Football Wrapup

* You are not hallucinating. That’s ESPN College Gameday, broadcasting this Saturday from VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, home of the #19-ranked Commodores. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Kiss your loved ones and get right with God, because the world as you know it is ending.

* Bama ranked #2 and generally regarded as a legit contender for the national championship? THIS is what Nick Saban was paid $8 million for, to wrench the Tide from humiliation to superpower in the span of 18 games. It’s not the sort of thing where one or two plays would have taken everything the other way and left them 2-3, or anything like that – they’re making sure that those one or two plays don’t have a chance to make a difference. And that is scary stuff.

* “Horny for Zorny” shirts are going to be popping up all over DC this week. The Skins have now beaten Dallas five times in the last seven tries – say what you like about Joe GIbbs 2.0, but he did something that nobody else managed during his absence: he made the Cowboys beatable again and turned the series from a thrashing into a rivalry again. Tony Romo is, quite frankly, pwned by the Burgundy and Gold defense; he’s 1-3 as a starter against Washington. At this point, I’m willing to bet that 3 teams from the NFC (B)East will go to the playoffs, and the fourth will have a better record than at least one other playoff team.

* That’s all the good stuff. Now for some really incendiary commentary about the Golden Bears, after the jump…

Cal took care of business, 42-7, although they looked a little shaky doing it. If Best really is unable to go, that’s a huge blow. As for the passing game…well, the thing to remember is that coming into this season, the entire Cal receiving corps had a career total of 8 catches between them all. In other words, expecting amazing things from the passing game is something only a drooling idiot would do. And yet. Anybody know where I could find a drooling idiot?

Jeff from Danville, you’re on the the line…

Tedford said he is not sure who will be the starter Saturday.

“We’ll see,” he said. “We weren’t sharp in the passing game.”

Longshore played when the game was out of reach, making it difficult to gauge his performance, but his numbers – 9-for-13, 100 yards, two touchdown passes – were better than Riley’s. He and Riley apparently will compete for the starting spot during the week.

“If a guy did not play well, you have to look at adjustments,” Tedford said.

I mean this in the most loving, supporting, Go-Bears way possible:

Jeff Tedford is a fucking retard.

Nate Longshore spent the second half of last season limping around like something out of a three-legged race with a bone chip in his foot, with three senior receivers to throw to and a seasoned senior running back to carry the load, and he played like a cripple with a sack over his head. And despite the shrieks and screams of the fans, despite dissent in the locker room, despite a season that spiraled out of control like a 747 with three engines on fire trying to land on an aircraft carrier in a hurricane, Tedford would not pull Longshore at all, not until the season was lost, the Axe was lost, and the Bears were down three touchdowns in the bowl game.

Meanwhile, Kevin Riley – in, let’s not forget, his FIFTH career start – has a rough outing throwing to a bunch of kids, then gets pulled after the Best injury because Cal is already leading by four touchdowns and nobody wants a repeat of the Tyrone Prothro-at-Alabama tragedy. Longshore comes in and gets two garbage-time TDs in the 4th quarter against a thoroughly demoralized Colorado State team…and all of a sudden the starting QB position is up for grabs?

I don’t know if Tedford is already starring in the Berkeley version of Brokeback Mountain or just wants to. I don’t know, maybe Longshore has pictures of Tedford in bed with a horse. I don’t know what the deal is. All I know is that there was no ambiguity through the first three games about who was the better quarterback. None. If Tedford is going to trigger a quarterback controversy now, on the basis of one game, well…he’s the head coach, he’s welcome to his opinion – but if Longshore starts on Saturday, and Cal goes down to defeat, then Sandy Barbour should be waiting with a lawyer in the North Tunnel at the end of the game and Jeff Tedford should never set foot on a sideline in blue and gold ever, ever again.

When your catastrophic irrational attraction is more important than the success of the football team you purport to coach, when your singular obsession and inability to adjust is directly responsible for the poor performance of the team, you are not fit for purpose. The best thing that could happen to Cal right now would be for Nate Longshore to suddenly decide to undertake his Mormon mission and wind up knocking on doors in Burma somewhere, far enough away that there is no chance he could play again this year – because right now, that’s the only scenario where he remains alive and Tedford doesn’t try to insert him as Cal’s QB.