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Cal - Home of the Hippies
By Chris Drexel
Oh, how I am dreading making a return to Berkeley this weekend.
Once I get near Cal's campus, there won't be a parking spot seemingly within miles of Memorial Stadium -- the land underneath the run-down neighborhoods near campus is too valuable. So I must make my way through possibly the most eclectic hippie districts in the world.
"No, Mr. Rasta Man, I don't want to buy buds," I will mention several times. "No, Mr. Emo Dude, I don't have a cigarette to bum," I must continue on. "And no Ms. Flower Child, I'm not interested in your political crusade. I came here to watch the Sun Devils fork the Bears."
Just a few minutes in this moth ball-smelling, pastel-looking, incense-burning place and I will yearn to be back in Tempe, a real college town. It is the land of sunny skies, flip-flops and beautifully bronzed co-eds looking like they stepped off the cover of FHM Magazine and sat right down at the desk next to yours in English class.
Of course, Cal's students have never seen anything like this -- ladies that would melt the tape off their glasses. I once spent an entire Fourth of July on Fisherman's Wharf and never saw one female that could compare with the 50 bombshells one can view walking from Burger King to the bathroom at ASU.
Write us off as a party school if you will -- Playboy has ranked us No. 1 in that category multiple times -- but at least we know how to get out of the chemistry lab, have a good time and still get a quality education. And we didn't have to put multiple mortgages on the family house to get it.
"Ah, I will be back home soon," I will console myself come Saturday. But first thing's first. I must enter the run-down, depressing confines of Memorial Stadium (aka the worst destination in the Pac-10) to watch the nationally underappreciated ASU football team trounce much-overrated Cal.
You thought the debacle in Tennessee was bad, Bear fan? This will be 10 times worse because you will witness it at home, in person. By the final buzzer, the Sun Devils will finish what the Volunteers started -- exposing the 2006 Bears as one of the most overrated teams in the history of NCAA football.
What's this you say about Jeff Tedford? Please. Dirk Koetter has more offensive know-how in his pinky finger than Tedford does in his entire body.
Think you had a quarterback controversy because Joe Ayoob threw for 1,707 yards and Nate Longshore threw for 131 yards last season? ASU's Sam Keller and Rudy Carpenter were so sharp last year they threw for more than 2,000 yards each.
You think Marshawn Lynch is tough? We'll counter with someone like Zach Miller, the best tight end in America.
You think DeSean Jackson is going to be special. He'll never be as good as Derek Hagan, the Pac-10's all-time leading receiver.
Face it Bears fan, Sun Devils are better looking, better people and better at lighting up the scoreboard. Look out Saturday.
Chris Drexel is grad student at Arizona State University, where he is the sports editor for The State Press campus newspaper.
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ASU - Hot Chicks, Not Much More
By Brian Bainum
You could say the rivalry between Cal and Arizona State is about on par with, oh I don't know, the rivalry between the Yankees and Blue Jays. Sure, there might be something there, but they're not each other's biggest rivals. The Red Sox of each team exist; for the Bears, it's Stanford, for the Sun Devils, it's Arizona.
From a Cal perspective, Arizona State is that guy in high school who never quite fit in but still tagged along with the cool kids. While it's easy to hate the arrogant jock driving a Mercedes (USC), the cello-playing teacher's pet who gets a 4.0 (Stanford) or the younger kid that steals your fight song (UCLA), how can you hate the awkward outsider that is ASU?
It seems like nothing either team has done on the gridiron has done much to spark any animosity between the schools. After all, only four of the teams' 25 all-time meetings have been decided by less than a touchdown. Plus Arizona State consistently outperforms Cal in the coed department, bringing a plethora of Smokin' Sun Devilettes. What is there to hate about that, I ask you?
Jeff Tedford has owned Dirk Koetter in complete and utter fashion. Their only three meetings went well for the Blue and Gold, with Tedford's bunch winning by an average of 24 points, including a 27-0 blanking in 2004 at Memorial Stadium. So it's not like the Bears faithful will be screaming for revenge over some terrible loss to a Koetter squad come Saturday. No, hate is not the word if you want the Cal attitude towards Arizona State. A better way to put it would be to say we have a sense of superiority.
Look at the way Koetter and Tedford handled their respective quarterback situations to see where the sense of superiority comes from. Both coaches had tough decisions to make. Koetter had arguably two of the top-three signal callers in the Pac-10 in Rudy Carpenter and Sam Keller. Tedford had Nate Longshore and Joe Ayoob, both solid but neither overly impressive in camp. Koetter made the call for Keller. Tedford made the call for Longshore. Fine. But since the ASU players were upset with Koetter's decision, they decided to stage a mini-coup and voice their opinions to their coach. Later, Koetter went back on his word and selected Carpenter. Keller went on to transfer and bad feelings still exist.
Surely some Cal players preferred Longshore, while others likely would have rather played with Ayoob as quarterback. But once the decision was made, the entire team stood behind it. Unlike the Sun Devils' players, the Bears respected their coach. As Cal linebacker Worrell Williams put it best: "It's like if your dad says something, then that is the way it's going to be."
Tedford is a father figure to his players. Koetter is, well, who knows? One thing is for sure: if his unpunctual pick Carpenter doesn't produce a win Saturday against the Bears, there will continue to be nothing to hate about the "awkward outsider."
Brian Bainum is a senior at the University of California. He is a staff writer and football beat writer for the Daily Californian.
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