Many people know of Michael Spinks as being a light heavyweight boxing champion and an
Olympic Gold Medalist in boxing's middleweight division, few people remember that he won
the gold medal after having won just two fights. Unlike fellow gold medalists Sugar
Ray Leonard and Howard Davis, who each had to win five fights, Spinks was fortunate to
have both Jean-Marie Emebe and Alec Nastac forfeit, meaning that he advanced to the finals after having won just one
fight. He then battered the Soviet Union's Rufat Riskiev
in a third-round TKO, to earn a spot atop the medal podium. Now its likely that
Spinks was skilled enough that he would have won the gold medal whether he had to beat two
or five opponents. Nevertheless, his gold medal doesn't shine any less brightly
because his path was less rigorous than his teammates. There was no reason for him
to apologize, or preface any comments with a "Yeah, but", or stand in the
background while attention was showered upon the other 1976 boxing Olympic gold medalists.
He beat everybody who stood in front of him, and he became an Olympic champ.
And so the California football team, through no fault of its own, finds itself ranked
#2 in the nation. As a team, their objective is to win football games, and they've
been successful as their 5-0 record would suggest. What happens outside of their
games is out of their control, so as teams started falling by the wayside - Louisville,
West Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida, Texas and USC, the Bears started climbing in the polls.
From the top 15 to top 10, from the top 10 to #6, from #6 to #3, and now they're the
2nd-ranked team in the country.
Every team that has an outstanding year also has a decent amount of luck go their way.
Consider that when Cal went into the Oregon game as the 6th-ranked team in the
country, West Virginia had just lost on Friday, followed by losses by Oklahoma and
Florida, and a nailbiter of a win by USC. Fast forward to this weekend when USC suffers a
humiliating loss to Stanford at home, and LSU needed fourth-quarter heroics to defeat
Florida at home.
While the Bears are now sitting at #2, it's apparent that many poll voters view them as
a soft #2. Consider that going into the September 29th game, the Bears had a 70
point lead over Ohio State in the AP poll and a 45 point lead over the Buckeyes in the USA
Today poll. That weekend, Cal defeated a ranked Oregon team (AP 11/USA Today 12) on
the road, while Ohio State won at hapless Minnesota. The Bears' lead in the AP poll shrunk
to 50 points, while it grew slightly to 50 points in the AP poll. With Cal
having a bye week, Ohio State defeated an overrated Purdue AP 23/USA Today 20) team 23-7
at West Lafayette. Cal's lead over Ohio State in both polls was cut significantly - down
to 27 in the AP poll and down to 17 in the USA Today poll.
Put another way, the poll voters were substantially more impressed by Ohio State's wins
at Minnesota and Purdue than Cal's win at Oregon, although the Ducks were and continue to
be substantially higher ranked than either Minnesota or Purdue. Yet after each team's
loss, Oregon actually went up in the polls, while Purdue either went down or dropped out
altogether.
With each poll awarding 25 points for a first place vote, if every voter ranked Cal 2nd
and Ohio State 3rd, the Bears would have a 65 point lead in the AP poll and a 60 point
lead in the USA Today poll.
Ohio State's surge in the polls might make sense if it had another good win on its
resume, but the Buckeyes only other mildly respectable win is a 33-14 win over Washington.
The Bears have a win over Tennessee, which enhanced its quest back to the top 25
with a 35-14 win over formerly 11th-ranked Georgia.
According to the latest Sagarin ratings, Cal is ranked 6th, behind LSU, Ohio State,
Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Arizona State. In the set of ratings used for the BCS
formula, the Bears are ranked 5th, behind LSU, South Florida, Missouri and South Carolina.
Since teams are at different junctures of their conference schedules and
everybody's nonconference schedules are all over the place, it will take a few more weeks
before all the oddities are shaken out of the system.
Working in the Bears favor are that three of its remaining opponents - Sagarin #5
Arizona State, #7 USC, and #18 UCLA (beats us, too) are still top 20 teams, while
Ohio State's toughest foes will be Sagarin #28 Penn State, #31 Illinois, and #32
Wisconsin. Should Cal be able to win all three games, it'll give their strength of
schedule a big boost that should put them near or at the top of every computer ranking
formula.
Yet there's still plenty of time for all of the polls and computer rankings to work
themselves out, and with all the craziness in the college football season thus far, who's
to say that it won't get even stranger. Lurking just behind Cal and Ohio State are Boston College and South Florida, and to compound the insanity of it all, the only other
undefeated teams in the top 25 are Missouri, Hawaii, Cincinnati, and Kansas.
Just as Applachian State-Michigan had apparently cemented itself in college football
history as one of the all-time upsets, Stanford's 24-23 upset of #1 USC trumped that. While Appalachian State was considered to a be an excellent I-AA, bowl subdivision
whatever team that might have been in a little over its head against the Wolverines, most
of the pre-game talk about Stanford-USC was whether Pete Carroll's annoyance with Jim Harbaugh would warrant him leaving in USC's starters after building a six-touchdown lead.
With Stanford having to rely upon backup quarterback Tavita Pritchard, the hope was
that the offensive line would have some success in keeping him in one piece in the event
that T.C. Ostrander needed more time to recuperate.
But it was like Tom Vu went to sleep and woke up as John Basedow.
All the bluster about Stanford football's program bowing to no one actually seemed to
mean something. While USC's football team isn't quite ready to be a case study for
brand decay, the team that looked dominant against Nebraska a few weeks ago had trouble
hitting open receivers (well, open USC receivers) and was allowing Stanford to pressure
their quarterbacks. In the pivotal fourth quarter, when the Cardinal could have been
expected to buckle and fly home with a moral victory, they kept making plays, culminating
in Pritchard's 10-yard touchdown pass to Mark Bradford with 49 seconds left to put
Stanford ahead 24-23.
Saturday's game did the unthinkable in that many Cal fans found themselves rooting for
Stanford. While picking a team to root for between USC and Stanford is like deciding
whether you want Comcast or AT&T for your home phone service, a loss by USC would move
Cal ever so closer to the top of the polls.
Although t-shirt makers planning on commemorating Stanford's win shouldn't expect a
surge of orders from the East Bay, the game did show that Stanford, on some days, isn't
always likely to be the walkover than everyone expected them to be at the beginning of the
season. Likewise, optimism in Palo Alto probably isn't high enough to deluge El Paso
with late December reservations. Saturday's win will certainly help revitalize a Big
Game that in recent years had all the excitement of renewing your newspaper subscription.
With USC and UCLA losing at home on the same day to two of the most wretched teams in
Division I, and with Cal now ranked #2 in the country, maybe Gottfried Leibniz (four-star
CB from Leipzig; good measurables, raw athletic ability) was right; maybe for better or
for worse, today, more than ever, the time that we're is indeed the best of all possible
worlds.
And somewhere, Michael Spinks, if he followed college football even remotely, would be
lifting a glass.
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