Cal at Oregon

Just a little perspective on the upcoming game.  Cal and Oregon have been battling it out on the gridiron since 1899.  Cal leads the series by a score of 37 - 30 and two ties.  But Oregon has won 8 of the last 10.

Back in the day when I was at Cal, and when Nike was still making shoes on the waffle iron, you could count on a victory from the men in green.   While Cal was no great shakes, we pretty regularly dominated these guys.   But then came Nike and the whole new ball game.  It just goes to show how a program can be turned around by the right coaches, staff and athletic department.  I think we have that now, and we will be moving forward much more than Oregon every could hope to.  At least I hope so.

The other interesting tidbit from this year so far...each game we have played, we have either evened the lifetime record, or have moved out of a tie in the lifetime record.  For Tennessee, we were 1 and 2 against.  We are now 2 and 2.  Cal and Arizona were tied at 12 wins each, with 2 ties.   We had lost our only other meetings with Colorado State and LA Tech.

For future games, we are also tied with Arizona State.  We have a deficit with USC, UCLA, Stanford and Washington.  We are ahead of Oregon State and Washington State.

For the USC game, it is critical that we emerge victorious.  We are at a critical juncture.  Our lifetime record is 30 - 59 with 5 ties.  If USC wins, they will have twice as many wins as us.  WE NEED TO STOP THIS MADNESS!!!  The 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and the first half of the 90's were not kind to our plight against the toejams (12 wins in 55 years - boy those victories were sweet).  However, I do believe that we can start to become as strong as we were in the first half of last century (14 wins vs 9 loses).  Lets get it going.

We also need another solid 10 years of victory against the Furds to bring our series to even.  I think I could handle that.  Actually, I think they would give up altogether before they let us win 16 in a row against them.