I’d like to give a heart-felt thanks for Rose Bowl Before I die (RBBID) listing my blog as the 6th best Cal football blog.  He also says that he would have ranked me in the top 3 had it not been for the “Rivals falloff” that caused this blog to suffer last year.  Which to me is a very generous statement.  Between particularly Tightwad Hill (#1), the California Golden Blogs (#3) and Cal Golden Bear Football News (#4) as well as the not to be mentioned here #2 blog, to think that this blog’s content has been good enough in the past to bump two of them off, well, it’s very humbling.

So thank you for both the #6 ranking and for speaking so well of the blog’s potential.

While we’re on the subject of ranking Cal blogs, I want to remind everyone that I update my list of Cal blogs I link to every fall just as the season is starting.  There will be some changes this year as some blogs have unfortunately gone out of business and some new blogs have proven themselves worthy of inclusion.  As a additional reminder, I take which blogs I link to very seriously.  There are those sites out there that’ll post a link to just about any blog they know of, and while that is a fine way to go about it, it has the downside of the list getting so long it is meaningless and hard to find the good needles in the haystack.

Here are the criteria I use:

1. Moral content: The #1 thing to prevent your blog from inclusion on the list is any content that is morally offensive.  The most common example of this is frequent swearing and why the #2 ranked blog does not and will not get a mention here unless one particular poster cleans up his language.  Does it really add anything to a post to say a player is f-ing pathetic?  Find better words to describe yourself.  Other examples include any suggestions of violence against anyone, this is college football not a war, or personal attacks against players or coaches beyond just their capabilities on the football field.  It’s OK to say that Joe “Booya” Ayoob is the worst player to ever grace the Cal sideline and Tedford is a complete coaching moron to have let him stay behind center for as long as he did (even though I’d disagree), but to say you want to rip out his bowels and force-feed it to Tedford crosses the line.  Finally, I expect the comment sections being in line with my moral standards and that the comments of the blog’s author on other blogs meet the standards as well (one blogger in particular suffers from this problem).  For the comment sections, I don’t expect one to moderate to the degree that all comments meet my moral standards, but that truly, wildly objectional comments are deleted and somewhat to moderately objectionable content is somehow rebutted/chastized.
2. Frequency of posting: I’m only going to link to blogs with somewhat regular posting.  Generally that means at least a couple posts a week during the season.  I’m not too concerned with off-season posting but someone who is consistent all the time gets extra props.
3. Quality of posts: What this means depends on what your blog is trying to accomplish.  If you’re just trying to report news, I’m not going to hold it against you that you don’t have detailed analysis.  At the same time, if your goal is news and you’re always a week behind everyone else, well, that’s not very good news.  On the other hand, if you’re a game-analyst type guy, I’m not going to hold slower posting against you, but I do expect that your analysis is meaningful.  Generally what this means is if when I go to your blog, do I find something worth reading?
4. Longevity: I generally like to see that a blog has been around for atleast a year before it gets the nod.  This is partially to give me time to judge based on the above criteria and also because lots of bloggers drop off within a month or two of blogging.

If you don’t care if you get a link on this blog, that’s fine.  But if you do, those are the criteria I judge by.  Consider this post a good place to put your blog’s URL so that I can see if it is one I want to include in the fall.

We heard about the Colorado St. game getting picked up by CSTV about a month agon and now we have the preliminary ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 schedule for the Bears.  The short answer for the Bears is that both the Tennessee game and the USC game will now be at 5:00 PM and that the Tennessee game will definitely be on ABC.  It’s being incorrectly reported in certain cirlces that the USC game will be on ABC as well.  While that is the likely case, it could still be on any of ABC/ESPN/ESPN2.  I suspect that’s what will happen if Cal or USC loses 3 or 4 games by the time the November matchup rolls around.

While we’re on the topic of TV coverage, since I’m sure I get a ton of readers from the Cal Athletic Office (har har), this whole “we’ll let you know the game time and channel 12 days, or in the worst case 6 days out” really sucks as a ticket holder.  I’ve got small kids that I take to the games and it makes life a lot easier to know what the game times are ahead of time.  I’ll take them to any game between noon and 5:00 PM for the start, but the late FSN 7:00 PM games are just too late for a 3 year old.  It would really be nice if you guys got rid of the whole “exclusive time blocks” crud that requires all of the game time manipulation.

Similarly, if I knew a road game wasn’t going to be televised more than a week or two in advance, I’d be tempted to arrange travel plans to go see the game in person.  But with that little warning, it’s much more difficult, particularly for places like Oregon where getting tickets can be difficult.

The reality is that there are enough channels these days for every Pac-10 game to be on every week.  There is no excuse for TV contracts that make it impossible for that to happen and require us fans to constantly be adjusting for changing game times and which cable/satalite package we need to watch all of the games.

Many people forget that a fairly large percentage of NFL players were undrafted.  After draft day, all the NFL teams go out and sign contracts with the guys that they like that didn’t get drafted.  In Cal’s case, 6 players signed free-agent contracts after draft day:

• Tim Mixon went to Seattle
• Nu’u Tafisi also went to Seattle
• Erik Robertson went to San Diego
• Marcus O’Keith went to Kansas City
• Byron Storer went to Tampa Bay (no word on whether Storer Buses will get the Tampa bus contract)
• Mickey Pimentel went to Carolina

To me, the most interesting pick-up was Marcus O’Keith.  This guy hardly got any caries stuck behind Marshawn and Forsett, so you’d think it would be hard for a pro team to justify his salary.  That said, I’m glad to see that someone besides me thought highly of him.  Every time he was in the game he impressed me with his determination despite being a backup.  You know he’s a team player as well because he never complained about being 3rd on the depth chart.  He’s probably the best college RB that spent his entire career 3rd on the depth chart.