Well, spring practice continues on for the Cal Bears.  I would have had lots of stories about it but… well you guys know.  In any case, nothing remarkable has happened at practice really but it’s always interesting stuff.  I encourage you to read the articles at the Cal Rivals site.  There’s good stuff there about the practices and about various up and coming players.

But spring practice isn’t the only news.  In fact, there has been a flurry of news in the last few days:

1. Cal has announced when Big Game tickets will be available.  The short answer is that donors who have given $1800 or more in the last year (or are willing to do so soon), will have the ability to buy tickets at various times in early June based on their donor levels.  They’ll also be able to buy up to 6 tickets for the REALLY big donors and 4 if they’re smaller donors.  For the rest of us season ticket holders, we’ll be able to buy up to 4 tickets starting June 29th.  (As an aside, I’ve always thought it sucked that they don’t adjust how many highly sought after tickets (bowl games, Big Game, etc.) one can buy based on the number of season tickets one holds.)  Big Game pricing was not announced and Big Game pricing information was not given on the Stanford site either.  For the very precision minded people like me, they also haven’t announced what time on June 29th one can start ordering.  You can bet I’ll be on the website at 12:01 AM.
2. The “spring game” is this Saturday (4/14) at 2:00 PM at Memorial Stadium.  I put it in quotes because unlike previous years, there will be no scrimage/game.  It’ll just be a regular practice.  In some ways that is good, especially for those fans who have never had the chance to see a Tedford practice because he loves to keep them closed to the public.  In other ways it is a big disappointment because it won’t be nearly as entertaining.  In any case, considering the weather forecast for Berkeley on Saturday calls for sprinkles, I won’t be coming down with my boys like I had planned… unless the forecast changes.
3. The first game-time and TV coverage for a 2007 Bears game has been announced and it’s time to check your cable package to see if you get the channel, or if can even be ordered.  The Cal vs. Colorado State game will be televised on CSTV, a fairly rinky-dink sports channel that most cable and satalite packages don’t include.  I know I don’t get it.  I already checked and I’ll probably be paying the $12 for the month of September to add the subscription package that has that channel.  The game time has also been announced: 11 AM PDT, which is noon in Colorado.
4. Jay Heater is leaving the area and will no longer be one of the best Cal reporters in the area.  This is a crushing blow for Cal reporting, more crushing than… well you guys know.  I met and talked with him a number of times during the 2006 season.  He had a great personality and was generous to the players without pulling any punches.  He loved talking Cal football.
5. Finally, lest one thinks that the only stadium renovation news involves tree-huggers, the lead construction company has been chosen for the first phase of the project.  They’ll be starting on preliminary work immediately but of course won’t be able to start on meaningful construction until the lawsuits are resolved, which won’t happen until at least mid-summer.

GO BEARS!

Well it looks as though my time as a Cal reporter may be over.  I was let go from the Rivals.com team about a week ago.  I was told it was because of financial constraints and that there was a distinct possibility that they’ll bring me back on staff come football season, particularly if subscriptions to the site continue to rise (so please don’t dump your subscription to get back at them ).

While I’m definitely interested in the opportunity to get back on staff, I’m not that optimistic it’ll come true.  While I’m sure there was truth in the reason I was given, I also suspect there was more to it.  The publisher was always editing my articles more than I felt comfortable with (from the perspective of how he viewed the quality of my work) and because I don’t live in Berkeley my ability to follow leads not related to games or major press conferences was not that of other members on the staff.

The good news is that the material impact of this on me and my family is negligible.  I had always budgeted the income as “fun money” and the last paycheck I’ll receive will just about cover all of my expenditures I made for the job, including traveling to games like the USC game and the Holiday bowl in addition to the nice digital SLR camera and other equipment that I get to keep.  In fact, it is probably good news for my family because the strain of a second job was not trivial and to be honest the Bears games were not as fun to attend when I had the stress of both helping my wife taking care of my two toddler aged boys and making sure I was following every niche of the game as a reporter.

So where do I go from here?

I didn’t post about this right away because I wanted to spend some time reflecting on what my next move was.  Over the last week I have pondered opening my own Cal news site like Rivals or Scout, offering my services to one of the many news organizations in the area that might be interested in inexpensive reporter coverage of the Bears, just taking the effort that went into reporting and focus it on improving the blog, as well as a number of other alternatives.

I haven’t come to any conclusions yet.

I’m definitely still interesting in doing reporter work (and if you’re a publisher/editor who would be interested in my services please drop me a line at jobs AT thecrawfordfamily.net).  The reality is that I despite the compromises it took, I very much enjoyed the work.  That said, I’ve pretty much decided not to heavily pursue that avenue at this point and will let that job come to me if it is indeed meant to be.

I definitely intend on putting what effort I don’t put into a reporter job into improving the quality of the blog.  The reality is that this blog was a lot better before I got the reporter job in part because of frequently I posted and in part because of the quality of my posts.  In fact, it was the quality of the blog that got me the job.  Ever since I got the reporter job, the amount of effort I was able to put into the blog suffered both in quality and quantity.  I never felt comfortable providing the same analysis on the blog that I had already provided in an article that was only available to Rivals subscribers.  In addition, I just didn’t have the time to post frequently.  Without those limitations, expect to see the amount of Cal posting rise to the levels I had early in the 2006 season and 2005 season.  In fact, as I already posted, I have some improvements in the works and now expect to “double-down” on those.

Finally, amongst all of that pondering, another road for me to take hit me like a lightning bolt.  Since it is not Cal related I will put it in another post, one that will only be on the main portion of the blog (note to cal blog readers: click the link on the sidebar for ‘Main Blog Page’).

Hopefully most of my Cal blog readers have been followers of http://cal.rivals.com since I started writing for them.  For those that haven’t, I wanted to make sure you heard about an opportunity to win a Calography, a picture diary of all of the 2007 football recruits for Cal, signed by Tedford.  I’ve got an unsigned one and it’s pretty darned cool.  To win it, you have to win the Pac-10 tournament predictor contest.  Go to http://www.cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=648907 to learn more about it and sign up.

You don’t need to be an existing member of Rivals to play, you just need to sign up for the 7-day trial.  Since the contest ends before the trial would, you could win it without paying for a subscription.  However, I would hope that once you’ve tried it, you’d want to keep the subscription.  It’s only $100 a year and you get all the news that doesn’t make the papers.

 

OK, probably not, but I’m definitely one of the first:

At 8:30 AM this morning I logged into the CalBears website (I tried at 8:29 and it wouldn’t let me) and renewed my 5 football season-tickets and added 1 additional seat.  After I wrote in my special instructions on where to add my new seat I clicked the button at the bottom of the form titled “piss and moan like an impotent jerk and then take it up the tailpipe”.  I was in and out in 10 minutes. and had recieved the confirmation e-mail within 5 additional minutes.

I am now an official 2007 Cal Bears football season ticket holder.  (and the crowd goes wild!)

For those of you who wonder why the “submit” button has been relabeled to something with a tailpipe, it’s because of the continued increased prices.  Up until last season, not a single game was as expensive as every game this year.  The top price was the Big Game at $50.  This year every game except two are $51.  And before you get your hopes up, those two games are the Tennessee and USC games which were $66 each.  Thankfully the tailpipe for reserved season tickets was not as big/long as the one for general admission.  There’s no way I would pay half of reserved to sit in the endzone and fight over bench space.

The good news is that the $50 “stadium renovation fee” was removed so the actual ticket price was less than last year.  However, there’s another reason for that: Stanford.

You may have seen this on another blog, but part of the renewal packet announced that they had not reached an agreement with Stanford as to what to do for the Big Game now that Stanford stadium is too small for all of both Cal and Stanford’s season ticket holders.  Everyone had assumed that they would announce the priority/lottery system that would be used as a part of season-ticket renewals.  Unfortunately it was not.

So that means not only am I still in the dark as to whether I’ll have a shot at getting tickets, I’m also in for another $60 (or more) per seat on those tickets if I can even get them.  My boys have been to every Big Game of their lives (6 games cumulatively for my 2 and 3 1/2 year olds) and it’s VERY important to me that they go every year until they should be paying for themselves.  At that point, I’ll have done my duty as a father.

Despite those grumblings, I’ve very excited to be the first 2007 season ticket holder.  I’d like to thank my wife for supporting me even when I seemed crazy; my Mom and Dad for taking me to Lair of the Bear, the official Cal alumni summer camp, every year of my childhood; by brother for always coming to the games and helping with the boys.  It’s a real honor to be the first 2007 ticket holder.  Thank you all!

GO BEARS!

Well, I guess it was inevitable.  With a group this determined to stop the Cal High Performance Center and their connections to various other groups, one could just about guarantee that they were going to “find” a new avenue to potentially stop the project.

Yesterday at a press conference at the oak grove, it was announced that the site was a Native American burial site.  From reading the article it is clear that the evidence for this announcement is weak.  Not only are there question marks in the survey they present about whether the site of this supposed burial ground is by the stadium or at another site half way across campus called Faculty Glade, but there is no explicit evidence that the single skeleton found was either part of a burial ground or Native American.  Furthermore, even if their claims prove to be true, there is no reason that this should halt construction, only that the removal of any additional remains be supervised by Native Americans.  In summary, it’s a meaningless revelation to the project.

However, this is classic Californian obstructionist strategy.  I like to call it the “shotgun approach”.  The strategy is simple:  Since no single claim you have is the silver bullet to stop the project, you instead shoot 1000 craptastic shrapnel bits in the air.  The reason this strategy is so popular is because it has a number of different ways it can work.

The first way it can work is that with luck, one of those shrapnel bits can turn out to be more meaningful in California law than anyone, including the obstructionists, thought.  Considering how many poorly thought out laws have been passed in this state in the last 50 years, it’s surprisingly easy ti use this strategy to find a meaningless piece of evidence that ends up being very powerful in court.

The second way it can work is that it wears down the opposition.  Even if none of the individual pieces hit home, the work that the opposition must to do refute every single crappy argument ends up being a burden that only the most determined and well financed opponents can overcome.  Ever wonder why “huge corporate interests” are the biggest enemies of the obstructionists?  It’s because they’re the only groups with pockets deep enough to fight the “shotgun approach”.

The third way it can work is the affect it can have on public opinion.  People don’t like reading about the same news over and over.  It’s the reason that ballot propositions always to worse their second time around than the first.  It’s the reason that the American public is sick of the war in Iraq.  Irrelevant of what the public thinks of the issue, they only want to deal with it for so long.  At some point they get so sick of hearing about it, they just want it to go away.  The only way the obstructionists will grant the public that reprieve is by siding with them and halting the project.

The fourth way it can work is the cumulative affect.  Eventually, even though none of the particulars merits blocking the project, eventually some judge or jury looks at the situation and says “you know, each of these on their own seems meaningless, but together maybe they’ve got a point.”  While that’s ridiculous from a strictly legal perspective (you don’t sentence a man to death for 20,000 shoplifting incidents), it’s only human nature to end up thinking that way.

The fifth way it can work is by winning the “judge lottery”.  We all know there are activist judges out there and if the obstructionists can eventually get the case assigned to one of these judges it’s a huge boost to their side.  How does one make sure they get that activist judge?  By submitting suit after suit after suit.  Sure there are laws and precedence that have the same judge responsible for multiple cases against the same defendant, but there are also laws that require judges to pass the suit onto another judge.  As an example, if judge Miller has any Native American blood in her, she’ll be required to re-assign the case to another judge who doesn’t have a potential conflict of interest.  Think it is a coincidence that this evidence is coming out just a week after judge Miller made the first ruling that sided with the University?  It probably is.  That said, I wouldn’t count out the possibility that the obstructionists are interested in a new judge however.  As a side note, re-assigning of judges also causes delays in the court proceedings so way number five can also enhance way numbers two and three.

You see, it’s a very powerful strategy and one that will be difficult to fight.  I only hope Athletic Directory Sandy Barbour has it in her.

OK, I’m working on a look-and-feel overhaul for the Cal Bears portion of the blog to be ready later in the spring.  I was looking for a new name and liked what “The Band Is Out On The Field” blog had done in taking their name from The Play.  So I decided to see if I could find a Starkey quote from The Play that I liked.

There were 26 different things Starkey said that could be used as a blog name (sans titles I know are in use).  I’ve limited it down to the top 5 that I think are worth considering:

(numbering based on full 26 at the bottom of the post)

• #1. Only a miracle can save the Bears
• #12. There were flags all over the place
• #14. We don’t know who won the game
• #24. Excuse me for my voice
• #26. There will be no extra point
• Honorable mentions for #3 (A seemingly impossible situation), #5 (The Bears problem is…),#10 (Will it count?) and #18 (We’ve heard no decision yet).

OK, here’s what you need to do to be able to vote/comment.  First you need to know the image I want to project.  I want to project a sense that I’m a Cal Bear faithful and die-hard fan who loves to shout and yell at the games.  That I’m opinionated and forceful, yet willing to entertain opposing views and that this is a place for that type of spirited discussion.

Now that you know the criteria, the next thing you need to do is block all memory of The Play from your mind and think about the titles on their own.  Pretend your a person that thinks the only team named the Bears plays in Chicago.  Pick your favorites (try to limit it to 3).

The next thing to do is bring back your Bear fan memories and visualize in your mind which of the blog titles you can remember without watching the video.  Which ones can you hear Starkey’s voice.  Finally, watch this video of The Play.  Think about the blog titles that really stick out as notable and unique.  Which ones are “classic Starkey” or “classic The Play”?

Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to vote/comment.

(Note, you should probably comment before reading the rest so I don’t upset your natural thoughts)

My thoughts are varied.  #1 is great because it has that “faithful Bear” thing going for it.  The problem is that it is somewhat resigned to mediocrity.  #3 has the same problem but lacks as strong of a faith in the team.  Nevertheless both have their upsides.

It’s not at all in my real list but #5 I’m sure would get a resounding vote from my brother’s girlfriend Sarah.  She’s always harping about how I excessively use the phrase “The problem is…”.  Sorry Sarah, it’s just too negative.

#12 is great from a spirited discussion perspective.  It’s got that “everyone has something to complain about” thing going.  It’s probably also one of the more memorable statements Starkey makes during the call.  I’d say it’s my second favorite at this point.

#14 is the funniest of the bunch.  Left on it’s own, it seems like the blog is hosted by people who don’t have a clue, or want to make it seem that way.  Obviously it’s quite the opposite.  So it’s the anti-title, so to speak.  #18 is similar but has a more reporter like feel to it.  Which is kind of cool considering my part-time gig these days.  But it also has an indecisive quality that I don’t like.

#24 is my favorite at this point.  It’s a great suppliment to the other half of my blog titled “As we forgive those who tresspass against us”.  It also has the die-hard fan who blew out his vocal chords at each game thing going.  It’s got that argumentative thing going for it, but the apologetic nature communicates that others are welcome to comment.  It’s also a very notable Starkey moment as well.

#26 is worth putting up there because everyone remembers it and it has a certain gusto to it that is compelling.

What do you guys think?

Finally, here’s the full list of candidates.  Let me know if there’s one in the full list that I’m not considering that you think is appopriate (parenthesis show where there are optional extensions to the title):

1. Only a miracle can save the Bears
2. This is some show (I’ll tell you)
3. (The bears are in) A seemingly impossible situation
4. They pretty much have to run it back
5. The Bears problem is…
6. The Bears have to get out of bounds
7. They’re still in deep trouble at midfield
8. The ball is still loose
9. He’s gone into the endzone!
10. Will it count?
11. The bears have scored (but the bands are out on the field)
12. There were flags all over the place
13. Wait and see what happens
14. We don’t know who won the game
15. The Bears may have made some illegal laterals
16. It could be that it won’t count
17. The Bears believe it or not took it all the way into the endzone
18. We’ve heard no decision yet
19. Everybody is milling around on the field
20. The bears have won
21. Oh my God!
22. The most amazing, sensatation, dramatic, heart-rending… exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football
23. California has won the Big Game over Stanford
24. Excuse me for my voice
25. I have never, never seen anything like it in the history of any game I have seen in my life.
26. There will be no extra point

Many others have commented on the subject of Cal’s recent recruiting class so I won’t spend the time to go over it player by player.

However, I want to say this: this was Tedford’s best class yet no matter what the rankings say.  While it would have been nice to nab a 5-star player or two, balance is far more important.  And this class is PERFECTLY balanced with a strong emphasis on both the offensive and defensive in the trenches.  Additionally, the couple of junior college recruits are going to be able to come in and make an impact immediately.  They will go a long way to filling the voids left by Hughes, Bishop and Mebane.

While many are proclaiming the greatness of the running back duo, I think the crown jewel of the class is the offensive line.  People may be right that this is the best RB duo in the country, but I was already comfortable with the depth Cal had at RB and think we could have survived a year with a weak RB class.  Additionally, as Florida showed, weak RB’s can be worked around.

The offensive line however, can not be emphasized enough.  Whether you’re running, passing, kicking, taking a knee, or any other offensive snap, the success of the play always starts with the offensive line.  And the offensive line is also the place where the most injuries happen.  You can almost never have enough depth on the offensive line.

And this is a great offensive line class.  In fact, it probably has a better beat on the best in the country than that RB duo does.  All 5 players have rivals rankings of 5.6 or better (5.7 if you exclude DeMartinis who is the highest rated 5.6 nationally).  To give some context around that, it means ALL 5 of them are amongst the 50 best linemen in the country.  They’ve got the size (3 are already over the 270 lbs. mark with the other two containing the frame needed to add the 20-40 lbs. needed to be a top-flight lineman) and proven high-school talent to make the jump to D-IA football.

Yes, Kyle Reed, Kevin Riley or Brock Manson (likely QB candates) and Montomerey, Slocum, Schutte, Best or Vereen (likely RB candidates) are all going to be very happy campers come 2009-2010 when these guys come of age.  Their job will look easy because of the O-linemen up front.

I was reading in another blog about their move to requiring user accounts before one can comment.  I understand that desire, seeing as how I get 20-50 comment spam a day.  That’s why I went to moderated comments a while back.  Neither solution is ideal, but seeing as how I hate having so many different user accounts, I decided to go the way of moderated comments instead of user accounts.

But it had long been my plan to switch to the authentication string model and remove the moderation.  This has been the plan for far too long now and something always seems to be more important.  But, today the last straw broke my back.  Motivated by the bad news that yet another blog was taking action to eliminate comment spam, I FINALLY found the time to implement the comment filter.

So (triumphant music starts) from now on, no moderation!  All you have to do is answer a simple math question (something like “Please add 3 and 5″) and you’re comment will be immediately posted.  I decided to go this way instead of the “image in a string” route because sometimes those strings can be a pain to read and frankly anyone who can’t do simple math shouldn’t be posting here.

Comment away unfettered by the shackles of moderation!

That’s right, tomorrow is the day where we officially find out whether the recruits who have been commiting to Cal and other schools actually follow through on that commitment.  Generally there aren’t too many surprises, but just about every year there are a handful around each conference.  I have it on good authority that Cal is going to get a last minute recruit who is dumping another Pac-10 school.  I can’t say who yet…

Speaking of which, if you want all of the inside information and fastest breaking news on recruiting, today is the best day to signup at http://cal.rivals.com to get the best bang for your buck.  Tomorrow is the day that everything they’ve worked hard on all year comes to fruition.  As a reporter for the site who covers the team (not the recruits) I’ve been absolutely amazed at how much information gets passed around behind the scenes.

The subscription is well worth the price this time of year.

UPDATE 2/6 @ 9 AM: I posted this blog entry at the end of the day yesterday so that it would be up all day today in reference to tomorrow.  But yesterday, tomorrow was inaccurate.  So, just to clarify, signing day is Wednesday, which is tomorrow today but not yesterday.

Cal has announced that the offensive line coach Jim Michalczik will be the new offensive coordinator.  Instead of hiring an outside guy, Tedford decided to promote from within.

From my perspective, this was a wise choice.  Tedford’s staff had stayed intact for his first 4 years and was a significant part of the program’s success.  Unfortunately for Cal, success brings the headhunters.  A number of assistant coaches have left over the last couple years.  By promoting internal candidates not only do you help prevent that particular coach from bolting but you create an environment where others might stay when headhunters come their way in the hope that they too might get a promotion some day.

Additionally, by promoting from within Tedford ensures that the new OC has “bought into” the offensive scheme that is used at Cal.  There was always an uneasy feeling about the Tedford-Dunbar experiment because no one was quite sure what the experiment would yield.  In retrospect, it turns out that some of the haphazard play calling we saw in 2006 was a result of the collision between the two offensive systems.

Considering how strong our offensive line has been the last few years, it is clear that coach Michalczik is a good coach and I’m hopeful that the step up to OC and do a great job.