Cal sucks.
It’s taken me almost thirty years of fandom to accept this
obvious reality.
Cal sucks. When it
comes to major athletics – football and Men’s basketball – Cal simply
sucks. Thoroughly and consistently. And it’s not going to change.
In the thirty years I’ve actively followed Cal football, Cal
has posted losing records in the large majority of those years. That’s sucking. And they’ve made the NCAA tournament in men’s
basketball just a handful of time. Again,
that’s flat-out sucking.
But it’s so much worse than that. Over those thirty years (far more if one goes
into history), Cal has had THREE football seasons that would be considered “good”
(10 win seasons). And in each of those
10-win seasons, that’s ALL the wins they got. Even the few years Cal is good,
they suck. Over those thirty years Cal
has made it to the Sweet Sixteen TWICE, losing handily both times once they got
there.
Of the football seasons where Cal had a winning season (not
many), the huge majority of those season were BARELY winning season – 8 wins or
less. So top to bottom, the football
team sucks.
The teams land talent.
The NFL is full of players who went to Cal – some doing quite well, and
a lot better than they ever did at Cal.
The NBA has former Cal players. Yet even with talent, Cal football and
men’s basketball programs – just suck.
It’s cultural, it’s in the programs’ DNA. And it’ll never change.
Now, this is fine if one accepts the obvious historical
realities and enjoys the programs for what they are – mildly entertaining but
never going to win many games. They’re
loveable losers, and only loveable if a fan fully accepts that the teams are
and always will be losers.
Cal had Jason Kidd on the basketball team and won exactly
TWO NCAA tourney games during his entire career. Cal had Aaron Rodgers as QB and Marshawn Lynch
as RB – ON THE SAME TEAM - and had ONE 10-win season, where they lost to Texas
Tech in a middling bowl game, during that time.
Those players had far more success at the professional level than the
collegiate level because CAL SUCKS.
Jared Goff was a Cal QB who went #1 in the draft – after a 14-23
career at Cal. In other words, the NFL
has COMPLETELY DISCOUNTED the fact that Cal football just FLAT-OUT-SUCKS, no
matter what kind of talent is on the team.
(And this has proven to be justified, as Goff has gone on to do well in
the NFL, while Cal football… continues to suck.)
And it’s just the way it is. Thirty years is a more than adequate sample
size – lots of different Chancellors, Athletic Directors, coaches, even a new
stadium. Guess what stayed the
same? The suck.
I don’t bring this up to pile on Cal. Okay, maybe a little. Cal has been losing at football and men’s
basketball for over sixty years. (Yes,
Cal got one NCAA tourney championship – under a coach who promptly left and did
the same thing at a neighboring school which also sucks at basketball.) Even the one year in the 50s when Cal got to
the Rose Bowl they sucked – it just so happened all the good teams were hit
with sanctions at the same time, so Cal backed in – and then got their asses
kicked in the Rose Bowl. Because even
back then, they sucked.
This is a school that insists on keeping a mascot that looks
like a carpet sample the dog used as a diarrhea toilet for thirty years,
because it’s “tradition.” And whose fans think said mascot is cool enough that
they can disparage Stanford’s tree mascot.
In truth, Stanford has a hideous mascot, but when our mascot looks and
smells like a turd with a sweater and clown shoes, we Cal fans should really be
quiet when it comes to mascots. Colorado, Air Force, Texas have AWESOME mascots Cal fan complain about while Cal has a walking rape practice dummy dragged in from People's Park. And when
our major teams play like said smelly turds in good years, and said rape dummies in the other years (hello, Wyking Jones and Sonny Dykes), we Cal fans
shouldn’t be disparaging anyone about, well, anything.
All of this is a long way of saying I’ve been a stupid,
delusional person when it’s come to Cal football and basketball. A stupid, delusional person who for thirty
years (well, a little less) believed THINGS WOULD CHANGE. All the years of losing, of mediocre wins, of
just plain sucking, and I’d believe a bright future was just around the
corner.
Every winning season was just a ripple in a sea of
losing. But THIS winning season would be
different. THIS YEAR would be
different. That’s not Cal, that’s
me. As much as Cal has sucked, I’ve
sucked worse.
Well, I’m done sucking.
I’m doing what I should have done years ago – giving up on Cal. That is, giving up on my delusional fantasy that
Cal would ever be anything other than… Cal.
Cal will always be Cal. And as
such, Cal will always suck. History
doesn’t lie. Reality doesn’t lie. Self-delusion and false hope lies all day
long.
I regret the energy I put into something so stupid that
sucked so badly for so long. Really
regret it. I was an idiot. It’s a testament to the power of hope, but
also a cautionary tale about the power of self-delusion.
That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy watching a game. College football is fun. Just don’t expect anything. Because whether they win or lose that game,
Cal will still suck. No point in
fighting it.
I can’t take back all the energy and stress wasted over
something so stupid that amounted to nothing.
Even investing that much energy in a team that regularly wins is stupid,
but at least USC fans can point to a tradition of winning to justify a meaningless
existence. I just have time and energy I’ll
never get back.
I also have a lesson.
A lesson in both the power and danger of hope. Hope can keep one going a long time. It can keep one’s spirits up when things are
bad. And that’s a good thing. But hope can also keep one from
changing. I look at the energy I wasted
on Cal football and think “what if I had come to this place earlier in life?”
I would have had to look at my time and find better things
to do. Which would have led me to look
at a lot of other unhealthy things I was doing that I was ignoring while I
obsessed over sucky sports teams. It
took me a long time to find a good place, and most of the big positive changes
I made came after I began to accept that my hope in Cal athletics was misplaced
and it was time to take action in my life.
Optimism is great, but false hope is nothing but a
drug. Clear vision is important. See what is working well, what needs work and
what just flat-out sucks. And determine
what can be improved and what can’t. And
if you can’t improve it, cut out the things that suck. Even if you’ve been holding on to them for
years. Especially if you have.
Because a tradition of holding on to things that suck that
you cannot change… well, it sucks. Cal
sucks.
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