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Cal football: Another opinion
By Jonathan Okanes
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm in off-season stuff.
The Sporting News college football issue is out and it has Cal ranked No. 21 and picked to finish third in the Pac-10. That’ s a bit lower than the other major publications that have released their annual preseason predictions. Interestingly, it has Oregon State ranked 16th but in fourth place in the conference standings. Oregon is ranked 7th and USC is 4th.
The Sporting News also apparently isn’t as high on Jahvid Best as some of the others. He’s not listed among the top eight preseason Heisman Trophy candidates and is a second team All-American behind Oklahoma State’s Kendall Hunter and Georgia Tech’s Jonathan Dwyer.
Cornerback Syd’Quan Thompson is listed as a second team All-American.
Best, Thompson, defensive end Tyson Alualu, linebacker Michael Mohamed and punter Bryan Anger are picked to the All-Pac-10 team. The magazine lists Oregon State’s Jacquizz Rodgers as the conference’s “most elusive RB,” not Best.
The Sporting News also projects Cal to play in the Las Vegas Bowl. It lists quarterback commit Austin Hinder as one of the next top 100 players to watch after its high school All-America team. Linebacker Jarred Price is picked as one of the nation’s top junior college transfers.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
No wonder the Sporting News is such a stellar publication. Kendall Hunter over Jahvid Best? Who the hell ever buys that rag?
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
makes for great kindling during those cold football saturdays.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Being a for-profit publication I have to imagine that SN will cater to it’s circulation base. Perusing their media kit I could not find any geographical distribution, but I did find other statistics. One telling statistic is that only 18% of their readers graduated from college.
Do not expect me to go on a diatribe about ‘uneducated readers,’ rather I would look at college fan base composition. I would say that Cal’s fan base is largely composed of alumna, relative to say USC, or Texas, who will have a strong regional non-alumna fan base (speaking in percentages). Sadly, most San Diegans will by default root for USC (including my Uncle who can rationalize a regionally motivated love of USC with an ethnically motivated love of Notre Dame [he roots for the away team if you are curious]).
The implication here, I would say, is that the crafty Ed’s at SN recognize who their readership is: 25-54 yr old males whose college football allegiance is based on region. I don’t think it is the largest logical step. Schools such as USC, Oregon, Texas, Florida, Tennessee have larger (percentage and nominal) followings based on regional residence and not matriculation in said school.
Just my two cents on what I see as fiscally prudent sleight (but sleight none the less) by the folks at SN.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The Sporting News preview was written by Jon Wilner at the San Jose Mercury News who never seems to be too high on Cal. But we can take solace in the fact that he is also very poor in his weekly football picks during the season.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
The Bears need to prove it on the field. It’s time for Cal to step up and prove they are better than 2nd-4th in the Pac. It’s time for them to break through and win the whole darn thing. I like that there are doubters, I believe in the Cal team that will compete in the fall. They are going to get it done!
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:40 pm
What Rodgers has over Best, unfortunately, is that he rushed for well over 100 yards against SC while Best was held to 30.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:00 am
Kevin,
Not to talk about a different blog here, but
Wilner sometimes sounds so ridiculous but is so right-on the other times. He predicted each Cal game correctly in one of his pre-season polls. Of course during regular season he changed his mind at times. For ex against Stanford he picked Cal to win during preseason, but picked Stanford the day before.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Haven’t paid for a Sporting News in years, but I’ll give him this…he probably got the numbers transposed.
Hope we’re practicing for that late kick-off time against Maryland.
June 4th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Regarding Rodger’s romp against U$C, it was early in the season, and Rodgers took their defense by surprise. Also, due to his size, he gets lost among the lineman, and their linebackers couldn’t react in time when he suddenly emerged from the pack at top speed. U$C had exactly the same trouble with Keola Antolin in the Arizona game. Antolin is similar to Rodgers in size and toughness, was running U$S ragged in the game, and it looked that the Wildcats had a chance for an upset. Taylor Mays solved the problem: by a criminal, obviously intentional, helmet-to-helmet hit on Antolin, after which Antolin was unable to return to the field. After seeing similar intentional hits on key opposing players over the years, I believe that Pete Carroll condones such intentional, illegal hits.