Now that I've said that, let me mention that I've been paying a lot of attention to college football this year. This weekend was the best college football weekend yet -- I got to watch two top ten teams play each other, two teams that represent two good universities. This was no Oklahoma-Miami match-up. This was Cal-Washington.
I've been a fan of Cal football since I was a little kid, and the relatively good academic standards of UC Berkeley have allowed me to remain a Cal football fan while I hate the sport as a whole. Besides, it was obvious that Cal didn't take part in the nefarious actions of the rest of Division I-A college football, because they never won. Every Saturday my family and I would pile into the car and drive three hours to see Cal lose again.
So Cal's finally a good team -- and I think they're still playing clean, too. Their star, Russell White, was academically ineligible coming out of high school. Cal got a lot of flak for letting him in. But the people at Cal discovered White was dyslexic, began tutoring him, and he now has a 3.0 GPA.
For all Cal's strengths, the University of Washington Huskies are a better team. I expected Cal to get pasted by UW, probably by more than 20 points.
Cal ended up losing by 7, and had a decent chance to win the game even when there was no time left on the clock. So Cal loses again -- except this time, even the loss to UW is a victory. Because Cal didn't fold when playing the team ranked third in the nation -- unlike when they played against Miami the last two years. I've never been so happy while watching a team I was pulling for lose a game. They lost to a better team -- but they proved their own worth at the same time.
All this Cal business has, of course, given me a much greater interest in college football polls. Usually the polls are a joke, with voting biased toward traditionally successful (and usually eastern and midwestern) teams. The Washington players could tell you that -- they're always ranked lower than they should be.
With Cal's loss, I expected them to make a big drop in the polls -- a drop to 15th place or so. After all, North Carolina State remained undefeated on Saturday, even though they had to come from behind to beat Marshall, a Division I-AA team. Given that eastern teams with easy schedules are usually listed higher in polls than good western teams playing the tough Pac-10 schedule, I expected N.C. State and other pantywaists to zip past Cal faster than George Foreman zips to the dinner table after a fight.
It didn't happen. Cal dropped three places, and remains in the top 10 -- right at the very bottom, but a top 10 team nonetheless. Applause all around for those who vote in the AP football poll.
The growing recognition of Cal as a good football team is causing certain unsavory (for Stanford fans, that is) images to bob up to the collective consciousness of football fans everywhere. I heard at least two references to "The Play" -- where Cal defeated Stanford by returning a kickoff with a dozen laterals, through the Stanford band -- this weekend. No doubt Stanford fans are out there screaming "Enough already!" I'll admit that I'm getting a bit tired of hearing about The Play, too.
The reason The Play doesn't always play well with me is because I remember listening to it on the radio, in my bedroom. This means that I heard one of the most astounding football plays of all time being recounted to me by Cal's awful radio announcer, Joe Starkey.
And Starkey, believe it or not, brings this whole series of demented ramblings full circle. You see, my information about Cal's place in the AP poll has been provided to me every Sunday morning by a friend of mine who works at KRON-TV, the NBC affiliate in San Francisco. Yesterday's not-as-bad-as-I-thought news prompted us to talk about memories of the "old Cal," the team that would have lost 54-0 to Washington.
Inevitably, we talked about The Play. It's ironic, we both agreed, that The Play will always be tied to Starkey's radio call of that play. Then one of my friend's co-workers chimed in from the background:
"Joe Starkey... is to broadcasting," the TV sports guy said, "what Kool-Aid was to Jonestown."
Now Cal is to football was Matt Schnurer is to UCSD. They've both done a good job, they're both entertaining to watch, and they both gave it their best shot... but, when it came down to the Washington Huskies and the Associated Students, they were both doomed to failure in the end.