It wasn’t that long ago that Cal fans were the ones longing for basketball season.
In 2001, the year prior to coach Jeff Tedford’s arrival in Berkeley, the Bears went 1-10, closing the season with their sole victory, a win over even more lowly Rutgers.
That season, horrific as it was, was fairly consistent with Cal’s history. The Bears had long been a lower-tier Pac-10 team, and for about 40 years had never risen consistently above that level.
That 2001 season also saw UCLA begin its football season with a 8-0 record. The Bruins were proclaimed by Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke to be the team to beat in L.A. ““ and, subsequently, the Pac-10.
Times, as they have a way of doing, changed.
Cal enters Saturday’s game against UCLA with a 5-1 record ““ the Bears’ one loss coming without starting quarterback Nate Longshore. The Bears have ridden as high as a No. 2 ranking in the country and are every bit the play-making offensive machine that their current No. 9 ranking would suggest.
And, more surprisingly, this is consistent with their play over the last five years.
Since Tedford’s arrival, the Bears have not posted a losing record in conference and have finished No. 2 to USC twice.
UCLA, historically the second- or third-best team in the conference, has given up that place.
The Bruins stand at 4-2 with a 3-0 conference record, but the 4-2 record comes with blowout losses to Notre Dame and Utah, and the 3-0 conference record has been padded by three games against the dregs of the conference.
In the five seasons since Karl Dorrell was hired, UCLA has finished higher than fourth in conference exactly once. Once a proud participant in the Rose Bowl every few years, the UCLA football program has become a mid-level Pac-10 program.
So when UCLA plays Cal on Saturday, it will be another in a long line of David v. Goliath matchups between the two schools ““ only now with a role reversal.
As far as the players go, however, that story line is shrug-worthy.
“I don’t know, I don’t care (about Cal’s rise to the No. 2 spot in the Pac-10),” senior offensive tackle Brian Abraham said. “I just want to beat them this weekend. I don’t really care about any of that (stuff).”
Caring or not, the Bruins are in an interesting position this weekend. With a victory, the Bruins would put Cal in a probably insurmountable two-loss position in conference and put themselves in the driver’s seat with a 4-0 record. The Bruins would then have a decent chance of getting to the Rose Bowl for the first time under Dorrell.
But if Cal wins? If Cal wins, the Bears have simply to beat Arizona State and USC, and avoid stumbling in the rest of the conference slate, to put themselves in their first Rose Bowl since 1959. That would put the icing on Tedford’s early reign in Berkeley and perhaps solidify the Bears as the team to beat in the Pac-10 after USC.
And like the game against ‘SC every year, the Cal game has taken on an added atmosphere for some Bruin players.
“Ever since I was a freshman, it’s such a different atmosphere,” Abraham said. “It’s such a big game. It’s always sold out. It’s almost like ‘SC, just with how many people come and how pumped up the players are.”
The Bruins will have to be pumped up on Saturday. The Bears, coming off a defeat at the hands of Oregon State, will likely be geared up for a game against their UC rivals.
The Bruins will have to find a way to contain the offensive playmakers of the Bears while also finding a way to generate their own offense against a Bears defense that, while young, also has a good amount of talent.
“We’ve just got to come out and prepare for anything,” wide receiver Brandon Breazell said. “We’ve practiced against pressure, zone and everything. We pretty much need to prepare for anything.”
But ultimately, it will come down to containing Cal and countering the speed of their playmakers with positioning and intelligence.
“(Tedford) thinks he’s got better athletes than everyone else, and so he thinks if he just gets his guys in space, he’ll win,” linebacker Christian Taylor said. “We just have to take it away, take away space. That’s the name of the game.”