Cal football faces long road to respectability

Jeff Eisenberg
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So the Cal football team is ineligible for postseason play this
year. So what.

After amassing a sparkling 15-40 record over the past five
seasons, including last year’s 1-10 masterpiece, the Bears
are just hoping to escape the Pac-10 cellar in 2002. Even before
the NCAA placed the program on five years of probation last week,
Cal had about as much chance to qualify for a bowl game as Freddie
Prinze Jr. has to receive an Oscar nomination for Scooby Doo.

In fact, the Bears have been so dreadful lately that it makes
you wonder if they are clear on the whole “cheat to
win” concept.

Other notorious cheaters have ridden a wave of overzealous
boosters and illegal shoe contracts to the top of the college
football world. Five years of academic fraud and recruiting
violations has left Cal with a team that should struggle to notch a
conference victory in 2002.

The Bears went 0-8 in the Pac-10 last season including a
forgettable 56-17 drubbing at the hands of our then-unbeaten Bruins
at the Rose Bowl last October. Cal has not beaten its rival
Stanford since 1994.

It has gotten so pathetic in Berkeley that if not for a
face-saving victory against Rutgers in the last week of the season
last year, the Bears would have gone 0-11 for the first time in
school history.

I’ve heard that cheaters never prosper but this is
ridiculous.

Maybe the university should have hired former men’s
basketball head coach Todd Bozeman as a football consultant. At
least when Bozeman paid off high-profile recruits in the mid-1990s,
the squad was a fixture in the NCAA tournament.

One thing is certain though: The program’s cheating
tactics leave a lot to be desired.

Michael Ainsworth and Ronnie Davenport, the two Cal wide
receivers who enrolled retroactively in spring semester classes in
August of 1999, and received passing grades despite not doing any
of the work, left the school shortly afterwards.

And the 38 members of the team who received what the NCAA
Committee on Infractions deemed “incidental hotel
expenses” from 1997-2001. The NCAA did not specify what that
means, but I’m sure that watching late night porn or raiding
the mini-bar on Friday nights could really help the Bears prepare
for upcoming road games.

No wonder the team often appeared a step slow in assembling a
sterling 7-21 road record over that span.

The university has decided to appeal the punishment, claiming
that a one-year postseason ban and the loss of nine scholarships
over the next five seasons was too stringent.

Here’s hoping the NCAA does not back down. In the seedy
world of Division I college football, if you are dumb enough to get
caught, you deserve whatever punishment you get.

Seeking a fresh start this season, the Bears seem to have made
an intelligent decision at last, hiring Jeff Tedford as their new
head coach. The former University of Oregon offensive coordinator
is widely respected as a solid coach and a top-notch recruiter, but
he is taking over a program that has reached rock-bottom.

Massive changes must be made before the program can climb toward
respectability again.

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