Well I’ve seen two games in person at Memorial Stadium in 2005 and neither of them have been pretty. Thankfully, both have been wins. Here’s my analysis of the 35-20 victory over Illinios:

The bears started this game on a good note, scoring a TD on a dominating first drive. Things were looking good! But then the Illini did the one thing they could do to win the game: control the ball. They went on a 6 minute scoring driving that mostly utilized the option. It was clear from the pre-game press conference quotes that Tedford didn’t quite know what to expect from Illinois. They had a new coach and are rebuilding. It was also clear 5 minutes into the game that Tedford hadn’t expected the option (for the football novices out there, the option is a run play that includes the possibility of the quarterback running the ball (it’s his “option”)). The Cal defense just wasn’t ready to face this archaic offensive (in both ways) play. Illinois used it all the way into the endzone to tie the game at 7 a piece.

The Cal offense came out for their second possesion VERY flat. Why, nobody really knows. It might have had something to do with the fact that they’re used to their defense getting them back on the field quickly, but instead spent a LONG time watching Illinois ground out that TD. It might be because Ayoob doesn’t think he looks as good in the blue home uniforms as the white away uniforms. No matter what the reason, 3 offensive plays (again, in both ways) later we were punting away. The worst part about this wasn’t the lack of scoring, but the fact that it only gave the defense a minute or two to talk over how it was going to defend against the option.

That allowed Illinios to grind out a second, option heavy, nearly 7 minute TD drive that lasted into the 2nd quarter. By the end of this drive the defense was looking really tired and possibly worse, really confused. Illinois was mixing in some creative passing plays to their already effective option attack and it all had the Cal defense scratching their heads.

This was the first moment this year I was worried we might lose. At all the other moments when the opposing team had scored or made good progress, I had faith that we’d make the necessary adjustments. This week, I just wasn’t so sure. While I had hope, we looked so tired. In addition, we were missing a lot of tackles. Our previous two opponents were much smaller teams. Maybe we just couldn’t bring down these big corn fed Big-10 conference (the name is no coincidence) players. Our only hope was a long offensive drive to give the defense time to rest and to talk about what adjustments to make.

1:34 seconds later, we were punting again and I was REALLY worried…

But then something happened, something that would change the game. Cal tried putting their pass defense guys on the line to bump the recievers off the line.

You see, the big wrinkle to the option that Illinois ran is that most of the time the option is run out of a run offense with, at most, 2 wide receivers. Illinois was running the option out of a 4 wide receiver “spread” offense. The Cal defense was respecting the pass threat and hence wasn’t putting the needed pressure to stop the option. But what Cal didn’t realize was that those receivers were mostly decoys and we didn’t need to give them that much respect. What we needed to do was play man-on-man bump-and-run pass defense and spend the rest of our energy stopping the option. Of the three remaining series that Illinois had in the first half, only one did they make any progress (it resulted in a field goal). It just happened to be the one that Cal tried backing off the tight pass defense.

So at half time, hope was on the rebound. While there were still many questioned to be answered, like where the heck our offense had gone and why did Ayoob suck even after they strong performance at Washington last week, there were many things to be hopeful about, like the fact that our run offense always is stronger in the 2nd half and that we finally seemed to have a hope in stopping the option. All that was needed was the right adjustments in the locker room, a good pep-talk and supportive fans.

And that’s exactly what happened. Halftime score 7-17, final score 35-20.

Looking forward, I still have lots of confidence that we’ll win our next two games against New Mexico St. on the road and Arizona at home. Neither of these teams look too intimidating and I doubt either will have a wrinkle that confuses us more than the option did. What was very clear in the too close for comfort victory over Illinois is that this team has a lot of talent. We had so many injured players on the sideline that we should have been asking FEMA to step in (not that it would have helped). But the backups played surprisingly well. You could tell that the team as a whole was very well rounded athetically and ready to make big plays. Additionally, my words last week about the strength of our running game and the value that has in the 2nd half proved to be true yet again and am sure we’ll use it to our advantage in the coming weeks. Finally, this team is learning something new every week and is getting better every week. My hope is that by the time we get to the meat of our schedule in October, we’ll be ready to stick it to them!

Go Bears!

Well, after solid performances by UCLA and Oregon, both beating teams in the top 25, they should join USC, Cal and Arizona State (who all won this week) in the top 25. I can’t think of the last time that has happened. We’re looking pretty strong as a conference! 8 out of the 10 teams won this weekend. In fact, even Arizon didn’t look bad seeing as how they played pretty well in their close lose to #12 Purdue. The only team that REALLY let the conference down Stanford who lost to the utterly pathetic UC Davis (see below for the ragging).

UPDATE: Yup, UCLA is 24th and Oregon snuck in at 25. Cal is up to 13th.

Well, it looks like Stanford has decided that they needed to replace Washington in the prestigious position of the Pac-10 toilet bowl because they STINK!

How can you lose to UC Davis? That’s just amazing to me. And it’s not like UC Davis is good, they were 0-2 coming into the game and a division II team that is just now making the transition to I-AA, which is well below division I-A where the rest of us play. UC Davis is so bad, they’re probably going to lose to Sac State (yeah, that team we spanked 41-3) in the Causeway bowl (or whatever they call it).

But if that wasn’t bad enough, 14 of the 17 points Stanford scored were directly from turnovers. Yes, you read that right, the offense only scored 3 points… Against DAVIS. And if THAT isn’t bad enough, Stanford only racked up a total of 180 yards… against DAVIS. And if you wanted to give some credit to the Stanford defense (they did score 14 points after all), they gave up 408 yards… against DAVIS. And if you wanted to think that Stanford started the game poorly or were unprepared for a certain offense/defense and just couldn’t recover, no they were up 17-0 mid way fairly late in the 2nd quarter. Then then allowed 20 unanswered points by DAVIS.

We’d better win the Big Game against Stanford this year. I won’t be able to sleep for a year if we lose to a team that got spanked by UC Davis.

Down in the Brave New World post, my brother took exception to the following line:

“Additionally you’ll get the “I’m a mom” homosexuals who intend to further manipulate the concept of a family to cater to their political agenda.”

He took exception to gay couples being able to be a family, pointing to an example of a family we knew well growing up that consisted of a gay couple and their adopted son.

The problem here lies in the English language’s ability to let terms morph dramatically and that as a result the terms have a lack of precision. What defines a family? What defines a mom? What defines a dad? What defines a parent? What is a child? I could have been more clear in what I was referring to in this post.

For my purposes, unless I state explicitly otherwise, when I refer to a mom or mother, I’m referring to biological motherhood. I also mean the biological father when I refer to dad or father. I also mean biological child when I refer to children. The parent term has a more loose definition in my book, referring to the person or people who care for a child in a custodial sense. Finally, when I say family I’m referring to mom, dad, and their biological offspring. This is what I intended in the case referenced above. I refuse to qualify these terms with things like biological. I think it is a shame that these terms have been abused to such a degree that the qualifier needs to be put on the natural case, not the un-natural case. Nevertheless these term are widely over applied and this is why I probably shouldn’t have used them in the above case without a qualifier, ridiculous though it may be.

Now, there are many families out there, but many of them deserve a textual qualifier. Adoptive families are still families, but a family that needs the qualifier ‘adoptive’. For some reason as a society we’ve confused qualifier with decreased value. This is simply not the case. Sometime in the last century or two we changed from dropping these qualifiers in casual conversation because of convenience or simplicity to dropping them because it “devalues” them. This should not have ever been the case. The world is full of less than ideal circumstances and we shouldn’t fault those who are doing their best in less than ideal circumstances (minus their fault in the situation being less than ideal). Just because there is a qualifier that defines their circumstance does not mean that the people are bad nor that they are doing a bad job in that circumstance.

But all of this does not take away from, and it’s time to get religious with this discussion, what God intended. God created the family (yes, the biological one) and intended that it was the mechanism by which children were created and raised. There is a certain connection that exists between biological parents and their children that does not exist otherwise. While this connection is not necessary to be able to be a good parent, it helps in the parenting process. There are certain values and perspectives that mothers bring to a biological family that fathers do not. There are also values and perspectives that fathers bring that mothers do not. While these perspectives are not absolutely necessary for a child to have good parents, they help a great deal.

It’s because of the above truths that traditionally, adoptive parents and other non-biological families have done their best to mimic, to the best of their ability, biological families. One of the things I respect about our gay couple friends who adopted a boy was that they adopted a boy who sorely needed adopting. They did their best with a non-ideal situation. I would argue that the adopted son would have benefited more by having similarly committed heterosexual parents, but again they were doing their best to be parents in a less than ideal situation. Nobody else was going to adopt that boy. In that sense, what they were doing was very noble.

But this is not what I was referring to in my previous post. I’m referring to people who purposely abuse the creation process for their selfish desires (i.e. so they can be the real parents, not just adoptive ones). There are so many examples here, from the fairly extravagant (like attempting to create a baby without a biological father or mother) to the fairly simple (like having sex with a complete stranger to conceive a baby) and everything in between (like Invetro fertilization for both heterosexual and homosexual couples with either anonymous or provided sperm). All of these things purposely thwart God’s desire and intent. This is not the case of making the best of a non-ideal situation, it’s a case of purposely subverting God’s will.

I compare our gay friends and their adopted son to a couple of nuns who adopt a boy. Though there was sin in their lives, they were doing a good thing by adopting a child who needed adopting. The same can be said of the nuns who adopt a boy (although one assumes and hopes that their sins were of a less sexual nature). One difference might be that the nuns would have likely preferred to find a good existing biological family (childless or otherwise) to have adopted the boy. Nevertheless, I have the same respect for both actions because they are both rooted in the desire to care for a child who is not being cared for.

I do not have the same respect for those who abuse the creation process for their own ends.

A reader writes:

What do you think about this? Something about it disturbs me.

I’ve been thinking about this issue for a while now (I’ve read a number of articles on it), so I have a lot to say about it. For starters, I liked the article. It was a very balanced one in a realm where balance is VERY rare. Many of the articles I’ve read in the past were too biased on either side to take an honest look at the future of the abortion catastrophe from this perspective.

As for the issues of artificial wombs and viability, I think that it holds much promise, but like every new technology is ripe with possible abuses.

Celebrities are already routinely inducing labor 4-6 weeks early to avoid stretch marks and the rest of the body altering aspects of pregnancy that can be minimized by shortening a pregnancy. These type of people will likely be the first on board to manipulate a natural process for reasons of vanity and self centeredness.

One can also imagine a world where lots of women who are unwilling to deal with the difficulties of a pregnancy are willing to give it a go if they can do it artificially. One wonders how someone who is unwilling to make the sacrifice of pregnancy is going to be able to make the sacrifices of motherhood.

Additionally you’ll get the “I’m a mom” homosexuals who intend to further manipulate the concept of a family to cater to their political agenda. The article even mentions research to create an embryo without a man being involved. Gee, I wonder who wants that? The artificial womb opens up the idea of a baby without a woman involved too. Ugh.

And from a Catholic perspective (and some Protestants I’m told), the continued trend of people “playing God” and excessively manipulating the life creation process to be able to conceive a child when they were unable to do so naturally, will only get exacerbated by the creation of an artificial womb.

But even with all of these potential abuses, the artificial womb could do much good. Babies like Susan Torres, the daughter of the comatose woman who was kept on life support as long as possible so that the baby could be born and have a fighting chance, but ended up dying in the end, may have better success at a sustained life. There are a number of scenarios I can think of where this can be very beneficial without any moral questions.

As for abortion, I think it is a red herring solution from the perspective of women choosing this over an abortion. Women who get abortions are looking to avoid shame and to forget. Putting the baby up for adoption isn’t a “viable” option for most who get abortions because it both doesn’t avoid the shame (because everyone knows you were pregnant) and makes it hard to forget because your child is out there somewhere. The artificial womb does not solve the problem of the child being out there somewhere. That child may try to come and find you some day. It makes it hard to forget.

As well, while science continues to amaze me, I suspect it’ll be a long time after we can create a pregnancy in an artificial womb before we can TRANSFER a very small fetus from a natural womb to an artificial one. Fetus’s are very delicate and we’d have to figure out how cut the umbilical cord and re-attach it to the artificial one. This would make it so that a woman would have to carry the child for a number of months, probably past the point of the pregnancy showing (a key moment to avoiding the shame).

But all of these factors should not stop us from embracing the technology. I think the underlying theme of the article was that embracing these technologies will be the key to getting beyond the current “stalemate”. Said another way, whoever is able to effectively embrace the technology and use it to their advantage (whether that be continuing down the road to objectifying life or towards having a great respect for the value of life by going to amazing ends to save it) will likely be the victor in this war. I’m not sure this is the case, but I think it is a reasonable assertion to test out.

To sum up, I’ll quote what I think is the key admission in the article to why this provides promise to the pro-life movement:

“Many pro-choice women, like me, have been deeply disturbed by ultrasound scan photos that show fetuses, at earlier than once thought periods of gestation, sucking their thumbs, appearing to smile and otherwise resembling a full-term baby.”

Those same people (I’ll include men too) will be awful disturbed to know that the baby they’re allowing young women to flush down the toilet could be saved, without them “forcing” a pregnancy on those same young women. While the young women may not be sympathetic to that logic for the reasons stated above, it could, along with further progress in early viability, help turn the tide on this very important issue by forcing many to admit that the current lack of substantial limitations on abortion is treating life far to casually.

To use this technology to that advantage, we must embrace it, lest it be used against us.

I don’t think anyone will be sad to see it go… However read the story.

Funny stuff.

For those too lazy to click: “Pope Benedict, Successor to the Prince of the Apostles and College Football Expert, moved quickly to quell general fan nervousness about the legitimacy … of the new pollsters.”

In a world where a Catholic education contains less and less Catholicism, I thank God for Notre Dame when they create comercials like this (link points to both a 30 and 60 second version).

Now if we could just work on that tuition…

I was out of town this weekend, but thanks to the miracle of Tivo, I was able to watch the game Sunday evening (and in 2:30 as well). It’s never the same to see a game on TV as it is in person because so much of what is really happening is off screen, but I feel I can give a reasonable analysis of the Bears performance and the outlook for the future.

First, the most important thing we learned is that Ayoob is going to be just fine as a QB. Some try to suggest he had a slow start, but going 0-3 on your first 3 throws is not unprecedented and two of the throws were pretty respectible but dropped by the WR’s. The interception was just bad luck on a bad bounce (on an admittedly underthrown ball). 17 for 27 and 4 touchdowns (and just the one interception) is pretty good. In fact, in my opinion, he looked even better than those numbers. He had great mobility in the pocket, escaping a number of would be sacks, and made good decisions.

Next, the running game looks to be a lot like last year, Marshawn Lynch or no Marshawn Lynch. Nobody can debate that Lynch is a great RB in the making, but I was pretty impressed with the running games of both Forsett and O’Keith. As with last year, the strong offensive line only gets stronger as the game rolls on, opening up big running lanes for our backs. This was a key to last years success because it allowed us to control the game when we were ahead and to force the opposing defense to give up big plays in their attempts to stop us from pounding our way back into the game when we were behind. I think this will be a key to success again this year and I’m very optimistic about it after Saturday’s performance. I mean, we were just trying to grind out the clock and ended up running it in for a couple more touchdowns.

As well, the run defense of the Bears looks VERY strong. Everyone was worried that they’d be the weakness of the defense this year, but after the last two games of giving up about 75 yards each game, I think they’re going to be more than OK. In fact, I’m more worried about our supposedly stout secondary than I am about the run defense. As much as they’re pretty good 90% of the time, that other 10% they seem to give up some pretty big plays.

So, with all of that positive news (minus the shakiness in the defensive secondary), what’s the outlook? Longterm it is hard to tell, but I can assure you the next few weeks look pretty good. Any team that has trouble against Rutgers and takes a while to get rolling against San Jose St. (both at home I might add) is going to be just about as good as Washington… yeah that team we just laid the wood to. So next week at home should be a victory against the TKO’ed (as in fighting poorly) Illini. The following week we’re on the road against New Mexico (it appears we can’t field two football teams in this state) State. That should be a bloodbath of epic proportions. They’re 0-2 right now losing to UTEP and getting spanked by an unranked and supposedly mediocre Colorado. Finally, three weeks from now we’ve got Arizona at home who’s loss to Utah was pretty weak and their victory over Northern Arizona was nothing special. Again, this team is probably not much better than Washington.

But the big question mark for the future is: Just how bad is Washington? Everyone knows that Washington is picked towards the bottom of the Pac-10 this year, but are they just ordinary Pac-10 bad or are they extrodinarily bad? If they’re just ordinarily bad, then the outlook looks good. Every Pac-10 team is strong enough that when you blow them out, it’s a positive sign. However, a couple times in a decade, you get an extrodinarily bad team, one that blowing them out doesn’t mean much.

That is what could make Saturday’s victory less convincing than it seems.

I haven’t found a way to get minutes or summaries of committee actions yet so I haven’t been able to get a definitive answer to whether the timing of the legislature passing these bills is suspect. That said, if one looks at the history of the driver’s license bill, one can see it was sitting around in committee for a long time and then was sent to the assembly floor on August 29th. Lest anyone need reminding, that’s the day Katrina hit and is the same day the gay marriage bill made it out of committee.

Also of note, Mark Leno, author of the gay marriage bill , and Patty Berg, author of the donor legislation (AB 849) that was used to resurrect the original legislation (AB 19) are both on the Assembly Appropriations committee.

OK, nobody seems to be reporting this (both the Sac Bee and the SF Chronicle didn’t have it on either their front or politics pages), but the California legislature wasn’t slowed down in their desire to usurp the will of the people by Governor Schwarzenegger’s promised veto of the gay marriage bill.

Late last night the Assembly passed the Illegal Immigrants Drivers License bill. Don’t believe me? Not see it in any of the papers? Well, take a look at these links:

AP artcile on the subject
The actual vote from the assembly floor
The overview of the bill’s state (Note that some of the stuff updates more slowly than other parts, so the history doesn’t reflect last night’s vote while the votes at the bottom of the page shows the vote.)

It’s good to see that the legislature is continuing on their “under the cover of Katrina” strategy to ram their VERY unpopular (you know, so unpopular that it is partially credited with Gray Davis’s recall and undoing it was the first action of our new Governor) bills down our throats.

This is just ridiculous.