It bears to make mention that the Bowl system has vastly expanded in the past couple decades. It used to be that you went to the Rose or perhaps a secondary bowl, and that was it.

Now that they have a bowl for the 6th place Pac10 team is a really different environment. Bowl games were reconized as being profitible exercises and so more and more bowls were born, so much so that the NCAA collectively agreed to make 6 wins be the minimum accomplishment required for playing a bowl game. That meant a winning record of 6-5 when the max games played was 11, but now with the expanded 12 game schedule, all you have to do is finish .500. Not very impressive.

I think I counted the number of bowl games and D-1 teams a couple years ago and found that there were about 32 bowl games (64 teams) and about 130 D-1 football programs. So, nearly half of all D-1 programs get to play in a bowl game these days. It ain’t what it used to be.

I’m still waiting for Rose – and hopefully if we win the Pac 10 and qualify for Rose, we don’t end up leapfrogging into the National Chumpionship game!

I commend Tedford big time, because his record of Wins and Losses is WAY BETTER than Cal has experienced in a looooooooooooong time, and we have realistic hope of Rose each year! It will come, eventually!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Golden_Bears_bowl_game_history

One bowl from 1959 to 1990?
One bowl from 1993 until Tedford?
One bowl EVERY YEAR since

That’s some kinda awesome. I’m proud of this team. Especially how they turned things around this year. I waffle so much with Tedford because I feel like if he just had a killer instinct, we’d take things to the next level. I just need to remind myself over and over again, that if it was up to him, we’d already have a renovated stadium and workout facility. He stuck through all this crap, lobbying hard to get it all done. He’s gotten better with the players. He’s started to show a little emotion. He’s getting all the things we’ve ever wanted for the program, and he’s winning, consistently. I keep forgetting that we’re not 3-deep with 4-star players at every position. A couple injuries here and there cost us big time. That may change in the next 3 years, with new facilities. Add in a little bit more of a killer instinct from Tedford, and we’ll be talking about championships every year.

Go Bears!

Go Bears!

Oklahoma would be a tough game, though.