Friday, December 01, 2006

Wow, talk about quitting...

The Cal Golden Bear Football News always posts great articles about Cal everyday. There was one of particular interest to us, from the Stanford Review, especially after our post on the #1 reason why Cal is better than Stanford. Here are some excerpts from the article.

Facing another year where the Stanford University football team will be crushed by Cal’s, the fifth consecutive time for those keeping score, our school stands at a bit of a crossroads. Berkeley coach Jeff Tedford is consistently producing top-25 football teams with Heisman candidates. We find ourselves in ESPN’s Bottom 10 rankings. These two facts mean that we won’t be beating Cal in football for the foreseeable future, which begs the question: should we continue to care about Cal? They have a much larger student body and lower academic standards for athletes. One Cal newspaper even declared that we were unfit to be rivals.

We’re happy to take our rivalry elsewhere. Cal clearly lucked-out having us a rival; if they would prefer UC Davis, well, they can have them. We always knew that we could do better than Cal...

It is interesting that the author chooses UC Davis as an example. After what Davis has done to Stanford the past couple years, it makes sense that the Trees would fear a rivalry with Davis. The author ignores that fact that Stanford, prior to the last 5 years has been competitive and actually won the previous 7 Big Games. During which time Stanford also went to the Rose Bowl. How quick they are to jump off the bandwagon on the Farm. When the going gets tough, the trees just quit.

...The task now is to find a new rival, one much more like our fine school (meaning a private school), a school that we can fairly compete against, and beat on occasion, and sometimes badly.

First off, we’d for once like to have a school that would be in the same academic league as us, and Princeton, with their #1 position in the U.S. News rankings, certainly fits the bill. We still have a higher yield and lower acceptance rate, so we’re about equal in the academic category. Second, we need to face the facts, and schedule Division I-AA teams for our football team to have a chance. We should play at least a couple of games that we have a chance in every year to keep morale above the “nihilism” level...

Once Princeton starts beating Stanford who will the Cardinal want next. Perhaps a local JC or maybe an international program where football is actually soccer.

...This will be far more inspiring than getting thrashed by Cal every year. Both schools could get into this rivalry of equals.

So we’d like to extend an invitation to Princeton University to be our rival. It’s in the best interest for both schools, and would make for an exciting cross-country rivalry. We’ve had enough of the Bears. And they have had enough of us, apparently. Bring on the Tigers.
Seriously, I did not make this up. This is an actual article. Here is the link: Stanford Says Uncle. This is some great writing. I particularly like how you can almost hear the whiny nasal toned voice of the author as you read the words. Go Bears.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

great find, great critique, i'm forwarding!

Anonymous said...

what a dumb biotch.
he pisses me off here: "The task now is to find a new rival, one much more like our fine school (meaning a private school)"
huh?!?
wtf does that mean? a fine school ain't a public school?

Anonymous said...

they've just given up, it's sad. really sad. really really sad.

Anonymous said...

Wow. Talk about weak. As well as ignorant of their own record beyond the last five years. Even in the darkest days of the seven year drought, I don't think I ever saw or heard anything this pathetic at Cal.