Not sure how many times we've harped on it this year. Not likely a team will win all 12 regular season football games without some kind of a challenge. For openers, it's nearly impossible to win them all. Boise and Alabama did last year. Tide had a couple of scares. 2 point victory against Tennessee and a 5 pointer at Auburn. BSU snuck by Tulsa 28-21 and 17-10 against TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. Before that you go back to the 2006 Broncos who had a pair of 7 point wins and a 23-20 nailbiter at San Jose State before the wild 43-42 Fiesta Bowl thriller against Oklahoma. Texas went unblemished in 2005 when they won that heartstopper versus USC. Early that year they needed a 4th quarter comeback to sneak past Ohio State 25-22. Those overly concerned the Ducks won a conference road game by 2 simply don't pay enough attention or get how freaking hard it is to win all those games. Chew on this as well. No contest, that Cal defense is head and shoulders above anything Oregon has seen. Portland State, Tennessee, New Mexico, Washington, and Washington State are flat out terrible. UCLA is not good. USC and Stanford are maybe mediocre on that side of the ball. Arizona State is okay, California is good. They had me fooled. I thought they were overrated, but there is some serious talent on that side of the ball.
Okay, let's address the polka dotted elephant in the room. Cal coach Jeff Tedford should be ashamed of himself and offer a public apology for the blatant fake injuries. Sorry coach, it's not gamesmanship, it's cheating, pure and simple. According to www.thefreedictionary.com cheating is to deceive by trickery, misleading or fooling. Putting a guy in(#96 Kendrick Payne) who pretty much doesn't play and having him fake getting hurt is a disgrace. I accept no excuses cause it's crap!
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I’ve never tried this before and will probably never again but I just had write this.
It’s December in 1956. The New york Giants are playing the Cleveland Browns late in the third Quarter and the snow is coming down. It’s hard to see the players from the far end zone where the seats are fifty cents if you’re under twelve. It’s second and 18. Jim Brown gets the ball and goes down after five. The pile gets up but Brown stays down, is he hurt? The coaches run out to check on their prize player. Eventually he staggers to his feet and wobbles back to the huddle. The next play they give him the ball again despit his “injury” and 3 rd and twelve and he takes it 26 yards, carrying three players the last seven. Faked injury?
Or just another great player toughing it out? We’ll never know and there’s no way to ever find out for sure although the Giant fans knew absolutely! The notion of faked injuries goes back a lot longer than your still wet behind the ears memory can take you. So stop whining, you Steve and all of you others.
How about this scenario, The Ducks play fast so other teams need to substitute more than usual too. Sometimes a player with pretty low ranking can get in for just a few plays and not hurt the overall effort. Let’s say he gets a cramp but doesn’t want to come out - lord knows if or when he’ll ever get in again. But he knows that if he doesn’t come out and gets run out of position his name will surely be mudd and it’ll be a cold day in hell before he gets in a game again. Especially if anyone finds out he was hurting and didn’t tell anyone. ( kinda like certain Ducks not telling the coaches about what they did or didn’t do) So despite his personal feelings, he goes down and is taken out of the game.
Actually, this sounds pretty logical to me. What is not logical or even sportsmanlike, are the Duck fans making judgements about this person from a quarter mile away. Even if he did look over to the sidelines ( which he did) is there any evidence that he got the “fake it now” sign. Of course not.
From what I could see, California was outplaying the Ducks at that point in the game and in fact the whole game. They certainly had no desperation for another 30 seconds of rest. The Ducks were lucky to win, yes lucky.
So try to have a little class.
just another Jersey kid who grew up
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