OK, continuing on my quest to prove I’m very good at predicting winners in the Pac-10, here are my picks for this upcoming weekend:

USC 49, UA 17: I can’t see Arizona getting blanked two weeks in a row. I bet they’re able to put up some points but will be completely overwhelmed by USC in the end.

Stanford 24, WaZoo 38: OK, if this game were at Stanford, I might be tempted to think that Stanford would start to get it’s act in gear against a very suspect WaZoo team. Alas, that won’t happen this week up in the frigid Washington plains. I think the Stanford offense will finally make some progress against a weak defense, but will be unable to slow WaZoo down enough to win this one.

Oregon 24, ASU 42: One of the bigger weaknesses of Oregon is their inability to slow passing games down. Everyone thinks they’re suspect against the run but that’s just because they got schooled by USC in the ground game. ASU will walk away with this one because of their potent passing offense easier than they should because these teams are more evenly matched than the final score will indicate.

Cal 35, UCLA 13: Everyone I’ve talked to who wears Blue and Gold on Saturdays is worried about this game. Let me let you in on a little secret: they’re fools. There are three reasons. 1. We have a direct comparison point for these two teams in that they’ve both played UW. Cal absolutely demolished UW (56-17) on the road. UCLA had to pull out all the stops to just barely sneak away with a come from behind win (21-17), and this is the important part, at home. OK, but what about Oklahoma? you ask. That brings me to point #2. Oklahoma S… U… C… K… S… with a double capital S. This is a team that lost to TCU, barely got their act together against Tulsa and then loses to UCLA. Is there something I’m missing here? Why is this the big win that everyone is pointing to for UCLA? This is a case of an over-rated team on the way down still getting credit for their overly high rating. UCLA didn’t prove anything by beating them. Which brings me to point #3, strength of schedule. Everyone loves to pick on the Bears weak schedule. OK, I’ll admit it’s been weak to date. But what everyone overlooks is how weak UCLA’s schedule has been, highlighted by an over-rated Oklahoma. Let’s compare schedules shall we? The bear beat New Mexico St. Would you say that they’re about as good as San Diego St.? I’d say so. The Bears beat Illinois? Would you say they’re as good as Rice? I’d say better. The bears beat Arizona. Would you say they’re as good as Oklahoma? Maybe not, but they’re at least in the same ballpark being in the lower half of their comparable conferences. Seeing as how San Diego St., Rice and Oklahoma are the opponents that UCLA has faced (outside of UW which we’ve both faced) I can’t say that UCLA has had a tougher schedule. All in all, the Bears defense will show what kind of hack offense UCLA really has and the Bears passing game will continue to improve to compliment it’s incredible running game.

All right, another game in Memorial Stadium and another victory!

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it before on this blog but I took my son Gregory to the 2003 Big Game for his first game when he was 3 months old and he’s attended every home game (minus last year’s ASU game which was a night game and the opening game this season because he had the flu) since then and he’s NEVER experienced a loss. If Cal were some perennial powerhouse that would be one thing, but the Cal undefeated home stretch (including games at Stanford as “home” games) only started a couple weeks before Gregory’s first game against the routinely week Arizona. We would have beat them anyway. But the moment I start taking my son, we start winning. Need I say more? My boy is the best good luck charm money can buy (don’t worry, he’s not for sale). To sweeten the pot, when Gregory had the flu my younger son Andrew went to his first game at 7 months old (yes, I take BOTH my now 8 month old and 2 year old boys to the game), to ensure that the Crawford boy good luck would be maintained. It’s clear after 3 home games that he has the good luck as well. I hope my point is obvious by now: the USC game is coming up in a month. I think it is clear that we, as the Cal faithful, need to make a group effort to make sure my boys are in good health and able to attend that game if we hope to win.

In any case, back to Saturday’s victory.

Cal looked more polished this week than they have all season. Ayoob looked comfortable, threw a number of good passes and made very few mistakes. The running game looked as strong as ever even when Arizona put what looked like 14 defenders in the box (those were some big guys!).

But what was truly impressive was the play of the defense. These guys were on fire and I was particularly impressed with the secondary. They were hit with a few pathetically bad pass interference calls (one was so bad that I couldn’t help myself from yelling out despite the fact that there was a sleeping 8 month old in my lap. I mean come on, he didn’t even touch the player. What, did he interfere the ball?) but were completely undeterred from making good plays. In fact the goalline pass interference call seemed to provide the ammunition for the shutout maintaining stand. Speaking of which, the run defense was as good as ever and did a very good job of adjusting between the pass and rushing plays as well as wrapping up players, a weakness in previous games. Additionally, they really did a good job of making sure every play was disrupted right from the get go.

The big weakness for the team was the deep pass. Ayoob’s touch on long passes still isn’t there. Early in the season he was skying his short passes and under throwing the bombs. He’s solved the short passes but is now overthrowing his VERY speedy receivers, which is surprising and in an odd way impressive. The score easily would have been 45-0 if he could have completed the long passes to open receivers which made up about half of his incompletions.

I guess there is one other area that has been a little suspect and that is the kickoff/punt return teams. They’ve been giving up too many big plays and not keeping their lanes to prevent the big runbacks. They also seemed to have trouble wrapping up players. This area wasn’t horrific, but in a tight game could become an issue.

Overall this is a team that is starting to click and one that will only continue to get better as they work out these last few issues. Along those lines, I have every reason to believe that they will work out these issues as every game to date the Bears have shored up the biggest weaknesses from the previous game without losing anything in other areas. Tedford said in his press conference that long passes and special teams were the two areas of concern. Consider it done.

Finally, Ray Ratto in his traditionally jovial way pointed to Tedford’s continued dissatisfaction with his practice facilities, particularly with having to have the whole team practice on one field. To quote the article: “a not-entirely-subtle advertisement for Tedford’s Web site, ineedanewpracticefacilitysoondammit.com”.

For all of you more wealthy Bears fans, that domain name is still available.

OK, another perfect weekend: 5-0. I feel pretty good about my picks and my margin of victory picks were darned good with the exception of ASU giving USC a bigger scare than I thought. I still continue to, on average, under estimate the amount of scoring that’ll happen. I think I’m giving Pac-10 defenses too much credit!

The updated metrics are as follows:
Winning percentage: 89.5%
Margin of Victory Delta (MVD) average: 14.2
Total Points Scored Delta (TPD) average: 16.2

I’ll give picks for this upcoming weeks games on Friday:
-Cal at UCLA
-Arizona at USC
-Oregon at ASU
-Stanford at WaZoo
(Both UW and OSU have a bye)

Everyone who knows me knows that I love metrics to measure things. So here’s my past Pac-10 picks and their accuracy based on 3 metrics:

Winner (percentage)
Margin of Victory Delta (average), MVD
Total Points Scored Delta (average), TPD

So here are my past picks:
(format is: my picks -> actual score: metrics)

Last week:
Cal 56, New Mexico State 7 -> Cal 41, NMSU 13: MVD=21, TPD=9
Washington 17, Notre Dame 35 -> UW 17, ND 36: MVD=1, TPD=1
USC 42, Oregon 31 -> USC 45, Oregon 13: MVD=21, TPD=15
ASU 41, OSU 20 -> ASU 42, OSU 24: MVD=4 TPD=4

2 weeks ago:
OSU 20, Louisville, 24 -> OSU 27, Louisville 63: MVD=32, TPD=46
Cal 45, Illinios 20 -> Cal 35, Illinios 20: MVD=1o, TPD=10
UCLA 20, Oklahoma 24 -> UCLA 41, OK 24: MVD=21, TPD=21
WaZoo 49, Grambling 31 -> WaZoo 48, Grambling 7: MVD=23, TPD=25
Oregon 28, Fresno 20 -> Oregon 37, Fresno 34: MVD=5, TPD=23
USC 42, Arkansas 13 -> USC 70, Arkansas 17: MVD=24, TPD=32
ASU 35, Northwestern 17 -> ASU 52, NW 21: MVD=13, TPD=21
Stanford 38, UC Davis 10 -> Stanford 17, UC Davis 20: MVD 31, TPD=11
Arizona 14, Purdue 28 -> UA 24, Purdue 31: MVD=7,TPD=13
Washington 35, Idaho 24 -> UW 34, Idaho 6: MVD: 17, TPD=19

Total metrics
Winner: 85.7%
MVD: 16.0
TPD: 18.5

So, while I did a pretty good job of picking the winner, the victories were usually bigger than I expected which hurt both my margin of victory and toptal points scored. I was surprising accurate at getting the losers score.

We’ll see how I do this week! Tune in Monday for results.

So a friend of mine at work and I have been making picks for the Pac-10 games of the week for the last couple weeks. I figured I’d start making those picks more public so that Brian can pick on me and then be humiliated later.

Here we go:

USC 49, ASU 20: ASU is one of those teams that can light it up when it doesn’t matter but never seems to have the defense to win when it matters. The LSU game a couple weeks ago is a perfect example. Everyone remembers last year how they choked (and I mean CHOKED) against both Cal and USC. Expect the same this year against USC.

WSU 20, OSU 28: This is the game I’m least sure about. WSU, from now on referred to as WaZoo, has killed all of their opponents to date but when the strongest team on the list is Idaho, what does that tell us. They’re even more untested than Cal. OSU on the other hand has been beat around by a couple of good teams and pulled out a tough win against a under-rated Boise State. My gut says the battle tested team wins this one, especially at home.

Oregon 49, Stanford 17: This is probably the easiest game to pick if it weren’t for both the “redemption” factor and the crushing defeat factor. I’m not even talking about Stanford. Oregon doesn’t do well after a crushing defeat but somehow I think the UC Davis wannabees… er Stanford can have any motivation they want and still lose this game.

Arizona 13, Cal 38: This is Cal’s warm up game of the season. Yeah we’ve played powder-puff teams for 4 weeks but they week we only have to play a gravel-puff team. Cal may be a little slow out of the gate on this one, but runs (literally) away with it in the end.

Washington 13, UCLA 24: I so desperately want to call the upset here. UCLA’s ranking is all predicated on their big upset of Oklahoma but THAT’s all predicated on Oklahoma actually being an upset. People seem to forget that the only reason Oklahoma was ranked was because of pre-season hype. They’ve done literally NOTHING this season to justify any ranking. Washington on the other hand, looked fairly strong last week against Notre Dame. So this feels like an upset in the making. But, seeing as how Washington got spanked by Cal, my gut tells me Notre Dame is overrated and the game is at the Rose Bowl, I don’t see this being the week it’ll actually happen.

OK, I’m 12-2 to date (4-0 last week and 8-2 the week before (stupid Stanford and Oklahoma…))

While there shouldn’t be any confusion where my primary college football loyalties lie, but ever since I’ve become Catholic, I’ve had a secondary affinity for Notre Dame football. Stories like this only reinforce this.

If my memory serves, Weis is a former Notre Dame player and from a generation where the majority of players were Catholic. I suspect he is Catholic as well. I think that will be good for the team both on and off the field. One of the things that I believe made the team strong in the past was their shared faith. Weis would do well to restore that legacy.

I didn’t travel all the way to New Mexico to watch Cal spank New Mexico State but I did watch it on ESPN. Here are my comments on the game:

First, I want to start by saying how high the expectations we all have for Cal. We’ve played 4 games and had 4 victories with a combined score of 173 to 53 and there hasn’t been a single game where Cal fans haven’t been disappointed. In many senses this is a good thing as it encourages the team to strive for more and will help them be ready for better teams. On the other hand, nobody should panic. This team is still pretty good.

The two big surprises were the amount of offense, particularly in the running game, that NMSU was able to generate and the amount of miscues on special teams. For the defense, it is clear that Cal still hasn’t figured out how to successfully defend against a spread defense. I’m glad that we’ve had so many recent games against spread offenses because it will help us later in the season when we have to face Oregon and Washington St.. As for the special teams, it has been very strong to date and I’m going to chock it up to a lack of intensity. Hopefully it’ll be a learning experience.

The offense is starting to click better and better and Ayoob is steadily improving. He’s been particularly good on the road which is hopeful for that first big challenge at UCLA in two weeks. The running game we have is just AWESOME and will give our passing game many more opportunities as teams try (and I emphasize try) to shut down the run game.

In summary, I don’t think we learned much from this game. While this was probably a good game for the coaching staff to be able to have more game film to look at as to how to better improve against the spread offense and how to continue to help Ayoob and the offense as a whole improve, I don’t us fans had much to learn from here as to help us understand how we’ll perform in the future. I still expect us to be able to handle Arizona (but don’t let the players know that), making our big first test be UCLA on the road in two weeks.

Have I mentioned that I’m loving this week so far?

In any case, ESPN does a weekly worst list for college football. Guess who the new addition to the list is this week… That’s right, coming in at #5, the only team on the list with a victory, STANFORD!

Here’s the text explaining the pick:

No need to bring in a Stanford graduate to calculate this week’s No. 5 spot. Even those of us without that lofty sheepskin could figure this one out. Stanford’s 20-17 loss at home to UC Davis makes the Cardinal’s selection a no-brainer. The Aggies, who are in the third year of transition from D II to D I-AA, held the Cardinal to 180 total yards and no offensive TDs in Walt Harris’ home debut. Stanford lost to a team with only 35 scholarship players and a team that had already lost to New Hampshire and Portland State. Ouch.

The whole article can be found here

Many have heard my description of the Stanford mascot. Many have disbelieved it is as bad as I say it is. Now I’ll prove it! But before I do that, a little background:

See, Stanford’s team name is ‘The Cardinal’. Notice that there is no ‘s’ on the end of that name. It’s not ‘The Cardinals’ as in the bird. No, it’s ‘The Cardinal’ as in the color. You know, cardinal red. The color that people who vote in papal elections wear. Yeah, ‘The Cardinal’.

Amongst all the downsides of having a team name of ‘The Cardinal’ is the problem that their mascot can’t be a direct representation of their team name. What, are they going to run around with a red piece of paper? Or maybe they could steal a red Mitre (the hat) from a Cardinal of the Catholic Church. Faced with these options, the Stanford “faithful” decided, at the same time they picked the team name I might add, to go a different direction entirely. Stanford resides in the town of Palo Alto. Palo Alto means “tall tree” in Spanish. So the mascot for ‘The Cardinal’ is a tree.

And if that isn’t bad enought, it looks like this:

Why didn’t I buy a bunch of single game, general admin tickets to USC vs. Cal? General admin seats are going for $100 a seat right now on EBay! Those tickets only cost $15 at the box office and I could have gotten as many as I wanted as a season ticket holder. Any idiot should have known that those tickets were going to be worth at least $40. I can’t think of many investments that would get me a 250% return at a minimum and a 650% return as it stands.

Although they haven’t been bid on, some people think they can get about $250 a seat for tickets about where my tickets are… $250 * 5 = $1250… hmmm… that’s pretty tempting… nah… NO TICKETS FOR YOU!

However, if you’re REALLY nice to me, I MIGHT just be able let a REALLY SPECIAL AND LUCKY FRIEND use the ticket I have that is for my 8 month old son. Kids younger than a year don’t need a ticket. We got it so that we’d have extra space to spead out and wouldn’t need to possibly move seats next season when he’s old enough to require an extra seat. If you’re EXTRA generous to me (did I mention I have a birthday coming up…) I might be able to squeeze you in.