As I was analyzing the Pac-10 records, I realized that OSU is very much in the hunt, if not for the top spot, at least for one of the 2 or 3. They’ve got the one big advantage that everyone else without a backbone wishes they had: a bye vs. USC. Right now they’re 2-1 in Pac-10 play.

Once I realized that, I decided take a good hard look at the Pac-10 and make sure my assumptions weren’t completely out of whack. What I found was re-assuring (from my assumptions perspective). 3 teams are 0-3 and don’t seem to be getting any better: Arizona, Washingon and WaZoo. Now with 6 teams in the leaderboard mix with OSU added, there is only one team remaining: Stanford. Stanford is 2-1 and admitted seems to have righted and made seaworthy the ship that was holed, capsized and run up against a rocky shore in September. So why didn’t I add them to the list? Well, because the only team in the top half of the Pac-10 they’ve played is Oregon who is responsible for that ‘1’ in the L column. In the next 4 weeks they play ASU, UCLA, at USC, and at OSU. I really don’t see them winning any of those games particulary with how beat up they’ll be after USC and going on the road to OSU and ASU coming off a bye this past week.

But put this in your pipe and smoke it: Assuming Cal plays how I’d expect in the next three games (1-2) and Stanford loses at least 3 of their 4 games (which I’d go to Vegas with), the Big Game should be deciding who gets #6 in the Pac-10 between us. Now there is a reversal of fortunes!

In any case, here is the updated spreadsheet with OSU added which required adding 2 games to the matrix. I’ve highlighted in green what I think are the 4 most likely scenarios (scroll down to the bottom) and put the best scenarios for Cal at the top. Notice that the best Cal can do now is get in a 6-way tie for first place with all 6 teams having 2 losses. I don’t want to have to be the one to decide who goes to the BCS bowl in that scenario (although if it’s the same scenario as the old Rose Bowl rules it’ll be Cal (since they’ve got the longest streak of being unable to go).).

Warning: Following Cal football loses be on the lookout for fans suffering from “Crawford Cal-loss syndrome”. While not dangerous of its own right, when provoked, those suffering from this disease WILL react. Suffers can be identified by looking for overweight individuals not taller than 5′ 10″ and usually shorter than 5′ 7″ wearing significant amounts of Cal clothing and sweating profusely even on fog covered days while wearing shorts and t-shirts. Suffers tend to congregate into groups. The disease is contagious so watch for others congregating with the sufferers even when they don’t match the above description.

When you happen upon a group with individuals meeting this description first watch for signs of the disease. The first sign you’ll notice will be scowling faces and an uneasy silence. Also watch for angry and accusatory statements that occasionally puncture the silence. These comments are often responded to with further statements of disbelief and claims of athletic ability not present in the group (“Any of us could have thrown that pass” being a common example.).

Once you have identified the disease, it is important to know how to respond:

-Do NOT provoke them. Although they never turn physically violent, the verbal outburst unleashed upon you WILL make you feel violated.
-Do NOT ask them the outcome of the game. This warning can not be taken too seriously. Isn’t it obvious enough? Is it obvious NOW!?!
-Watch for flying objects. This warning should not be taken too seriously as most items thrown will be of the softer variety and unlikely to do any harm. More dangerous items, when thrown, are thrown with a surprising concern for other’s safety particularly considering the rage with which they are thrown.
-Keep all valuables out of reach. While the above warning is accurate, no regard is shown towards the value of items thrown. The next item hucked might just be your new cell phone. TV remotes are particularly likely candidates.
-Do NOT try to console them. Consoling will look like provoking to those with the disease.
-Make sure you fulfill all your responsibilities. Spouses that fail to walk fast enough or navigate the crowd well enough should most heed this warning. Bus drivers, concession stand workers and other game officials need also be concerned here.

Your best course of action is to give all sufferers of these disease as much conversational space as is possible. While there is no need to give physical space (sufferers are used to walking in crowded places) you should be quiet and focus on anticipating what will be asked of you next. Questions should be answered promptly, efficiently and unambiguously. Commands or requests should be acted upon immediately with military like precision. (Although a salute is not wise (see the warning about provoking) it is the appropriate mind set to be in.)

Finally, the key to surviving an encounter is to understand that, while the disease can take anywhere from two hours to 2 seconds to onset, once it has reached it’s peak, the disease runs it’s course very quickly and consistently. Instead of trying to conquer the disease, your goal should be to survive it. Once the sufferer has exited the stadium or turned off the television/radio, it will be no more than 30 minutes before suffers can restrain themselves when provoked (in most cases). Walking significantly helps reduce this amount of time as does reaching one’s car or even the bus that will take them to their car. By the time the sufferer goes to bed, the disease will have finished running its course (although you should probably read warnings about the far less dangerous but much longer lasting “Crawford Cal-loss hangover”.).

This concludes this public service announcement.

Man, these are so much easier when Cal wins…

First of all, I feel that is important to recognize an important rite of passage that occurred yesterday. Yes, my boys experienced their first heart-breaking Cal loss. It’s kind of like a circumcision: It hurts like hell but sooner or later (most likely sooner) it’s bound to happen.

After that, there are two words (besides heart-breaking) to explain yesterdays loss: Injuries and ineptitude.

Let’s start with the inepititude, shall we?:

When one person is responsible for 3 turnovers, I expect that person to do something to fix it. Going 13 for 39 ISN’T it! Simply stated, Ayoob isn’t a good quarterback. He has a lot of talent, but talent only gets you so far. What he completely lacks is the composure and the persistence that a good QB needs. In the 3rd quarter when things were looking easy, he completed a fair number of his passes. When things got dicey in the 4th quarter it looked like someone had greesed the football after giving Ayoob a mind-numbing concussion. We would have won this game with a good QB (not even a great one but just an acceptably good one). We lost it because Ayoob is mediocre at best and horrendous at his worst.

On to the injuries. Count them with me:

-3 offensive linemen
-Our best defensive lineman
-Our best running back (broken hand)
-The REAL starting QB
-A couple others I can’t think of

The reality was that we lost the line-battle on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball because of injuries. OSU was able to run the ball effectively because we couldn’t get the penetration to stop them. When they passed, we couldn’t get the pressure (consistently) to force bad throws. Offensively, OSU was collapsing our running holes better than anyone else has this season and it had very little to do with how good they were and everything to do with how bad we were. Cal just didn’t have the talent to get the job done. This was particularly painful considering that Ayoob couldn’t pass the ball and was worsened because he couldn’t get the time to throw, again because of our weak offensive line.

So that’s all she wrote folks. Cal is going to be in big trouble for the rest of the season until Lynch can get that cast off his hand and actually be able to hold on the the ball, at least one of the starting offensive linemen return plus we get Membane back on the defensive line. Right now I’m predicting a 7-4 season with wins over WaZoo and Stanford and losses to USC and Oregon, but am getting more and more worried about the Stanford game as Stanford has gotten their act in gear and is beating the lower teams in the Pac-10.

Update: The injury list was even worse than I thought:
-3 offensive linemen
-Our best defensive lineman
-Our best running back
-Our REAL QB
-Linebacker Abu Ma’afala
-Our two best recievers each missed half the game
-Our 2nd Tight End

Count ‘em: 10 of 22 original starters on the bench. You just can win consistently with that.

In regards to Cal’s loss to UCLA the writer says:

“Raise your hand if, down 12 points with 9:00 to go, you expected UCLA to punt on fourth-and-2 at its 42 Saturday night. Mike Nolan, please put your arm down.”

For those not in the know Mike Nolan is the coach of the 49ers. Hilarious!

OK, last week I wasn’t on top of my game. I think I was too wrapped up in the Cal vs. UCLA game to spend enough time predicting the other winners. But fear not, today we get things back on track:

UW 17, Oregon 34: I’m a little worried that I’m under appreciating an improved Washington team in this game but my instincts tell me that Oregon is going to walk away with this one, particularly at home. I was impressed with Oregon at ASU and have yet to be truly impressed with UW.

USC 42, Notre Dame 31: Up until last Saturday at around 8 PM I was rooting for USC to go undefeated until they reached Cal on Nov. 12th. I wanted it to be Cal with the shot at breaking the streak and to have a shot at the national title game by upsetting #1. Well, that’s all over now. Plus, I’m a closet Notre Dame fan and becoming more so every year I’m Catholic particularly when they’re the one Catholic University who seems to care about maintaining Orthodoxy. But alas, USC is just too good and will control the ball on the ground. They win this one after a slow start.

OSU 17, Cal 35: I feel sorry for OSU. They’re about to get spanked in royal fashion two years in a row. The only reason I’m keeping the score as close as I am is because I’m compensating for my bias. Sans bias-correction the score is 56-7, kind of like last year. The only place to worry about Cal in this game is that they may have a little more trouble than usual running the ball. OK, so it’s only 220 on the ground this week instead of the usual 220. I think only the red fog would be worried about that.

UCLA 24, WaZoo 17: UCLA is riding high after last weeks debacle in which their suspect team managed to sneak away with a win despite being man-handled for 85% of the game. A suspect the high will wear off poorly creating a monster hangover and they’ll overlook WaZoo. Sadly, WaZoo is that bad and won’t be able to pull off the upset no matter how much I’d like to see it.

Stanford 17, UA 20: This is a tough one but my heart tells me that Stanford’s win on the frozen potato patch was more an indication of the weakness of WaZoo than the resurgence of Stanford. Arizona on the other hand is getting better every week as witnessed by hanging with USC last week. Sadly both of these teams have trouble scoring, so the team that gets their act together in the 4th quarter will win it and I think that is Arizona.

Well that’s all folks, as ASU has a bye. Tune in on Monday for updated metrics and a more confident Bear’s fan.

OK, after writing up that big post about who will win what with certain wins I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to use a spreadsheet. So last night I created a spread sheet with the 5 teams and the 4 remaining games between them. I then did all the formulas to determine the place of each team (in blue) in all of those scenarios. The one downside is that it doesn’t attempt to calculate the winner in 3 or 4 way ties or to calculate the winner in 2 way ties where there is no head to head matchup. For those it just adds a “T-” to suggest that they’re tied for the position they have.

The best part is that it has a field for losses coming into these 4 big games and it will auto-recalculate the results when that is changed (the “rose” fields). So if you’re interested in seeing what the scenarios would look like if UCLA loses a game to WaZoo or OSU, you can increase their current loses to 1 and it’ll show you the scenarios based on that.

Here’s the link. You may need to turn off or turn down the security level in Excel so that it’ll use my calculation formulas.

A co-worker, who’s a Oregon fan, and I looked over the scenarios for the finish of the Pac-10 and what place teams are likely to get. This early in the season, one has to make some assumptions to be able to start this type of analysis, so I’ll list those assumptions first:

1. USC will beat everyone
2. Cal, Oregon, UCLA and ASU will not lose to any of the rest of the Pac-10.

With those assumptions, there are only two games left that matter:

Cal at Oregon on 11/5
ASU at UCLA on 11/12

Assuming my assumptions are correct, here are the final 2nd to 5th place standings based on the outcome of those two games:

Cal and ASU win (the above games):
4 way tie for 2nd with 2 losses.

Cal and UCLA win:
UCLA 2nd, Cal 3rd, Oregon 4th, ASU 5th

Oregon and ASU win:
Oregon 2nd, ASU 3rd, UCLA 4th, Cal 5th

Oregon and UCLA win:
UCLA and Oregon tie for 2nd (no head to head), Cal and ASU tie for 4th (no head to head)

Now, let’s remove some of those assumptions. First, everyone doesn’t lose to USC:

Oregon and ASU have already lost this matchup, so it is only Cal and UCLA who can accomplish this upset (Cal on 11/12 and UCLA on 12/3). If only UCLA beats USC, they at least share the Pac-10 title, even if they lose to ASU. Here is how the rest of it would work out in this case (now including USC):

Cal and ASU win:
UCLA 1st, USC 2nd, 3-way tie for 3nd (Cal, Oregon and ASU).

Cal and UCLA win:
UCLA 1st, USC 2nd, Cal 3rd, Oregon 4th, ASU 5th

Oregon and ASU win:
3-way tie for 1st (UCLA, Oregon and USC), ASU 4th, Cal 5th

Oregon and UCLA win:
UCLA 1st, USC 2nd, Oregon 3rd, Cal and ASU tie for 4th (no head to head)

If only Cal beats USC, things are just as confusing so I best repeat the 4 above scenarios with USC included:

Cal and ASU win:
Cal 1st, USC 2nd, and 3-way tie for 3rd (Oregon, UCLA and ASU)

Cal and UCLA win:
3-way tie for first (Cal, UCLA and USC), Oregon 4th, ASU 5th

Oregon and ASU win:
USC 1st, Oregon 2nd, 3-way tie for 3rd (Cal, UCLA 3rd and ASU)

Oregon and UCLA win:
USC 1st, Oregon and UCLA tie for 2nd (no head to head), Cal 4th, ASU 5th

The scenarios change yet again if USC loses to both UCLA and Cal but simplify to some degree. If this happens, UCLA again wins share the Pac-10 even if they lose to ASU, the the Cal at Oregon game will decide most of the rest. If Oregon wins, they tie UCLA for the title, Cal takes #3 over USC or is in a 3-way tie with USC and ASU, the second scenario being if ASU beats UCLA. If Cal wins, the ASU vs. UCLA game is irrelevant in all aspects as Cal takes 2nd, USC 3rd, Oregon 4th and ASU 5th no matter what the outcome of the game.

OK, on to the other assumption. Any of these top 5 teams lose one or more of their other games:

There are too many scenarios here to list if I am being thorough, so I won’t do that but what I will do is list the games that I think are the most likely upsets (in team order of likelihood):

UCLA: UCLA has a lot of weaknesses and I think is most ripe for an upset. One of their weaknesses so far is overlooking weaker teams (as noticed in the 21-17 come from behind victory over Washington). This makes next week’s late afternoon game at WaZoo somewhat troubling for them. They’re also on the road 3 out of the 4 next weeks, with probably the strongest of the 4 teams being the last (Arizona). OSU is also one of those teams that loves to play the upset, but they do have them at home. Overall, I’d say this team is the most likely to lose at least one to other teams (at WaZoo, OSU, at Stanford, at Arizona in that order over the next 4 weeks), but it is not clear which one is the most likely candidate.

ASU: ASU seems to have a real weak spot for rivalry games, particularly following a disappointing season. If they lose to UCLA, particularly in a close one, I’d say the Arizona game is almost worth betting on for the upset. Outside of that, they do have game against WaZoo on the frozen potato patch (WaZoo being only a handful of miles from Idaho) and the time is still TBA. A night game could be a real problem for this somewhat wimpy team. I don’t think the other games against Stanford on the road and Washington at home are likely candidates.

Oregon: Their “Civil war” rivaly game against OSU is a likely candidate and they do have to play a night game at WaZoo on the frozen potato patch. They also have an overlooked rivalry game against Washington. Seeing as how that last game is at home, WaZoo is looking REALLY bad and OSU is at home as well, I wouldn’t go to Vegas with the odds of an upset. Nevertheless it’s definitely an outside shot worth being concerned about.

Cal: Stanford is most likely one just because it’s the Big Game. That said, it should be an easy victory and I don’t think it’s likely that Cal will lose any of it’s 3 remaining games (OSU and WaZoo, both at home, being the other two).

USC: This team is just too strong to lose to any of Washington, WaZoo or Stanford particularly since the only away game is Washington. Of note for them is that they still have two non-conference games left: at Notre Dame and Fresno St. at home. While that doesn’t affect their Pac-10 standings, it is of issue with their pursuit of the national title.

So what does this all mean to Cal fans? Well, it means that we’re in general big fans of the upset! We should also be big fans of ASU (unless we lose to Oregon) because they’re the key to us keeping towards the top. Since ASU is a team that can sputter out, particularly after letdowns, we want them to finish out strong. Probably most importantly, we have to take care of our own business and beat a VERY tough Oregon team on the road. This is key. If we can do it, we can finishing close to the top and get a good bowl berth (at least the Insight). Finally, we can REALLY shake things up by beating USC. While I’ll keep that prayer alive, because it guarantees us at least the Holiday bowl (assuming we beat Oregon) and could give us a BCS berth by winning the Pac-10 (with an ASU over UCLA victory (and USC beating UCLA)), I’m not going to be talking up any trash between now and then.

OK, I don’t want to have to do this, but here are my updated metrics after and abominable 1-3 weekend:

The updated metrics are as follows:
Winning percentage: 78.2%
Margin of Victory Delta (MVD) average: 15.4 (adding 28, 13,32,11)
Total Points Scored Delta (TPD) average: 16.9 (adding 38, 21, 18, 3)

I called the USC vs. AU game pretty well but overscored the others besides Cal vs. UCLA which had WAY more scoring than I thought.

Well, I might as well get this out of the way while I’m still angry so that I don’t have to think about it later. Simply stated, the better team lost today. I don’t say that just because I’m a Bears fan but because the statistics back me up. Cal far outgained UCLA and played better for 85% of the game. But when you spot the opposition 21 points from special teams mistakes you’re going to lose. Let’s count them:

1. Punt return sets up a 1st and goal.
2. Punt return for a touchdown.
3. Punt team gives up a first down on a pathetic fake on the drive that gives up the go ahead score.

Add to the that the fact that Tedford seemed to completely forget what was working for him when he was in the redzone and in the 4th quarter. I’ve never been as disappointed with Tedford as I am right now because the keys to success should have been clear to him. His 2nd half play calling was pathetic.

Simply stated, the key to success was to force UCLA to respect the pass. In the redzone Cal didn’t do anything to force the UCLA defense to respect the pass. In the fourth quarter, Cal didn’t do anything to force UCLA to respect the pass. They didn’t air it out. They didn’t run any hitches or come-backers to the outside even though they had been working for them the rest of the game. What few passing attempts they did do were over the middle where the box was full of defenders waiting for a run play.

And that redzone part is particularly important. 4 field goals just isn’t going to get it done. At least one of those should have been a touchdown, a touchdown that would have given them the extra score to hold on to the win.

Finally, I can’t believe that Tedford called all passing plays on that final drive. Clearly he didn’t have confidence in Ayoob earlier in the quarter, why put the game in his hands at the most difficult time? This is particularly true because UCLA was in a prevent defense and both Lynch and Forsett could do a lot of damage getting into the secondary. They had two timeouts plus they’d be getting lots of first downs on running plays. You can definitely make that work with 1:35 left. The alternative is to let a player who’s never run a two minute drill throw an interception into a prevent defense.

One of the things that has frustrated me most about the Cal season to date is that every week has brought the “first REAL test”. I remember after the Sac. St. game hearing how we’ll fair so much worse against UW and that’ll be the “first REAL test”. After we demolished them, I heard all week about how weak UW was and that the upcoming week’s game against a rebuilding and getting better Illinois could be too much for Cal to handle. This will be Cal’s “first REAL test” they said. After that debacle was over, people pointed to New Mexico St. and that despite being 0-3, they were a pretty good team that would force Cal to struggle and that we’d likely give up more points than we should. While it wouldn’t be the overall “first REAL test” it would be the “first REAL test” for the defense. 60 minutes and two field goals later, all I heard about how Cal was FINALLY going to get their “first REAL test” against their first Pac-10 opponent (I’m not sure what they’re considering UW at this point). One shutout later, we bring ourselves to this week and everyone is talking about UCLA being the “first REAL test” for the Bears.

So here’s my prediction: Cal will win this game handily and the consensus will be that UCLA was over-rated and that they shouldn’t have got so much credit for beating Oklahoma, who were over-rated themselves. This will inevitably lead to the observers looking forward to Cal’s “first REAL test”, since obviously UCLA wasn’t it, further down in the season.