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.

California politics just isn’t getting much press right now. But just in case my handful of readers missed it, the governor vetoed the illegal immigrants drivers license bill. From the article, I actually have sympathy for the bill’s author Gil Cedillo. Schwarzenegger could have been a lot more clear that he was going to veto the bill no matter what provisions were put in it. Instead he kept listing provisions he might be willing to sign a bill with and Cedillo kept adding those provisions to get the bill through.

Nevertheless, I’m glad this bill didn’t pass.

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.

…then read this article. There is no question that big unions like the CTA (see below) actively take money from their union members for political campaigning without concern as to whether the membership supports the idea and the only way to opt-out is to end their membership in the union. In the above example from the article, the CTA just assessed each member (and that’s every full time teacher in every California public school) $60 for each of the next 3 years to pay for political campaigning without a vote of the membership. The decision was made by the union officials. This increase will raise $50 million for political campaigning.

That suggests that there are about 270 thousand teachers in California. That seems little high to me… geez, I guess not. According to the CTA website, the “CTA represents more than 335,000 employees of California schools, colleges and universities”. Other sites suggest we credential about 30,000 new teachers every year.

OK, there are more political organizations that I don’t like than I care to count but there are a few that really go beyond the pale to truly piss me off. One of the first things one can do to get on my bad side is to blatantly lie or mislead. I’m not talking about supporting a position that I disagree with and calling that lying, I’m talking about saying things that are just not true. The second thing one can do is to constantly use distraction tactics to avoid a topic. You know, when some political issue comes up that affects a group, that group always re-directing it back to a different topic, possibly completely unrelated, that they feel they have more sympathy in regards to.

See I can take organizations like Planned Parenthood. They’ve got a simple goal, one that I happen to horribly disagree with, but a goal that they’re willing to publicize and argue on those terms. In their mind, abortion should be available to all, is not really a moral choice but a practical choice, and that children should be educated about every sexual practice available out there and free to experiment as they choose, once properly educated on the benefits and risks of each. They’re pretty honest that this is their perspective. As much as I think it is morally abhorrent, I can at least give them the credit of being honest human beings. Misguided and bent on a policy that will destroy millions of lives and harmfully affect billions of others but honest nevertheless.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) gives me no such room for honesty praise. They recently released a political add regarding proposition 74. For those not in the know, prop. 74 will increase the years of service required for tenure from 2 years to 5 years and will make it easier for schools to fire tenured teachers by allowing schools boards to fire a teacher after two consecutive unsatisfactory performance evaluations.

One can make arguments either way about whether this is a good thing. But the CTA has no interest in making an argument about the subject at hand. Here’s the text of the ad:

STEPHANIE FLOYD-SMITH, seventh-grade teacher: Governor, you’ve already broken your promises on education. Now you’re sponsoring Proposition 74, a ballot measure that allows one principal to fire a teacher without giving a reason – or even a hearing. While doing nothing to improve teacher training.

RENEE STEWART, elementary school parent: Parents like me are voting no on Prop. 74 to send the governor a message: Stop playing politics with our schools. And get to work on smaller class sizes, up-to-date textbooks, and restoring music and art classes – the things our kids really need.

You can see the video here (requires the stupid real player)

Let’s start with the blatant 100% lies, shall we?:

1. “allows one principle to fire a teacher”: No principle can fire a teacher. The school board must do that. (Of course a principles recommendation caries a lot of weight.)
2. “fire a teacher without giving a reason”: Performance evaluations, 2 unsatisfactory of which are necessary to fire a tenured teacher, by their very nature say what a teacher is doing well and doing wrong. Particularly since those evaluations would be used by the school board to determine whether to accept the recommendation of a principle to fire a teacher, if a teacher gets fired, those two evaluations will make it pretty clear what the reason is.

In fact the only thing that the first person says that has a HINT (and I emphasize HINT) of truth is the statement “or even a hearing”. But even that is very deceptive. Although it is true that teachers aren’t guaranteed an explicit “hearing” , they will have had their performance reviews with the principle, giving them a chance to make their case to the principle and most likely when the principle makes the recommendation to the board to fire the teacher, that process will occur in some forum that allows the teacher some input. So even in that one statement that is not 100% lying, it is very deceptive. Overall, they’re lying and there’s no other way to see it.

OK, on to the re-directing. The ad mentions the following “issues” that have nothing to do with prop. 74:

-“Governor, you’ve already broken your promises on education”: OK, so maybe he has. Does this measure have anything to do with those promises?
-“get to work on smaller class sizes”: Um, does this measure prevent smaller class sizes? Does it have ANYTHING to do with class size?
-“up-to-date textbooks”: Again, help me please, are we on topic?
-“and restoring music and art classes”: Still waiting…
-“the things our kids really need”: You forgot to mention food! Our kids need food! What is this ballot measure doing to help kids that starve? Don’t vote for this ballot measure because it doesn’t help one single starving kid!

I mean, all of those statements are just crap that have nothing to do with the ballot measure.

But my overall point is this: For crying out loud, make an argument against the measure! Is that too much to ask? Instead of lying about it and trying to re-direct to other issues, tell me what is wrong with this measure. Do we have great teachers who should be allowed to teach and shouldn’t be worrying about whether their principle likes them? That sounds like an argument you could make. But they don’t make that argument because they know that it doesn’t strike a chord with Californians who are sick and tired of bad public school teachers. Does the measure mostly impact new teachers who are the life-blood of the future of teaching and leaves the tenured teachers mostly untouched because of the lengthy evaluation process? That sounds like a reasonable argument. But that would piss off their existing union members that includes all the tenured teachers. Do you not like the measure because it affects the job security of your union members? OK, that is an argument that you could make (and it is the REAL reason they’re campaigning against it). But they’re not going to get sympathy for that from California voters who could only DREAM of having the job security that teachers have.

So, stuck without a good argument to make, they resort to lying and re-direction and that’s why I despise the CTA.

I finally saw Schindler’s List a mere 12 years after it came out in the theaters. I’ve been meaning to see this movie ever since it came out but wanted to be able to fully experience it by being ready for the graphic nature of the story and that moment never seemed to come, until last night when I got home from work and Wendy and the boys were still in Oroville visiting their Great Grandparents.

It was a very good movie and it is understandable why it won the awards that it did. It was far less graphic than I expected it to be from Holocaust perspective and much more graphic from a sexual perspective than I expected. There were way to many women in bed with exposed breasts. The Holocaust violence was well balanced in the sense that nothing was hidden but nothing was over “exploited” to pull on the heart strings. It was just raw. But again, there was far less of it from a number of minutes perspective than I expected.

I also thought that this was a two, maybe two and a half hour movie stretched to three plus hours. The beginning of the movie felt very surreal and didn’t do much to build up the movie other than to force the viewer to concentrate very intensely to try and understand what was being put together.

The heart of this movie doesn’t really kick in until the last hour although the preceding portions do a lot of necessary ground work the make the last hour have the impact it does. Particularly moving is the climax when Oskar realizes what his work had actually accomplished and as a consequence realized how much more he wishes he could have done.

If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is an important movie that touches on more than just the Holocaust but also the nature of oppression, suffering, opportunism, redemption and salvation.

I had a number of “out-growth” thoughts regarding the movie:

– Oskar in the end is made out to be the hero of the movie when in many ways he was a compromised soul going through the process of redemption. It makes me sick to think the far more holy soul Pope Pius XII is called “Hitler’s Pope” when he in fact saved far more lives than Mr. Schindler did while maintaining the moral high ground. For anyone who’s interested in reading another story of a man who is struggling behind the scenes to save as many lives as possible should read Hitler, the War, and the Pope.
– There is a great temptation amongst religious of all stripes to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. This is an understandable desire as there is so much temptation in the world that we’d like to avoid. However, it is only by operating in the world that we can do good for others. Oskar was definitely a man of the world. A man locked up in a monastery would not have seen what Oskar saw and would have been powerless to do what Oskar did. As it is said, we must live in this world but not of this world.
– On a completely different topic, it’s amazing how many movies use the same stupid tactics to entertain or make an impact. This movie definitely used the “wear the audience down before we hit them with it” technique and I think that’s why the movie was 3+ hours long. Other examples not in this movie include “add a heart string tug that has nothing to do with the plot”, “the obligatory happy ending”, “the comic relief character” and of course “the gratuitous sex scene” amongst others. In fact, I’d be interested to hear what other ones you guys could come up with for stupid techniques used over and over to try to make a movie good.

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.

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.