A Great Weekend for College Football

It was a great weekend. Cal beat Stanford but not without a fight. Too bad there weren't more Stanford fans out there to watch it and to cheer the great effort their team made!

The Stanford Band, who has moved from merely obnoxious to truly beyond the pale, was banned from performing at halftime. Meanwhile, the Cal student section took advantage of the fact with some truly clever card stunts. Kind of an old-fashioned way of teasing your opponents in this day of text-messaging, but it still looks really cool.

And then UCLA beat U$C in another tight defensive battle, the kind my dad taught me to love.

It's a good thing I don't have any training sessions scheduled for today--I'm hoarse.

So we're off to the Bowl Games. I know it's not as much money, but I kind of wish that Cal was playing in the Emerald Bowl and not UCLA. I could work half a day and then walk to the stadium.

Instead, Cal is playing in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego. On a Thursday night.

Cal is playing Texas A&M. (The oldest daughter of Julie D. from Happy Catholic is a freshman there.) Which means, much as I like Julie and despite the fact we often think alike, I'm going with Blue & Gold for this matchup!

Pregame is at 4:30 p.m., kickoff is at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Guess I'll be leaving work early!

Update (sort of): DS#2 had to come up with another debate topic for Public Speaking. Of course, he asked me about it this morning as we were getting ready to leave. I suggested he research the controversy around the BCS ranking system and if college football really needs a playoff. (For the record, I'm ag'in it. The players--at least at Cal--are student athletes. They already take a lighter load during the fall semester and then they have practice during the spring and late summer. A playoff system would mean they spent even less time in class than they do now--and playoffs would be held during finals. And, too, what would we argue about during Christmas dinner? Politics? Religion? Yikes!)