I was upset on Saturday and bitterly disappointed with the results of Cal football. It was oh so close for three quarters, and then they just kinda blew us away at the last. Sure, there's several places where it could have gone better, but we kept the USC offense out of the endzone for a large chunk of the game, and that's got to count for something.
Besides, there's a couple of things I've been thinking about. Between 1959 and 2001, Cal was really in contention for the Rose Bowl during two of those seasons (1975 and 1991). Since Tedford came along, we've been in contention twice in five years. So in some ways, Tedford is the victim of his own success. We whine about not winning the big ones when just five years ago, we couldn't beat Stanford once in seven tries. Forget about *being* in big games, we didn't have much success in the Big Game.
I was reading back in my journal in 2001, and found several comments of "well, another loss." About November, jokes were starting to be made about the "perfect" season. And then finally, the season ended on this note:
So...no perfect season
But we WON a GAME. Yeah! No more losing streak!
California ends the season 1-10, with their lone win over Rutgers. We beat 'em 20-10.
Now...would things have been different if we'd played this game September 15th as scheduled? A confidence booster going into the brutal Pac-10 schedule...who knows. But at least we avoided losing to Rutgers... :)
To go from that, to five years later feeling punched in the gut because we lost to USC with the Rose Bowl on the line? Holee crap, y'know? A bit of perspective, that's all I needed. And yeah. We were *UP AT THE HALF* against USC. We'd scored a touchdown and they hadn't.
We'll break through.
In the meantime, though...GO BEARS! BEAT THE TREE! My ticket's sitting right on top of my drawer thingy, and I ain't missing this for the world.
| Date | Opponent | Cal score | Opp. score | Cal total | Opp. total |
| 9/2 | @Tennessee | 18 | 35 | 18 | 35 |
| 9/9 | Minnesota | 42 | 17 | 60 | 52 |
| 9/16 | Portland State | 42 | 16 | 102 | 68 |
| 9/23 | Arizona State | 49 | 21 | 151 | 89 |
| 9/30 | @Oregon State | 41 | 13 | 192 | 102 |
| 10/7 | Oregon | 45 | 24 | 237 | 126 |
| 10/14 | @Washington State | 21 | 3 | 258 | 129 |
| 10/21 | Washington | 31 | 24 (OT) | 289 | 153 |
| 11/4 | UCLA | 38 | 24 | 327 | 177 |
| 11/11 | @Arizona | 20 | 24 | 347 | 201 |
| 11/18 | @USC | 9 | 23 | 356 | 224 |
| 12/2 | 109th Big Game v. Stanford | ||||
| TBD | Bowl Game TBD | ||||
| Total Wins | 8 | Cal Avg PPG | 32.4 | ||
| Total Losses | 3 | Opp Avg PPG | 20.1 | ||
