Let’s say that football is like running an ICU in large academic hospital. Much like being a fan in football, an illness in the family can be just as emotionally charged- let’s face it, because you care.

So, you, the coach/intensivist have a critically ill patient with sepsis with severe end-organ damage who is placed on pressors, iv antibiotics, and a ventilator. Your qb/ICU nurse was recruited to do a job and execute your orders in a timely fashion. Your patient dies. You see this happen in 50 percent of your patients, while it seems that the mortality- when the mortality risk scores are factored in- when compared to other ICU staff is much more than the upper crust of the facility of 15% (1 to 2 loss teams)

So what do you do? You remain positive, make adjustments, have the ICU nurses trained, look at the various issues that surround the care of the patient.

After the adjustments, there is no change in mortality. Change the ICU nurse-still no change. Now, after is said and done, still no change. Well, you probably suck as an intensivist.

But you stick around anyways, still doing the same thing. What if you really suck and don’t know it. What if you are blind-sighted by the fact that you got tons of money for your earlier efforts as a budding genius doctor, but only found out that you have gone flat.

You’ve sacrificed meals with your loved ones overnight, the nursing staff have worked weekends and holidays- everyone made sacrifices. Is that justification to stick around- or find something within yourself to make adjustments. Is there any more neuroplasticity there left in your mind. Or have you become so self absorbed and untrue to yourself by heavily patting yourself on the back and thinking that the naysayers don’t know anything about your profession.

It’s not to say that being slanderous is to be accepted, it just happens. It’s human nature. If a loved one dies in the hands in a purportedly brilliant intensivist, one may say some egregious stuff- because anger is a part of the grieving cycle. And some people just remain in that state. It’s to be expected.

For most of these kids, football is not going to be their career. But what they do get from it, though, is thick skin. The slander and the negativity is going to be out there. Give the kids more credit…they are resilient, and it makes ‘em stronger- so that they know, when that time comes, when their kid’s kids have issues, they’d have some great advice.

There are more serious things to worry about.

Let me know if you need a hand getting down from your high horse.

So I guess it’s okay to make our head coach the most highly paid public official in the state of California and continue to reward him for mediocrity. A 6-6 record with not a single real quality win in two years is okay as long as our beloved Bears get to a bowl game, right?

I’m a huge fan and have attended as many games as most people over the last 25 years. I don’t like the product I’m seeing on the field and expect better considering the investment the Cal administration has made in our head coach and in the new facilities. If ticket prices were still $18 for reserved seats, and if the head coach made $550,000 a year like Paul Woolf up at Pullman, I might feel different.

In the meantime, I am going to exercise my first amendment right to vent a little on this site. Nobody said this blog was a cheering section. The notion that players or recruits who view this site might be discouraged or dissuaded from attending Cal is laughable. These are smart young men who, like us, can see what his happening on the field with their own eyes and can make their decisions accordingly. And I would hope that enough players – and coaches – would gather up some of this fan discontent, get angry, and go out there and shut us all up.