Golden Nuggets: A Look at Cal’s 2019 Opponents

Football

• With the season approaching, Golden Bear Report is analyzing Cal’s opponents for this season. So far, aside from the ones I posted in last week’s Golden Nuggets, they have previewed Ole Miss, North Texas, Oregon, Utah, and Oregon State.
• Evan Weaver also got a spotlight article from the crew over there. Luc Bequette also has an article written about him.
• Their mailbag from last week answers some good questions, like what can be done to increase attendance?

The easy answer is winning.

That said, in conjunction with winning, there’s two big areas in my opinion, that need focus, and those are outreach and accessibility. The first of those is being done with younger kids and the Patrick Laird Reading Challenge. I don’t think there’s a better person to lead it this year than Mike Saffell, and like a year ago, it should create some new Cal fans. Safell can at least teach the kids how not to burn down their dorm rooms while attempting to cook.

• Volume 2 of Josh Yuen’s “Bold Predictions” is a little bit more optimistic than last week’s, which predicted a losing season.
• Jon Wilner evaluates the Pac-12’s early season schedule (which recently announced kickoff times)

Baseball

Both of these articles came before the MLB Draft.

• Andrew Vaughn is the “Stephen Curry” of Cal Baseball. Why?

“He cares about the success of the team more than his own success. When in today’s world is the best player on your team also the best teammate? Never. Unless you have someone like a Steph Curry,” [Joey] Gomes said. “I’m not above mentioning those names if everything is relative. What Curry is to the Warriors, Andrew is to Cal. He literally makes everyone else around him better.”

Using Steph Curry’s name in the same sentence as any other athlete in the Bay Area is off limits in almost any case. But Gomes, a Petaluma native and former eighth-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Rays in 2002 whose brother Jonny spent over a decade in the big leagues and won the 2013 World Series with the Red Sox, has seen every aspect of Vaughn as a player and person firsthand for years now.

• Published even before Cal’s unfortunate early exit in the NCAA Regionals, Andrew Vaughn learned to savor the present (at the time, the NCAA Regionals and the Cal Baseball season in general) and not even worry about the draft.

Misc.

• Learn about Cal’s Faculty Fellows program, which pairs a volunteering faculty member with a Cal Athletics sports team. The goal is to help enhance the relationship between academics and athletics.

Congrats to all our Cal Baseball draftees!