People who thought I was done writing about Cal football/hoops are mistaken; I might be done writing for Bears Necessity, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not writing about the Golden Bears elsewhere.
For those who don’t know, I’ve been writing a lot for the California Golden Blogs (a Cal sports community that’s part of SBNation, a grassroots sports network of team/sports blogs), which is probably why you haven’t heard or seen much of me lately. Stupid I know, but I generally work at my best when unencumbered by social or physical burden. I haven’t been this productive in years, and it’s definitely allowed me to reassess the way I approach writing.
For those who care about this stuff, the best way is to follow me at SBNation by clicking on the here (or on the SBNation link on the sidebar) and subscribing to the feed.
Anyway, these are just samples of the best work:
Should the Pac-10 eliminate round-robin scheduling?
“The BCS, for better or for worse, is here to stay for most of the next decade. We don’t really have much of a say in it, so we have to deal with the system as is. So we have to figure out what situations would benefit the Bears assuming USC maintains its conference dominance. One thing to look at it is the vaunted Pac-10 round robin. I got thinking about this after reading a quote from Wizard of Odds:
Wouldn’t it be nice if BCS teams took off the skirt and started playing BCS teams in nonconference? Wouldn’t it be nice if you, the fan, actually got value for all that money you pump toward a university just to get a decent seat? Wouldn’t it be nice if the spirit of competition returned to college football?
This is a nice viewpoint, but it’s a little naive. The Pac-10 already does this, playing the extra game, having every other team in the conference play each other once. How much respect do they get for this system? (Hint: it’s equal to the number of BCS at-large bids they’ve been rewarded with the past six seasons.)
Other stuff, if you want to take a look at it.
Here’s the dirty secret: This extra conference game drives up the probability of an extra loss. And you could argue has crippled BCS dreams several times for our conference’s best.”
This post was pretty crazy. 484 comments, with pretty good discussion arguing for and against. Can’t say it didn’t get a little bit heated, but it was all in good fun! We even started a discussion about Scorsese movies on the side.
Here are some of my other favorite posts.
What Concerns You About Cal Football (2009 ed): ”Concern. That’s the state of mind a Cal football fan can find his or herself in during the interminable offseason…However, while those positive thoughts run through our minds from time to time, worry and apprehension can supplant them fairly easily. As in, “how will the Bears break our hearts this time…There are several troublespots going into next season, and I’m sure we can identify others if we try hard enough. Behold the power of pessimism!”
Introducing +/- to Cal Hoops (still a work in progress!): You probably know how the plus/minus has become a huge staple of NBA stats (you’ll see it on NBA box score sheets); I tried applying them to Cal Hoops. Still a work in progress.
Should the Pac-10 Get Better Television Deals?: Anyone who’s followed or tried to follow the Pac-10 football circuit outside the West Coast has pretty much found themselves in dire straits…
Finally, I started a Hall of Fame for this Cal community site to reward the greatest Cal athletes for their efforts as Golden Bears and as pros. It’s a March Madness style tournament where . You can see what the full bracket looks like here, and track what’s going on by following the Hall of Fame section.
It’s really cool stuff; Cal sports fans should check it out if you guys have some time, some really quality stuff has come out of this.
