Uhm, About Those Expectations...

I've got to talk about this, because it seems to happen every year.

I've got to talk about this, because I just graduated from there.

But two weeks weren't enough to give the California football team any expectations. After the Bears torched Wazzu last week to the tune of a 66-3 win, the national media, the Bay Area media, everyone was ready to jump on the Cal bandwagon.

And everyone was jumping on the Jahvid Best for Heisman truck. Best was in ESPN's top 10 Heisman list last week after scoring two touchdowns and rushing for 200 yards against the Cougars. Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle got on the bandwagon, and so did the campus paper, the Daily Cal.

After the first two weeks, why not? The Bears looked good. They defeated what many believed was a middle-of-the-road Big Ten team and throttled someone on the road.

But after losing to a Maryland team that barely beat I-AA Delaware (fuck this FCS bullshit) and lost to Middle Tennessee State, what do we know about this Cal team? Well, let's just say that maybe they aren't as good as we all thought they were and that Jeff Tedford can't coach a team to win on the east coast.

The Jahvid Jet for Heisman campaign and the Bears undefeated season came to screeching halt.

Sure, I'm disappointed. Sure, a lot of Cal fans are disappointed. But maybe we shouldn't have had high expectations after just two weeks of college football and wins against powderpuffs.

And for that, I put it on the media, for boosting this team, for maybe over-hyping this team and for creating this sense of high expectations.

The media should have known better. This was a squad that lost six of its last eight games last year. Sure, there aren't any egos and sure, the chemistry looks like it's there, but this team hadn't proven itself yet.

How can anyone declare Cal a team that could conceivably contend with Oregon and Arizona State and especially Southern California for Pac-10 supremacy?

Maybe the media could have taken it a little easy and maybe not get caught up in the excitement of what could still be a very good Bears football team.

I guess why this happens is because in the Pac-10, everyone is looking for someone who can dethrone the Trojans. And everyone is rooting for someone to knock USC off its pedestal. So when a team, even an unproven team, with a young quarterback and unproven receivers and two fragile running backs shows a glimpse and a glimmer of greatness (even against a really shitty Wazzu team and a so-so Spartans team) then the media will hail them as a contender.

And maybe Cal can be that contender. It's only one loss. It's an out-of-conference loss. The Rose Bowl and Pac-10 title isn't out of sight.

But if the Bears continue to play in that same uninspired fashion that it did today, there's no way they can contend.

The print and mainstream media need to point that out.