like your little brother who has a slumber party at your house, and you get kicked out of your bed, and then one of his friends wets your bed, and he knows but doesn't tell you and you figure it out when you get into bed the next night. And then the next day he beats you in Air Hockey for the first time in his life, and he parades around the house screaming about how awesome he is and how you suck. You don't hate that guy; you just don't feel bad when you push him out of the way to get the cool seat on the ride at Disneyland.

UCLA fans are the biggest front-running poseurs on earth. Be that as it may, I don't detest their school.
As for the other two, it's so damn hard... Satan or Voldemort? AIDS or cancer? Nixon or Bush? Mussolini or Bin Laden? Stanfurd people are sit-back-and-judge dweebs who convince themselves that their school is more academically challenging (as if) and average about 2.3 risks per lifetime, but at least I have some respect for their school. SC fans are the jackoffs who show up for the game in their SC shirts with their SC hats and their SC pants and their lame SC fanny packs and think that cheating is awesome and are actually proud that their band played on Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk."

I guess what it comes down to for me is, who's beating us more frequently at the time? In the ‘80s, when SC was king and we were holding our own in Big Games, I hated SC more. Then when SC was down and Stanfurd beat us seven Big Games in a row and 900 consecutive times in basketball and Tiger Woods and Chelsea Clinton were there and they were racking up bogus national titles in women's cross country and fencing every five minutes, I absolutely hated Stanfurd more. Now we're all over Stanfurd, in every sport (really), and USC has a professional football operation that we can't overcome, and I have to hear about it from my NFL friends all the time.

So I guess the short answer is, SC Sucks (and Stanfurd swallows)."

Cal fans can be a laid back, downtrodden bunch, especially after a game like that, and probably don't make as much noise as we could. How do we get them riled up for playing USC?

OK, let me explain something to you: This is not a choice. This is a battle between darkness and light, and it is a mortal fight to the finish, or at least until we get to Pasadena on Jan. 1 in my lifetime.

Last November, all three of my kids' soccer games were rained out, and I had a late flight out of Sacramento, and it occurred to me that I could roll down to the Cal-Oregon game. So I did, and I sat with my best friend in the pouring rain and was cold and wet and couldn't even booze cause I was driving. It was miserable. And we won. And I remember saying something like, "I could sit here and watch us beat SC while people pissed on me for three hours, and I'd be cool with that. But if you told me I could sit here all day and, uh, receive oral pleasure, and we lost? Pretty far from cool."

I guess that's my way of saying, you've gotta want it. Really want it. When we were 0-9 going into the 2001 Big Game at Stanfurd-that's two years after the game when we had eight false starts and 20 penalties in all and Stanfurd celebrated a Rose Bowl berth and my friends and I slinked away in our blue-and-gold bathrobes in agony-some of my friends were fed up and decided they weren't going. We were about to lose our seventh in a row, and it was dreadful, and I briefly contemplated sitting it out as a form of protest.
This was right after 9/11, and I remember having a revelation: Hell yeah I'm going, because I'm a Cal fan and even though my team is a joke and is as ill-prepared for this challenge as a college football team could possibly be, going to Big Game is what you do when you're a Cal fan. I said, "We will not be cowed by Holmoe-ism. We need to make a statement-to Stanfurd, to ourselves-that even in the darkest of times we are not going away." The next year we ended the streak in Berkeley and my friends and I were at Blake's literally pouring pitchers of beer on one another's heads and loving every drop of it. It was that good. And Saturday can be, too.

Look, one of the reasons I wrote what I wrote last Monday was to remind the less-grizzled Bear Backers what the deal is. Yeah, we're disappointed about the nightmare in Oregon, and rightfully so, but the bottom line is we're 0-1 and winning our conference is all that matters. Don't get caught up in the expectations and the polls and the Heisman talk and whether GameDay is coming to campus, because none of that stuff is ours.

The quest for the Rose Bowl? That's ours, and we hold it dear, as we should. And as long as we have breath, I'm gunning for Pasadena, and doing everything I possibly can to try to get us there.

My future wife, in college, was hammered one Saturday and came up with, "The crowd controls the game. And we control the crowd." And I still believe that. I was at The Play. I give up never. And the notion that what happened last week will somehow cause my people to be submissive against the University of Shameless Cheaters is untenable.

Yo, everyone, GET YOUR GODDAMNED GAME FACES ON. These are the Trojans, and we need to treat them like Trojans: Give them a rollicking ride, take them on a three-hour, dirty-talking, ass-slapping, multiple-orgasm-producing trip to the next dimension, and then tear ‘em off and flush ‘em down the toilet and grab a beer and fall asleep with a fat-ass smile.

Can we do that? Does a Bear s--- in Tommy Trojan's megaphone? Did O.J. do it? Did O.J. Mayo get paid? Is ‘Tusk' the worst song in the history of recorded music? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Let's dooooooooooo itttttttt.

(Oh, and don't forget the thing about buying my friends the pitchers.)