Well, the Bears finally showed up for their first football game.  Unfortunately, it took two games for that to happen.

The first series of the game had a “Tennessee” feel to it with the Bears going three and out and the Gophers taking advantage of poor pass coverage to turn a big play into a touchdown drive (at least this time the Bears tackled them before the endzone and they had to earn the last 20 yards or so).  After that, Tedford’s Bears finally took the field and although the game was tied up until the mid second quarter and in reach until the early 4th quarter, I had no doubt the Bears were going to win once Longshore marched the Bears down the field to tie it 7 to 7 and the defense stopped the gopher run game in its tracks on the following possesion.

I think the biggest revelation from this game is that there is no more quarterback controversy.  As I said in last week’s commentary, Longshore is still young and he needs time to mature.  Well, count this week as proof of his maturing… and fast.  He looked confident, he picked the right receivers, did a good job of avoiding the rush when he could and didn’t throw too many ill-advised passes.  Yes he’s got a ways to go, but he’s definitely on the “Tedford track” and I think he’ll be the quarterback we need.  Next week will give him time to refine his game for the ASU game in two weeks.

The second revelation is that this hybrid spread/pro offense can work.  While I don’t know that it is a improvement over the pure pro-set, it’s not a step back either.  We’ll be able to accomplish what we need with it.

The final revelation is that Syd Thompson is going to be OK at cornerback.  I was hopeful before the game that he too was on a learning curve and he proved it yesterday with solid play.

The biggest disappointment with the game was the penalties.  The players need to realize that it doesn’t matter what the other team does to you, you can’t retalliate.  It always seems to be the case that the retalliation is what gets the flag and this game was no different.  I still think the refs were calling a biased game and there were two or three plays where the Bears didn’t retalliate to plays that should have been called for personal fouls, but nevertheless, the Bears can’t afford to lose yards because of personal fouls.

While we’re on the topic of refs, that “blocking the punter when he’s out of the play” penalty was a J…O…K…E.  Are you stinking kidding me?  The guy was running straight at the play!  If Jackson had managed to elude the tacklers, that block on the punter would have been the difference between a TD and a 20-30 yard return.  That was by far the worst call by the refs.

So, what do we have in summary?  The Bears have a team that has a LOT of potential but is still young in a few more positions than they’d like.  I’m very hopeful, particularly with the schedule the Bears have (particularly remembering that ASU has a soft spot for flopping in Memorial Stadium) that the team will have the time they need to mature as the season progresses while still keeping the Bears in contention for a Rose Bowl bid.  The key games on the schedule still remain Oregon on October 7th at home and USC on the road on November 18th.

Well another week is done with in the Pac-10 and we’ve learned quite a lot.  We’ve learned that Stanford must be worse than Washington, being unable to beat lowly San Jose St..  (On a side note, we need to start a pool on just how many public California Universities Stanford can schedule before they win one.  You’d think after the UC Davis debacle last year, they’d be ready… so it looks like another year where they’ll likely lose to 3 public California Universities.  We know what would happen if they scheduled Fresno next year… what about Humboldt guys?  You might be able to beat them…)  But enough with what we learned, on to how good of a prediction guy I am:

If it weren’t for the rest of my predictions I would be dolling out a big dose of “I told you so” because of just how well I predicted the Cal game.  Was it not a game that the Bears stuck it to the Gophers?  The defense definitely stepped up as I suggested.  But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.  I’ll save the review for another entry.

For the rest of the games, I did a pretty good job with TPD, but not so much with margin of victory:

• TPD: 12.0 (down from 13.1 with scores of 18, 4, 5, 4, 24, 11, 9, 18 and 7)
• MVD: 19.3 (down from 19.7 with scores of 4, 32, 7, 35, 10, 25, 29, 24 and 7)
• Winning percentage: 75.0% (up from 71.4%)

So we can see why I suck at the Cal pick’em, because I’m having a bad year at guessing the margin of victory and hence can’t guess if the spread will be covered or not.  I’d be doing great if I was just picking the victor.

Tune in later today or tomorrow for the Bears Game Wrap up.

OK, after a mediocre first week, I think I’ll be back on my game this week:

Cal 31, Minn. 10:  I know people will think I’ve been eating some of the nasty pot brownies in Berkeley this week but bare with me.  This game is either going to be a statement week for the Bears or a nightmare.  The Bears have too much talent for anything in-between.  And I’m firmly on the Bears side.  Last week was a tough one in a tough environment.  At home against a less fierce opponent, I think they’re going to make a statement.  Longshore is going to get his act together and while I expect a few mistakes, he’ll abuse their defense for enough long plays to open up the running lanes for Lynch who’ll finish off whatever is left of the burrowing Gophers.  Add that to the fact that UM is supposedly an all ground-game team and the best part of the Bears game last week was their run-control (minus one play) and I think this is going to be a romp.  Heck, I’ve even scaled my official prediction back from the 42-3 game my heart tells me we’re in for.  So to recap: on Monday you’ll think I’m either a genious or a complete fraud.

OSU 28, BS-U 24: Good ol’ Boise St… this is a tough game for me.  The Boise boys play pretty well on their blue turf and I’m not sure what I think of OSU even though they took E. Wash. to the woodshack last week.  In the end, I’ve got to go with OSU.  I think they’re stronger than people give them credit for and Boise St. is on a down-trend.

Stanford 35, SJ St. 29: The question that’ll be on most Cal fans mind when seeing this match-up will be: who’s better UC Davis or SJ St.?  And while that is a valid question (SJ is the answer) I think the more appropriate question is who is going to take the doghouse position in the Pac-10 this year Stanford or Washington?  I think it’s a toss-up and their scores vs SJ St. will be the same.

WaZoo 38, Idaho 24: Ah, good ol’ WaZoo.  Fresh from their expected roll-over to Auburn, they get back to their normal ways to take on Idaho.  This game is the same every year: Idaho comes out and makes a statement to the overly-lax WaZoo “football” players.  But in the end, a Pac-10 team is just too good to lose to Idaho and WaZoo comes roaring back to win.

UDub 13, OK 20: I think people are expecting OK to blow away Washington and in a sense they’re right.  But this game is going to be slow with all of the stunted drives.  In the end, I think OK will slowly grind out a decisive victory, but a couple lucky drives by UW and a self-defeating OK offense will keep the score closer than the actual game.

UA 21, LSU 38: Arizona will do a pretty good job on defense in this game… in the first half.  In the end, they just won’t have the offense necessary to keep LSU off the field and no defense will keep LSU out of the endzone forever.

UCLA 45, Cream-of-Wheat… er Rice 6: Man, how did UCLA get the joy of scheduling these powder-puffs?  Did the WaZoo AD take a job at UCLA?  Particularly considering how UCLA stuck it to Utah and that Rice lost to Houston last week, this one is going to be a walk in the park.

ASU 31, Nevada 24: ASU had better be careful in this one.  Nevada may be just south of Idaho and you’d expect their two football teams to perform similarly, but you’d be mistaken.  Nevada won the WAC last year and challenged Fresno St. last week.  In the end I think ASU will win this one, but if they come in as rusty as they did against N. Arizona, this could be the upset of the week.

Oregon 38, Fresno St. 24: Fresno St. is one of those teams that lives off of Pac-10 upsets.  They always seem to be better in September when playing the Pac-10 than in October when they get to the heart of their WAC schedule.  Don’t forget that this is the same team that gave USC a scare last year.  That said, Oregon is just too strong this year and they are always immaculately prepared.  Bulldog stadium will have no effect on them and they’ll walk away with this one pretty easily.

OK, that’s all folks!  USC is on a bye this week.  Tune in on Monday for an update on on the Cal game and my prediction metrics.

A recent story has broke that HP spied on its board members to find who was leaking info to the press.  I’m very disappointed that it has come to this, but I think the story is being spun the wrong way by the very press that enjoyed the information it was getting leaked.

First of all, there is no excuse for “leaking” news.  If a board member thinks the news media should get some piece of information, then he/she should come right out and tell them.  And if he can’t because of non-disclosure rules and the board won’t let him, he should go to the press and make an announcement that the board is refusing to release important information to the press that he is unfortunately unable to tell them.

So in that sense statments in the article like:

“Speaking out is a time honored tradition in the age of ornamental boards,” McGurn said. “It’s something that management, and CEOs in particular, have hated — but they usually let it slide.” 

are complete bogus.  They have nothing to do with the situation at hand.  This was secretly leaking information not “speaking out”.  As such, I have sympathy for the HP board and none for the press.  But there is another half of the story: spying.

Just as similarly, the board should not have been spying on anyone in the company, board members included.  If they suspected that someone was leaking inappropriate information, they should go to the person, make the accusation, and go through whatever formal steps necessary to make a determination whether that person was indeed leaking information.

What this article and so much of the discussion surrounding corporate America seem to forget is that there is a HUGE difference between honesty and transparency.  The real goal should be honesty.  Transparency is only a substitute for honesty.  It’s a way to ensure that people are telling the truth because one can see the behind the scenes stuff to verify the information.

So the difficulty becomes, where does the stock market need to “force” honesty by requiring transparency.  I don’t have the answer to these questions as I’m not a financial guy.  But what I do know is that the fundamental problem is a lack of character that is most manifest in a lack of honesty.

And it bugs me that the company I work for, once a proud example of honesty and integrity, has a management team that with the exception of Perkins (who quit over the issue months ago) no longer appreciates those values on both sides of this dispute.

Well it’s official: Tedford is going to stick with Longshore for next week and will likely give Ayoob time late in the game, similar to Tennessee.

I think this is a good decision, although I’d like to see Levy replace Ayoob as the backup, although I guess it is reasonable to give Ayoob one more week.

My feeling, as I expressed in my Tenn. game review, is that Longshore is just young and at least has the potential to grow into a good solid QB.  Tennessee is a TOUGH place to start that growth process (and let’s not kid ourselves that last year’s 3/8ths of a game vs Sac. St. counts for anything).  I’m hopeful that he’ll do a lot better this week.

Ayoob on the other hand has gone through that growth process and isn’t going to improve dramatically at this point.  I was willing to believe that he could have made a dramatic improvement over the off-season.  I’ve seen it before, a weak QB figures it out once he has time to reflect on his mistakes.  But not Ayoob, not after Tennessee.  He was the same old Ayoob and I don’t think he’s improved any.

Which brings us to Levy.  Levy is our safe guy, he’s already proved it.  Safe however is not going to get us to the Rose Bowl.  So we have to look elsewhere until we have nothing better.  Elsewhere for right now is Longshore.

Taking a worst case scenario (both Longshore and Ayoob stink it up indefinitely), I suspect that Tedford will insert Levy into the mix after Minnesota.  Likely he gives Longshore one more start to get his act in gear vs. Portland St. but Levy will be up to taking snaps in practice over Ayoob and will mop up for Longshore.  If Longshore doesn’t turn the corner by then, Levy will get the start by the ASU game.

That’s what I’d do… and I’m betting that’s about what Tedford will do if we have to go down that road.  But here’s to hoping that Longshore is just young.  I’m pretty hopeful that by the time we meet ASU, he’ll be confident and in control.

Jason Kendall took his 10th plunking of the season last night in the A’s game vs. the Texas Rangers.  He was hit by a glancing blow just inside his arm on his back by an errant fastball.  That brings his career total up to 207 only 66 short of the career record.

That puts his current estimate for breaking the record at the 50th game of the 2010 season.

Way to go Kendall!

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!