I’ve been to a lot of college football games in the East and Southeast, but when I started attending Cal games 3 years I was amazed at how quickly Cal fans turned on Nate. The only time I’ve seen hometown fans turn on college players was for either a perceived lack of effort or bad behavior, and these certainly were not issues with Nate. If anything, he tried too hard while he was injured when he should have been recuperating.

I wanted Riley to play at the end of 2007 when Nate was clearly injured and/or flustered, but I never booed Nate. That was a Tedford call, and when everyone in the stadium at UCLA could see Nate was playing on one ankle, Tedford should have pulled him.

Then when Nate throws 2 picks in the Michigan State game and the fans start booing, my first thought was that I did not want to sit and listen to a bunch of numbnut fans boo their own players for an entire season.

Now I’m wondering how long will it take before the fans turn on Riley if he starts playing poorly.

He stood tall as he was booed. One time on Sproul Plaza, two women decided it would be fun to approach him and ask “Are you Joe Ayoob” and then chant in unison “You suck!” when he answered yes. That was what he had to deal with from Cal “fans” and he never turned his back on Cal. He kept trying and trying to get his starting position back and never gave up.

He was and still is an amazingly classy man.

I thought Tedford was fair to him – Riley had to play poorly in 3 consecutive games (Wash St., Maryland, and Colorado St.) before Tedford benched him. He was throwing some pretty terrible passes, not seeing open receivers, and not using his legs to get out of trouble.

Now the “mechanics” rationale has also been suggested by both Tedford and Riley – that Riley’s “mechanics” somehow fell apart and that’s what caused his accuracy problems last year. OK.

My dimestore psycho-analysis says Riley is an emotional player that does his best in demanding situations (2007 OSU, 2007 Air Force, 2008 Michigan State). But he got lazy vs. Wash St. in 2008 because they suck, then he made a few mistakes while sleepwalking vs. Maryland and started to lose confidence. Then Colorado State was a combination of the lesser opponent/confidence problem. After that, he couldn’t pull out of it.

Hopefully the 2008 experience will be a building block. I hope Tedford has him use his legs on a few roll-outs and bootlegs vs. Maryland, as well as a few easy dump passes to the FB to build his confidence. don’t go for the home run too early.

I think this season hinges on Riley. I don’t think either Mansion or Sweeny are ready to come in and take the Bears to a top-10 finish, but Riley could.