Stanford makes points, Cal makes promises

By Art Spander

STANFORD, Calif. — The figurative laundry list for Cal was as as big as Stanford’s point total, the largest by either team in the history of the Big Game, which has been held 116 times.

The Cardinal won this one, destroyed Cal in this one, embarrassed Cal in this one, 63-13, on a sparkling Saturday afternoon in late November.

Attendance was announced as a sellout of 50,424 at Stanford Stadium, although there were plenty of empty seats, perhaps tickets held by Cal fans who couldn’t bring themselves to view a mismatch greater than anybody imagined.

Sure, Stanford, 9-2 and headed for a bowl, whether it be Rose or Fiesta or something else, was a 32½-point favorite. But the eventual spread was 50 — OMG, 50 — and the Golden Bears, after losing starting quarterback Jared Goff with a shoulder separation, couldn’t score a single point after halftime.

It was understood Cal had no defense. The Bears were last in the Pac-12 in that category and then Saturday allowed Ty Montgomery to catch five touchdown passes and Stanford to gain 603 yards.

But supposedly Cal had an offense.

That supposition was disproved, Cal gaining only 383 yards and after the opening four minutes getting only two field goals.

After Cal (1-11) finished with an 11-loss season for the first time in a football history that goes back to the 19th century — yes, teams didn’t play 11 or 12 games until the last few years — head coach Sonny Dykes took the blame and then took a stand.

“My job is to get the team ready,” said Dykes, who was hired last December from Louisiana Tech, “and I clearly didn’t do a very good job.”

Someone tried to get Dykes to allude to the many injuries to Cal players during the season. He made an acknowledgement, then took the high road.

“Yeah,” he conceded, “I can find a bunch of excuses. It is what it is. You guys can look at the depth chart. That’s up to you guys (the media) to draw your own conclusion.

“I think we got a bright future. There’s some things we got to fix. But yeah, we’re going to work tomorrow and get them fixed. Actually we’re going to go to work (Saturday) night.”

After having been worked over by a Stanford team that even with a mammoth lead in the closing two minutes was throwing, backup quarterback Evan Crower hitting Francis Owusu for 14 yards and a touchdown with 1:51 remaining.

Asked if he thought Stanford, which was running up the score, was indeed running up the score, Dykes answered, “Not at all. That’s part of football. Our job is to stop it.”

They couldn’t. They couldn’t stop anything or anyone. In any game, other than one against Portland State, which Cal won 37-30.

Cal gave up 63 points to Stanford, 62 to USC, 55 to Oregon, 52 to Ohio State. 580 points overall in 12 games. Ridiculous.

When somebody wondered what Dykes would say to Cal partisans, he responded, “I don’t have much to say. I wish it was better. It’s on me. That’s all I can say.”

Not all. Visibly dismayed, Dykes promised improvement. Everywhere.

“Blocking,” he began, then halted. “Well, no, we’re going to learn to pick up our locker room. We’re going to learn how to go to class. We’re going to fix our graduation rates.”

Cal, it was disclosed earlier this month, had the worst graduation rate for football players of any school in the Pac-12 — maybe, for the highest-ranked public university in America by several polls, a greater shame than a 1-11 season.

“We’re going to appreciate being a Cal student,” continued Dykes, “be supportive of other Cal students.

“We’re going to get faster, stronger in the weight room. We’re going to get bigger and improve our diet. We’re going to be more committed to getting sleep, rest and recovery.”  

And then the two that actually might make a difference.

“We’re going to learn to play on offense and defense.”

Dykes pointed out he had been coaching for years, been “lucky to be successful,” at every level. Until this year, until a year that terminated with a rout by Cal’s cross-bay rival.

“Never seen anything like this,” said Dykes. He was referring generally to the season, but neither Cal nor Stanford fans had seen anything like Saturday. No team in the Big Game ever had scored more than 48 points. Now one has scored 63.

“I haven’t been a part of it,” sighed Dykes. “Obviously haven’t done a very good job dealing with it. It’s on me to figure out how to deal with it, and go from there.”

He knows the problem. The solution will not come quickly.

Cal coach: ‘I knew it wasn’t going to be all rainbows’

By Art Spander

BERKELEY — It was an interesting comment from Sonny Dykes, on the day of his 44th birthday, on the Saturday afternoon his Cal football team was beaten — no, embarrassed — by USC, 62-28, at home.

“I expected to walk out after halftime,” said Dykes, “and see nobody in the stands. The fans stayed. It was really inspiring.”

The first season at Cal for Dykes. An awful season at Cal for Dykes, a team with too many freshmen and not enough self-belief, a team lacking a defense and even now, after losing eight of its nine games, lacking experience.

The Trojans, always the curse of the Coast no matter how competent Stanford or Oregon or even UCLA become, had their own troubles early in the schedule. So athletic director Pat Haden changed coaches, ousted Lane Kiffin and replaced him for the rest of the season, at least, with Ed Orgeron.

USC again looked like USC, maybe not right but full of speed — the Trojans returned three punts for touchdowns Saturday, tying an NCAA record — and agility.

Cal looked like a lost cause, even after cutting an immediate 21-0 deficit to 21-14. At least to our vision. But Dykes saw something else, a future, and reasons for that future. He’s a realist, certainly. A 1-8 record is unacceptable, even if it is understandable.

He’s also an optimist.

“I knew when I took this job,” said the man who replaced Jeff Tedford, “it wasn’t going to be all rainbows and puppy tails. Did you watch Stanford beat Oregon (Thursday night)? Stanford had 15 seniors on defense. Of our top 44 players on offense and defense, we only had three seniors.”

Maybe the numbers are not specifically accurate. Maybe there are a couple more Cal players or fewer Stanford players, but the idea stands. Championships are won by veterans, athletes who know the whys and wherefores. Mistakes are made by freshmen.

“Experienced grown men win football games,” Dykes said for emphasis.

Fewer than two minutes into this football game, USC’s Nelson Agholor, a letterman last year, took a punt return 75 yards into the end zone. In the second quarter Josh Shaw would pick up a partially blocked punt and run a short 14 yards for a score; then, still in the second quarter, Agholor would return yet another punt for a touchdown, this run 93 yards.

“I’ve been dong this a long time,” said Dykes, “and that (punt coverage) has always been a strength of ours. Our team last year at Louisiana Tech led the entire nation in net punting. We start three practices every week with our punt returns. We’re using freshmen. At Louisiana Tech we had one freshman who played half a game, that’s all.”

There are no excuses in sports, even when excuses are allowable. If someone goes down, it’s next man up. Or next kid up. Dykes doesn’t want sympathy. Only perception, which from the reaction of the Cal fans who stayed to endure, he already has.

“We were forced to play a lot of young players before they were ready,” he said. “We were decimated by injuries. A young team, and we lost games early. We lost confidence. It’s OK. It’s been a tough year, but it’s going to pay off.

“They are going to get tougher and have been game tested. In a weird sort of way, the experience they have gotten this year and the hard luck will help our team respond faster.”

Cal has a freshman quarterback, of course, Jared Goff, although it could be argued that after nine games he’s almost a sophomore. The trouble is Goff hasn’t had the reassurance of success.

He’ll play well a few downs — he did throw three touchdown passes Saturday, two to Kenny Lawler, also a freshman — then sputter.

“We try not to look at the scoreboard too much,” said Goff. But looking at the scoreboard is what everyone else does, on television, at Memorial Stadium, from the flanks of Tightwad Hill.

The coaches and players rate progress. The rest of us judge results.

Goff threw for 288 yards, Cal gained 483 yards running and passing, not too far behind USC’s 499 yards. Then there were the three Trojan punt returns for touchdowns not included in that total.

It is defense where Cal has faltered most. The Bears were last in the Pac-12 in scoring defense before USC. Then they gave up 62 points more. 

“Hardy Nickerson went down early,” Dykes said about the starting middle linebacker — who is a freshman but also a star. “He makes all the (defensive) calls for us. We were down to one middle linebacker, Chad Whitener. We were trying to make contingency plans. We missed a lot of checks and rolled coverage the wrong way.

“But we are going to get this thing right. I feel more strongly about that right now then I did December 5 when I was hired.”

In the Big Game, not just another loss for Cal

By Art Spander

BERKELEY, Calif. – Just another loss. The Cal safety Josh Hill said it. He was wrong.

This was a loss to Stanford, a loss when Cal couldn’t cross the goal line, a loss when Jeff Tedford’s future again was called into question, although much like the Golden Bears offense Saturday he isn’t going anywhere.

The Big Game came at the wrong time, smacked off its traditional late-November date to mid-October because of disdainful planning by the Pac-12 Conference.

We don’t care how it’s been done for 114 years, was the unwritten word from the Pac-12; you’ll hold it when we tell you. Even when the baseball season hasn’t ended.
   
For Cal, maybe, anytime would be the wrong time.
  
Stanford beat the Bears, 21-3. It could have been worse. The Cardinal threw only three passes in the fourth quarter, had no completions. Stanford coach David Shaw was kind and satisfied.
   
“Dominating, suffocating defense,’’ advised Shaw.
    
His school kept the trophy, The Axe, earned for a third straight year. His players gleefully marched The Axe to the south end zone of rebuilt Memorial Stadium where the Stanford partisans from the crowd of 61,024, including that intentionally ditsy pep band, cheered and chanted and rocked.

There they were, the enemy, symbolically speaking, the conquerors, lording it up while the Cal players walked slowly to their quarters, whipped. Just another loss? Hardly.
 
“Offensively, that was just a poor performance,” Tedford said, reaffirming what everyone had seen, what everyone already knew.
  
Offensively, Cal had a pathetic 217 yards – Stepfan Taylor of Stanford had run for 189 by his ownself – and, of course, for the first time in 15 years in a Big Game, and only the second in 36 years, no touchdowns.
   
“We couldn’t block them,” said Tedford. “There was too much pressure on the passer, and we couldn’t convert on third downs. Give them credit. They played hard and were better than we were today.”
   
Much better. The Cardinal, 5-2, are headed toward a bowl. Cal, 3-5, with Washington, Oregon and Oregon State among the teams left on its schedule, is headed for a losing season. And Tedford, in his 11th year, is headed for more criticism.
  
“We need to do a better job as coaches putting (Cal players) into places to be successful,’’ conceded Tedford.
   
The Old Blues and some newer Blues wonder if Tedford has stayed too long at the fair. Sure, Cal has tough academic standards. It was recently judged America’s No. 1 public institution of higher learning, with UCLA, another part of the great university, coming in second.

Not everybody is admitted, no matter how fast they run or far they throw. Cal isn’t LSU or Alabama.
   
But Cal people admit, gritting their teeth, neither is Stanford, and the Cardinal play physical, beat-your-face-in football.
   
Those smarties are toughies. Those toughies are smarties. And they took it to Cal in Cal’s new house.
  
It’s unlikely Tedford will be dismissed. He raised Cal from the depths of 1-11, and made the Bears successful and respectable. His players graduate.

Athletic director Sandy Barbour is not one to make rash decisions. On Saturday afternoon, along with members of the media, she took a seat and listened to Tedford explain but never try to justify.
  
In the previous two weeks, the Bears had crushed UCLA, crushed Washington State, improved an awful 1-4 record to a mediocre 3-4. There was optimism before Stanford. There is depression after Stanford.
 
“Those were the last two weeks,” said Tedford when asked for comparison. “This team (Stanford) is a different team. They are very stout to run the ball against. We need to get better to play a group like that.”

They need to have more than three net yards on the ground. They need to have the ball in their possession more than 23 minutes and 2 seconds out of the 60 (Stanford had it 36:58). They need to be more efficient near the end zone, the Bears throwing a fourth-down interception from the Stanford 12 after they had a first down at the Stanford 10.

“It’s always frustrating when you don’t score,” said Tedford. He sat behind a microphone in his familiar white coaching jacket, sunglasses pushed up on his cap. He spoke clearly and honestly. But he spoke as a defeated coach.

"We had the opportunity down deep and couldn’t score.” 

Then repeating himself, understandable because there wasn’t much else to say, he added, “It was a very frustrating day offensively, without a doubt. We have to go back to the drawing board . . . Their defense is as good as any defense we have played. We knew going in it was going to be a dogfight. You know they are going to get theirs. We didn’t have enough on our side to keep it going.”

Keep it going? They couldn’t even get it going.

RealClearSports: Luck 'Phenomenal' in Stanford's Victory

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

STANFORD, Calif. — He was wet and weary. But on this rainy Saturday night, Andrew Luck also was a winner. Of a football game, a traditional game that means as much to him as — maybe more than — the Heisman Trophy he might not win.

Whether Luck helped or hurt his chances for that individual prize is up to the observers and then the voters, but the only thing that concerned him was Stanford beating Cal in the 114th Big Game, if only 31-28, which might be considered a negative for a 17½-point favorite.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: No love lost in Stanford-Cal rivalry

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

This Andrew Luck kid from Stanford? Just diplomatic enough to keep the coach happy. Just candid enough to keep the alumni ecstatic.

“We definitely respect Cal,” said Luck, discussing Saturday night’s Big Game at Stanford, “and I think they respect us. But it doesn’t mean we have to like each other.”

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company