I most humbly ask for a retraction of my USC down trend without Barkley. Pure hatred and jealousy have obviously clouded my judgement.

Still, this string of NFL QBs must stop sometime.

Go Bears!

I know jt and staff are hitting the recruiting trail this week. It seems like jm’s return/work this year should help get highly regarded ol.

Tosh will do his usual superlative work.

Go Bears!

I promise you that USC will not be in a down trend next season, with or without Barkley. In Woods and Lee, they will have two of the best wideouts in the nation and will have the best defense, bar none, in the PAC 12 next year.

Their momentum heading into the end of the season was truly unbelievable. Cal caught them relatively early in the season. I shutter to think what that score might have been if we played USC in the last game. UCLA dominated Cal and got blown out 50-0 against the Trojans.

USC may lose Barkley, but they always have the comfort of plugging in a Top 100 national recruit into the QB position. I never expect Cal to beat USC because of their recruiting superiority, but I least expect them to be competitive. They haven’t been competitive AT ALL in recent years.

All the teams not named Oregon, Stanford, or USC are average to below average.

The question is the trend.

Is Cal’s trend up or down?

Up trend (Cal, UW, Utah)

Down trend (USC (if Barkley goes pro), AZ, AZ State, OSU, WSU, Colorado, Stanford)

Same (Oregon)

With all the talk of a vastly improved Cal team late in the season, just take a look at the teams we beat: An Oregon State team with a freshman quarterback coming off its worst season in the Riley era, a Washington State team that lost its last three games and will fire its head coach, an Arizona State team that lost its last four games and actually was down to one cornerback in the latter stages of its loss to Cal. I will concede that Cal played a good game against Stanford, but you have to figure Stanford was suffering a major hangover after its blowout loss to Oregon.

Let’s beat a good team, and then crow about it. By all accounts, Cal is heading to the Holiday Bowl to play either Texas or Baylor. More than anything, this will be the best measuring stick to see if Tedford has ironed out the kinks heading into next season.

Cal was projected to finish in 5th place in the Pac-12 North division entering the season. (they finished 4th)…Cal’s recruiting class was rated only the 6th best out of the Pac-10 in 2008 and 2009 (which was Tedford worst two recruiting classes during his tenure as head coach). You have to admit, the performance of Cal EXCEEDED expectation this year.

Now…you can complain that expectation should neer be that low for the 11th highest paid coach in the country…I won’t argue that point…but given the talent he has compiled…this was a good year.

As we go forward the expectations will certainly rise…Cal has the 3rd ranked (conference) recuriting class in 2010 and 2011…so as those players become Juniors and Seniors…one expects the team to perform at a higher level.

I also hope that Tedford can start getting the highest ranked recruiting classes given the new Cal football facilities coupled with the USC recruiting sanctions…we’ll see…if not, then you can start wondering why we are paying Tedford so much money.

We wouldn’t be having any of these conversations if we simply had above average QB play.

Let’s look at the only losing season under Ted, 2010.

Before Riley went down at OSU, we were 4-3; coming off the win over ASU in the rain at Memorial.

We had lost to Nevada (Kappernack), Arizona (Foles), USC (Barkley). See a pattern?

The last 5 games we scored 7, 20 (win), 13, 14, 13.

My point is football is a quarterback’s game.

To be completely down on Ted you must believe he has lost the ability to recruit and develop QBs.

I’m counting Colorado; a team that that Utah lost to at home. You remember Utah, the team that many were beginning to rank as the 4th best team in the Pac 12 after running off 4 straight victories after their beat down by Cal.

Oh, by the way Utah