As I mentioned early last week, I didn’t get to watch Saturday’s Cal game on Saturday because I was out of town.  That’s why my game summary post wasn’t up until Monday night.

But I wanted to make sure that everyone knows that my strategy for avoiding learning the score worked and I watch the game on Monday afternoon (TiVo’ed) completely unaware of the disaster that was awaiting me.  Make sure you review the strategy before you have to miss a game in the future.

OK, maybe I should say started Pac-10 metrics.

Well, this year I didn’t start out nearly as well as in the past.  My winning percentage in the first week was only 71.4% although I take some comfort in the only game I missed in which I wasn’t blinded by bias was the UCLA vs. Utah game, which I wasn’t very comfortable with not knowing much about Utah this year.

My margin of victory was also way out of whack generally expecting closer games than actually existed.  I was an average of 19.7 points off.

The only metric in which I had a reasonable shot was the over/under or TPD as I call it. Other than the USC blowout I did pretty well for an average of 13.1 points off.

Tune in late this week for week two predictions and updates on the Bears.

Ouch!  There aren’t many other words that more succinently state the feelings one should have after watching that drubbing.  This is also one of those games where it is hard to systematically approach the game because there is so much to discuss.  Well, let’s start with what the misconceptions will be about this game:

The first bit is that the game was as bad of a drubbing as it seems.  Really 4 of the 5 touchdowns were break-away plays, three of which wouldn’t have happened later in the season.  Syd Thompson is a YOUNG cornerback.  This game may have been completely different if we had Tim Mixon.  He wouldn’t have let those two breakaway passes happen.  Admittedly, Tennessee was still driving the ball well and may have gotten some of those points anyway, but you take away Syd’s two touchdown mistakes and the game is only 14-0 late in the 3rd quarter.  So the first falacy is that Cal was “blown away” by Tennessee.  No, Cal played a very mistake prone game.

The second misconception will be that Nate Longshore is a bad QB.  No, he’s just a young QB.  He was very hesitant and was clearly overwhelmed.  That’s a tough place and team to play for what is really your first game. So, while Longshore is no savior, he’s not chopped liver either.  I see promise in him.

OK, misconceptions out of the way, let’s get onto where the Bears truly are weaker than we hoped:

Offensive line.  I think we all forgot just how good last year’s line was.  While the line play today wasn’t horrible, we have to remember that the reason Lynch was able to abuse opposing teams last year had a lot to do with just how good the line was.  We can’t expect to be able to run against teams that can load the box and not worry about the passing game.  That’s basically what happened in this game.  And neither Longshore nor Ayoob really made them pay for doing so.  For us to be successful this year we’re going to need to keep defenses honest.  We just don’t have the offensive line to not do that.

Quarterback.  While it may seem odd to have this when Longshore was part of my misconception area but I think that it’s important not to go to the other extreme.  It seems that we don’t have a good QB yet.  We’ve got three choices:

1. Ayoob: Most likely to operate under pressure but also going to be very mistake prone and throw a lot of ill-advised passes.
2. Longshore: Young and hesitant
3. Levy: Gives the team an emotional boost and has that intangible quality… but let’s face it, he’s not our savior either.

My thought is that for the long term Longshore is the right guy.  Ayoob has no breathing room in my book and he showed that he’s the same QB who flushed last season’s promise down the toilet.  The number of ill-advised passes were far too many and he was also off-target on a number of other throws.  Longshore although young, will gain experience.  I think he’ll be able to grow into the role, but we have to accept that it is going to take a few games.  If Tedford can figure out how to put an end to “drop-itis” with the receivers and give Longshore a game plan that allows him to grow into the role, I’m hopeful by the ASU and Oregon games he’ll have matured a lot.  It’s a lot to ask of a young QB to go into Tennessee and perform.  Oh, and give the guy a break and don’t give him options to audible.

Speaking of which, I was very dissappointed with the coaching.  Tedford didn’t have a very good game plan.  He didn’t nearly enough stretch the field against a team that was just daring him to do so.  Also, he let Longshore die out there with all of the options.  I’ve never seen Tedford’s Bears so confused off the line and in a stadium like that you don’t give them the opportunity to be confused with audible options.

Looking to the future, I am still hopeful.  The only thing that was dashed with this game was Marshawn’s Heisman trophy.  Everything else, including a National Championship are still possibilities.  The Heisman is all about what people see on TV.  This was Marshawn’s chance.  He wasn’t able to make use of it.  But beyond that, are you honestly going to tell me that if they run the table and beat a USC team that’ll possibly be ranked #1 or #2 when we get to them in November (because they won’t have played anybody tough yet) that we can’t take their spot?  At some point the first game can become an aberation.

So what does it take for us to get that?  Well, it takes the team maturing.  They’ve got to do a little bit of it fast but after that they’ve got a few weeks before they’ve got to do the rest.  Longshore needs to get confidence and our cornerback opposite Hughes need to remember that there is nobody behind him.  I really think this team still has a lot of promise.  It just needs time to execute on that promise.  Thankfully, with the Gophers at home next week, I think a victory is doable.  After that we’ll have the time to mature before the tough games come later in the season.

I get all of my sports news from sports.yahoo.com.  I’ve found they’ve got a good balance of content and aren’t too intrusive with the ads.  Additionally, they get lots of great columns from various publications for their readers.

I’ve always liked both Dan Wetzel and Stewart Mandel, both who’s columns show up on sports.yahoo.com, but Stewart has been on fire this new college football season.  His top 20 reasons why college football is superior to pro football is awesome.  Add that to his great column on how to watch multiple games on one TV which I had previously linked to and his amazingly common sense column about the proper way to rank pre-season teams (a point that had bothered me before as well) and you’ve got the best columnist in sports.

Thanks for the great columns Stewart and keep it up!

Well, I didn’t realize that two teams were playing on Thursday night to open the season, so my first week predictions are going to be sans Oregon St. (who decimated E. Washington) and Arizona St. (who started slow but finally put N. Arizona away).  But for the remaining games…

Cal 27, Tenn. 16: This game is going to start out fast and furious but the defenses will adjust.  I expect to see two touchdowns out of Cal in their first few possessions.  After that, they’ll grind out a hard fought victory as their defense is able to handle Tennessee minus a couple break-away plays.

Oregon 31, Stanford 17: This game has a lot of question marks in it… but not so many that the final outcome will ever be in doubt.  Expect that Oregon, particularly at home, will just overwhelm Stanford and the only reason that the game will be reasonably respectible is because the Oregon defense is young.

Washington 35, SJ St. 10: Washington seems to be one of those teams that takes care of business when it’s taking care of business time and a serious choking hazard when the opponent is more reputable.  Seeing as how SJ St. is… well… how best to put this… a team that even Holmoe didn’t want to schedule any more, I’m pretty sure that Washington will do OK.  But don’t expect them to bust out the big numbers.

UCLA 17, Utah 24:  I think Utah is going to be a very tough team for a VERY young UCLA.  My only qualm with my score is that Dorrell seems to be a very good coach and gets the most out of his mediocre teams.  However, he lost his QB, RB and start TE.  That’s going to hurt.  Utah, after a rebuilding year, is going to be back on their game and one of the better non-BCS teams this year.  This is the game they need to prove that they’re back and I expect them to come out with all cylinders firing.

WaZoo 6, Auburn 45:  OK, I used to make fun of WaZoo for always playing weak non-conference games.  I take it back.  We’ve got to make a rule in the Pac-10 that they’re not allowed to play big conference teams from the East Coast.  They’re just going to make the Pac-10 look bad.

USC 24, Arkansas 13: Alright, I’m the first to state that USC isn’t going to be any good this year.  Depending on how this game looks, you may even see me pick Nebraska over USC next week.  However, Arkansas is still Arkansas and I don’t see them having the fire-power to beat USC particularly considering their one offensive strength (a power run game) plays right into the one solid, question mark free part of the USC team: their run defense.

Arizona 28, BYU 24: I think this is going to be a tough game for Arizona, even if “Lunchbox” graduated from BYU and will no longer “grace” their offensive line (see the 9th paragraph).  I think the Arizona defense will be the difference in this game and keep a potentially dangerous BYU team under control.

OK, that’s my predictions.  Unfortunately I haven’t had time to finish my “prediction challenge” website.  I’ll do my best to get it finished by week #2.  In the meantime, anyone who wants to put their predictions can do so in the comment box.  Because of the moderation feature I use, nobody will see your predictions until after the games are done since I’ll be out of town from basically now until after all the games are finished.

Check back early next week for metrics on the games and my wrap up on the Cal vs. Tenn. game.