Niners cut Tavecchio

The Chronicle reports that Giorgio Tavecchio was cut by the Niners yesterday.

Cal Contacted Bobby Petrino

According to Yahoo! sports, Cal contacted Bobby Petrino about some sort of coaching position.  The article states "schools such as California and NFL teams such as the Tennessee Titans have asked him to visit with their coaching staffs. He has done so and might continue to, with the hope that someone gives him another chance as a head coach."
Article: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/petrino-regretful-apologetic-espn-interview-174611322--ncaaf.html

WSJ: Cal's Football Stadium Gamble

Interesting article about the stadium.  Inept planning and unrealistic seat license sales results in huge deficit.
Link.

Aaron Rodgers in Brewers Ad

Quotes from Tedford's Holiday Bowl Press Conference

Here's the link.

Cal Bags Freddie Tagaloa, 6'7", 315 pound Beast from Salesian High

Great news, made even better by the fact Cal beat out Oregon and Stanford.
From the Chronicle:
"Tagaloa gave Cal coach Jeff Tedford a verbal commitment last weekend and firmed it up Wednesday night when Cal offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Jim Michalczik visited the star recruit’s home. It’s been a really rough recruiting process for Tagaloa, ranked the nation’s No. 69 recruit by CBS/MaxPreps recruiting expert Tom Lemming."
Here's the link to the rest of the Chronicle story.

Video of Memorial Stadium Construction

USC Spanks Cal 30-9

Zach Maynard threw three interceptions and fumbled the ball once in a bitch-slapping by USC at AT&T park. His half-brother got in on the action, fumbling once as well. Tedford insightfully noted "We just turned the ball over too much."
Another fun quote: "The fact he really telegraphed every ball he was going to throw made it easy," said USC linebacker Chris Galippo, who picked off one of Maynard's passes. "When a quarterback stares down his targets like that, you just follow his eyes."
Prior to quitting the University of Buffalo team, Maynard had 18 TDs and 15 interceptions.
WTF? Since Aaron Rodgers left, Cal has had a long line of mediocre QBS, called the "Cal quarterback malaise" by CBSsports.com writer Dennis Dodd:
Joseph Ayoob
Steve Levy
Nate Longshore
Kevin Riley
Brock Mansion
And now we have Zach Maynard. He looked erratic at the first few games, and while he can run, he's no Michael Vick. He doesn't play smart and he's just not that good. The malaise continues.

Wall Street Journal: Cal is the Second Most Overrated Team in Past Decade

Today's Wall Street Journal had an article analyzing which college football teams are most notorious for failing to live up to preseason hype, based on the highest dropoff in points from the preseason poll to the final poll. Florida State was #1:

"Since 2001, the Seminoles have been overrated more than any other major program based on the change between how many votes they get in the preseason Associated Press poll and the final one (including this season). Over this span, the Seminoles have finished with 60.4% fewer points in the poll than they began with. That's the largest decline of any team with at least five preseason-poll appearances over this span.
California has the second-biggest drop-off (-47.7%), which is owed to the Golden Bears' repeated failures in the mid-2000s."