Just a heads up for the East Coast alumni, that the Men's Rugby team will be at the Rugby 7s tourney on June 2nd and 3rd. I am working on coordinating the Philly alumni to go to the tourney. If you are planning on going, feel free to give me a heads up and we can alert you to the specific section we will be sitting in. We are planning to buy GA tickets and grab a section to root on our Cal Golden Bears!

Go Bears!

Hi folks,

I am hoping to organize a small caravan of Cal alums from Philly to head to the game in Columbus. I was hoping that the CAA would be able to come through with a block of tickets, but I am not wildly optimistic that they will be able to come through. I started to look through stubhub and can find some tickets....but I am also hoping to find a better way to go.

Anyone have suggestions on how to get tickets?

Hey fellow Cal fans,

If you are in Philly and looking for a place to watch the game tonight, come on out to Cavs in University City at 6:30pm. The bar is located at 39th and Sansom and has been our bar this season as they have satellite TV and can get CSN CA.

GO Bears!

For any Cal alums out here in Philadelphia, we will be getting together at 7pm to watch our Cal Golden Bears take on the Utah Utes. Come on out to Cavs in University City (39th and Sansom) to watch the game. As I have been telling alums all week, it might be 1-2 weeks before we are on TV again (since we play UCLA and Wazzou in the next two weeks), so come out and root on your Cal Golden Bears!

Go Bears!

-shaun

For any Cal alums looking to watch the game in Philly, we will be watching the Bears take on Fresno State at 7pm at Cavanaughs in University City (39th and Sansom) on 9/3/11.  They are confident that they can get a satellite feed for the game, so we will be there huddled around one or two TVs. Sigh, I miss watching games on the West Coast....

Join our Cal Philly mailing list or email me at shaunobrien81@gmail.com to stay on top of other Cal football viewings in Philly.

Go Bears!

During my time at Cal, I was admittedly an apathetic Cal sports fan. The football team was a joke, and I could never find time to really pay that much attention to the other sports. The low point was being in the library in October 2003 studying for a midterm on a Saturday afternoon, while our boys did battle with U$C-and defeated them in triple OT.

As part of my efforts to make up my past sins against the program, I now put any effort to see Cal out here on the East Coast. Whether it be watching at a bar in Philly by myself on a Saturday night (and believe me it doesn't help with the ladies) or exhorting the Cal Philly Alumni club to come out for events, I try to preach the gospel of Cal as much as possible.

Hence, when I found out that our Cal Men's Rugby team was going to be coming to Philly (!!!!!), I can't tell you how excited I was. It is pretty rare to see Cal teams out here in the flesh, and hence I made sure to try to pull together as many Cal alums for this weekend of rugby.

Here are some notes from my weekend of watching the Cal Men's Rugby Squad out in Philadelphia:

PPL Park-home of the Philadelphia Union

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I will be watching our Cal Golden Bears play on Saturday and Sunday in Philly at the USA Stevens 7 Rugby Collegiate Championships. Come join the Cal Philly Alumni in Section 109 if you want to root with Cal fans and meet the Cal Rugby team.  Games are 6/4 and 6/5. Cal plays at 10am, 2pm and 4pm on Saturday.  There is also a free concert on Saturday night by The Dropkick Murphys.

Go Bears!

At 3-3, we are pretty much halfway through our season and it is becoming apparent that we will only go as far as our offense will. When we can overpower a team with our running game (a la UCLA), we can cover for the weak QB we have. But when our running game is getting bottled up, we have to trust that Riley can do something.

At this point, I have to say that Kevin Riley is not going to get any better at QB. I thought he turned a corner last year, but he seems to have completely fallen off a cliff. I am a little puzzled that Tedford didn't bench him in the second half of the U$C game and at least give Mansion/Sweeney a shot as they could get some valuable time in during garbage time.

Here's my question-is it time to yank Riley for the other two and use the second half of 2010 to build for 2011? Or will the team be more competitive with Riley at QB and having us start out with unproven starting QBs next fall?

Its never too early to get the word out-if you are an alum who is running a Cal football viewing party in your city, feel free to post to this link.

For the Cal Alums in Philly, we will be hosting at Smith's (19th and Chestnut). This will be our 3rd fall at Smith's and we are gradually growing in attendance.  The plan is to catch all the TV games here.

We also will be having a joint Pac-10 Happy Hour at Con Murphys at 9/8 7pm. 

Go Bears!

I know we had a post for football, so I just wanted to put one up for Cal viewing parties that are taking place all over the US.

I am setting one up for the Philly alumni at Cavanaugh's (39th and Sansom) for Friday at 9:45-Round one.  Hope to see some alums there.  Feel free to message me if you need more info on the location.

Anyone else hosting an alumni viewing party?

So after a full season of Kevin Riley at QB, I pose the question is he the answer?  I advocated at the beginning of the season that we had to patient with him, as Tedford should have given him most of the snaps in 2008 during a true rebuilding year, and that he would develop over the course of the season.

I was at the bowl game last night, and don't want to pin the loss entirely on him (the poor O-Line protection, WR drops certainly didn't help), but I am not so sure that he has made progress over the course of the season. I was hoping that he would finally put things together, but that only appeared to happen in the Big Game and he seems to regress in key situations.

What are your thoughts? Is it time to look at Sweeney or Mansion?

What is your take on our 2009 season?  Would you consider it a success as we had a winning season, rebounded from a 3-2 record to go 5-2 the rest of the way and avoid a tailspin like 2007?   I think this team reflects the level of talent that it had, in that we have some great players on offense (Best, Vareen) that are surrounded by average players on offense (Riley and a decent WR core) and on Defense.  I think a 8-9 win is pretty good considering the up and downs that this year's squad had.

I think the one thing that I take away from this season is not buy into the pre-season hype anymore. Outside of 2004, we have yet to see a Tedford coached team stay ranked in the top ten after starting out that high in the beginning. I just hope we can figure out what coaching changes need to be made in order to get this team to produce at a higher level.

Here are my thoughts on Cal's keys to todays game

1) The O-Line- It needs to protect Riley by stopping UCLA DE Byran Price and open holes for Best. Getting holes for Best will be critical as the Bruin Run D is bad.  However, Riley is going to need time to beat the 8 men in the box to stop Best.

2) Riley-obviously, he needs to show some significant strides today, in order to warrant him as our QB for next season. The WRs also need to cut down on their dropped passes and run better routes. They have a tough test with the Pac-10 top Pass D today

3) Special Teams-we have to do a better job with kickoffs and returns today. UCLA special teams isn't that great with coverage on kickoff returns, so maybe Vareen and Thompson can get loose for some big runs today.

4) Mental Toughness- If this team gets in a hole early, they have to learn how to react better and not start giving up.

5) Jahvid Best-I am predicting that he has a huge game today as the Bruins Run D is weak.  If Best gets going, I think it will be an easier day for Riley.

Go Bears!  I will be watching from rainy and 40 degree Philly today....

Bold statement by our Cal linebacker Mychal Kendricks in today's Chron-

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/13/SP301A55OC.DTL

I like it, as it shows that the team still has some fight in them.....however, he isn't playing qb though....

I do think Best is going to run wild on UCLA this week as they seem to be pretty porous on their run D. 

Go Bears!

Is our program stalled? It seems since the 2007 season, we have been stuck in a rut.  The lead up to the great start in 2007 was the development of a young qb and his receivers in 2006 (Longshore, D-Jax and Hawkins).  We also started to develop some key players on D in 2006 and we seemed to accept that we were buiding up for a more productive year in 2007.

Flash forward to 2008 and we lose most of our stud WRs and have a new QB and the beleaguered Longshore with a new RB and WRs.  Tedford elected to platoon the QBs instead of letting Riley develop a rhythm with the young WRs. I think he felt pressure to win the Pac-10, although the Maryland game demonstrated that we weren't there yet. Riley's progress is hampered by the platoon and the young receivers haven't exactly developed as well as we though this year, maybe partly due to the inconsistencies at QB in 2008.

I want to see Cal win the Rose Bowl and the Pac-10, but I wonder if we our letting our Rose Bowl drought hamper our ability to build a strong base. In other words, should we be using this season to really build for 2010 and 2011?  I vote that we need to get a long look at Riley this year to determine if he is the answer in 2010.

Here is what I think most Cal fans are going through right now, when they advocate the removal of Riley for Sweeney or Mansion-"The Riley Effect".  This phenomena is described as when a freshmen qb comes in a plays lights out for a game and outplays the incumbent qb.  He then doesn't play much afterwards, but in limited time, displays flashes of brilliance.

This is what happened with Riley in 2007. He plays a great game in 2007 against OSU (minus the last minute), where he made plays happen with his scrambling ability, and his strong throwing arm.  I was at the game, and saw him lead a near comeback against OSU.  Riley then didn't play till the Armed Forces Bowl, where he jump started the offense and lead us to a bowl victory.  This series of events characterizes the Riley Effect.

But why should Cal fans be wary of the Riley Effect? We have to look closer at 2007 and 2008-what changed?  The WiRs did.  Riley threw to two amazing WRs in 2007-D-Jax and the Hawk. I think these two receivers were good enought to cover up Riley's deficiencies (overthrowing the ball).  Look at the first TD strike to D-Jax in the Armed Forces bowl by Riley-I bet you see Jackson make an adjustment on the ball for the catch...something that our current core of WRs aren't good at yet. So Riley's deficiencies were covered in 2007 by great WRs and only became evident during 2008 with a younger, inexperience crop of WRs.

So current Cal fans are under the Riley Effect when they advocate changing the incumbent for a promising, unknown qb. Here's why making any changes will not work-

I doubt that changing Riley for another QB is going to make a difference, as we don't have a great O-line and WRs that are in rhythm with the QB. Tedford should have let Riley play all last year to develop with the young WRs, but instead kept shortchanging our future by platooning him with Longshore (ugh).  Now we are dealing with Riley's growing pains that he should have figured out during a rebuilding year in 2008....so we need to be patient with Riley and let him develop with this current crop of WRs.  Yanking him will only cause him to regress more.

Go Bears!