While digging through the Philadelphia Eagles draft history here (hey, look at all the first round offensive tackle busts!), I noticed a fun link on the right side - the Madden 08 Nickname Generator.  How does it work?  Type in the name of a draft prospect, and it’ll spit out a nickname, along with the probability of that nickname being used.  Because a few results can come up for any given name, I ran each name in five times.  Here are the results of a few Cal Bears.

Marshawn Lynch - "The Solid Investment" - 80%
Marshawn Lynch - "The Bull in Bears Clothing" - 53%
Marshawn Lynch - "The Solid Investment" - 35%
Marshawn Lynch - "The Bull in Bears Clothing" - 32%
Marshawn Lynch - "Bullish" - 42%

Daymeion Hughes - "The Human Record Book" - 58%
Daymeion Hughes - "The Heat" - 36%
Daymeion Hughes - "The Threat" - 44%
Daymeion Hughes - "100 Yard Dasher" - 84%
Daymeion Hughes - "Cobra" - 83%

Brandon Mebane - "California Bear" - 40%
Brandon Mebane - "California Bear" - 58%
Brandon Mebane - "California Bear" - 79%
Brandon Mebane - "California Bear" - 63%
Brandon Mebane - "California Bear" - 36%

Desmond Bishop - "The Archbishop of the Big-Hit" - 36%
Desmond Bishop - "The Archbishop of the Big-Hit" - 57%
Desmond Bishop - "The Archbishop of the Big-Hit" - 77%
Desmond Bishop - "The Archbishop of the Big-Hit" - 50%
Desmond Bishop - "The Archbishop of the Big-Hit" - 79%

And just for kicks, a few guys who have no chance in hell of getting drafted:

Tim Mixon - "Primo" - 79%
Scott Smith - "Primo" - 77%
Joe Ayoob - "The Human Incompletion The Record Breaker of Inaccuracy" - 65%
Erik Robertson - "The Threat" - 65%
Marcus O’Keith - "Rocketman" - 53%
Nu’u Tafisi - "Game Time" - 32%
Steve Levy - "100 Yard Dasher" - 32%
David Gray - "Primo" - 38%

There are a few conclusions we can draw from this.  Marshawn reminds someone of a bull, or they were watching MSNBC at the time.  The guys over at Madden don’t think Hughes will be drafted, or they decided "40 Yard Slog" wasn’t a good nickname.  Brandon Mebane is wholly unremarkable and has no distinguishing characteristics other than the school he attended, or they realized "NumbaTenn" was already taken.  And Desmond Bishop has the best nickname ever, if a bit long.

My friend just sent me this interview with Leon Powe at the Daily Cal.  Not terribly deep, but it’s good to catch up with a longlost friend like Leon (Note:  I don’t actually know Powe, though I did see him once walking around at the RSF, but I did watch him play basketball a lot and that was a while ago and I haven’t seen him play basketball since, so I’m going to count that as long lost, so there). 

Here is the link. 

Cal Spring Game - DeSean

Cal Spring Game - Surplus Sale 

Having been stymied at the Surplus Sale, I went to the only other Cal Surplus Sale I could think of:  Joy’s.  Always with the lower prices, I knew I could get a deal there.  And the Cal hoodie for only 20 bucks in no way proved me wrong. 

So, I happened to roll into Memorial Stadium just as some players were coming out.  They were defensivemen of some stature, thanks to the blue jerseys. 

They came together at the foot of the tunnel and put their hands together as if about to start a game.  Perhaps that should have been a clue that an actual scrimmage was going to happen.  And then when the leader said "We are gonna get that ball" that also should have been a clue.  I feel as stupid as a USC student to not have put 2 and 2 together!

They then ran onto the field.  I accidently didn’t realize where I was going and kinda followed them a few steps onto the field.  Nobody really stopped me or anything.  Nor did I even really see any of security.   Perhaps I should have just gone onto the field to get better vantage point for photographs or some such thing.  And maybe see JT (who I didn’t actually see at all !).  

As I hadn’t been in the stadium for a while I decided to take a walk around to kill the 30 or so minutes.  They already have next year’s sked up:

I keep trying to figure out which game is more important, Tennessee or USC.  Tennessee is huge for more national reasons, while USC directly relates to whether we can make the Rose Bowl.  Tennessee has a lot of pride, but not a lot much else.  We got destroyed last year and still was Hawkins not randomly falling over at the 1 or DeSean’s big toe or the refs not taking like 40 Hughes picks back away from making the Rose Bowl.  So, USC could clearly seem bigger.  But pride is part of perception and on the national stage perception is huge.  Either way, I hope we win both.  Duh. 

Sweet!  Free food!  Last year I didn’t get the food, because the line was insanely long.  I think the bad weather this kept the amount of people there down and I actually grabbed some of the food.  It was OK.  

"I heard a rumor that Hughes is off the team.  We’ll have to figure out new and inventive ways to take interceptions back from SydQuan this year.  Have you ever heard of illegal use of dreads?  Let’s run with it!"

The team was stretching out as a whole before they broke up into individual drills.

In the next post, I’ll look at some of the individual drills such as the Defensive Backs and Wide Receivers drills (i.e. the ones done closest to us).   And then after that Ill look at some of the special teams play (which ranged from amazing to abysmal) and some of the action on Saturday.