Athletic Director Sandy Barbour recently spoke for about 40 minutes at the Second Annual Haas Wine Tasting, an event for Haas alums and Cal fans held at Mudd’s in San Ramon.  Through some exclusive channels, the California Golden Blogs has obtained a brief summary of her remarks, some of which are enlightening.  Summary in italics.

– she mentioned all of the many accomplishments this year for CAL sports…she thought it was a great year, the tree sitters and the stadium lawsuits notwithstanding

Standard AD opening remarks, nothing interesting here.
 
– she reviewed some of the record setting 13 national championships that the Bears earned this year, the most ever by the school, including the recent ones by track.  Last week 2 of the CAL National Champ. teams were honored by the White House.  Of the 13 titles, 2 were team championships and there would have been more team titles the past few years if rugby and men’s crew had also counted as NCAA sports.   The success that rugby has had the past 25 years is unprecedented in any sport.

I think we can all agree that this is pretty awesome, and a lot of credit has to go to Jack Clark (Rugby) and Steve Gladstone (Crew, former AD, hired Tedford).
 
– the final results of the Director’s Cup in a few weeks will put CAL probably at about #7 this year, matching last year’s record finish.  

Go Bears!  I suppose Stanford won another one of these things…you know, I thought they were having trouble getting exceptional student-atheletes into school.  If that’s the case, how come they’re so good at all the other sports?
 
– Sandy was very happy to report that CAL student athletes continue to do very well with their gpa’s, as well as their graduation rates.

Glad to hear it.  As much pride as us sports fans take in Cal’s athletic achievements, one could say that the whole Cal community takes even more pride in the school’s academic achievements.  The athletic department will never run this school, instead merely augmenting it, so it’s nice to hear that they’re not dragging our academic reputation down.
 
– there is news that will be released later this week that the CAL-Tenn. game on 9/1 will NOT be selected for coverage by ESPN Gameday.  Instead ESPN Gameday just told Sandy that the Va. Tech. game will be selected instead because of the sentiment around that game.   After initial reports last month that the CAL game was a sure bet, a few days later it was reported that the Va. Tech. might be selected instead….perhaps the CAL-USC game will be picked up in November….

Yeah, we all got excited by that (premature) Bear Insider article, but I can’t say I didn’t warn you.  I also can’t say I’m not disappointed, but man, if Gameday comes to Cal-USC in November, how crazy would things get then?
 
– Stadium and lawsuit update: CAL’s case is getting stronger all of the time as more data comes in.  There is some hope that the City of Berkeley might become more motivated to discuss the remaining issues (especially traffic and parking) and settle out of court.  Sandy also noted that while Jeff Tedford is frustrated by the lawsuit, he sees that there has been great progress (plans and fundraising) and he totally understands the situation and knows that the project will happen. Sandy also talked about how [football] recruiting is getting brutal and that other schools are saying that the project is dead…..Though more details need to be worked out on the stadium upgrade plan, eventual seating capacity after the upgrade is hoped to be as high as 65,000, but Sandy said should be over 60,000 for sure.  CAL will try to make sure the number of seats to be lost will be minimized.  Shrinking a stadium down by a lot (see StanfUrd down to 50,000) would not show much confidence in the desire to field a great football team and draw in large crowds for football….CAL would not go in such a direction.

I think we’re all glad to hear news like this.  No one (not even the city of Berkeley) likes to waste a lot of money on lawyers, so I’m really hoping Cal can come to a settlement with the city.  Not that we wouldn’t win a trial, but at this point, I think we all just want to see this project get started.
 
– Obviously many CAL fans will not be able to see the Big Game this year.  CAL is planning a special viewing of the Big Game in Berkeley for all of the fans who can not get into the game down on the Farm….more details will follow.  But the viewing will likely be coordinated around both the men’s and women’s BB games on December 1. The men will be  playing Missouri in the Pac-10/Big 12 Series.

That actually sounds like fun.  If I can’t get Big Game tickets on Friday, a whole Cal sports day on Campus sounds pretty fun too.  Plus, I’ll bet I can manage a lot more drinking this way…
 
– Responding to a question about Ben Braun, Sandy said that expectations are very high for men’s BB, just like all other sports at CAL.  She has confidence in Ben Braun and the team should be very good this year with the return of Hardin (who shunned the NBA this year)

So, a vote of confidence, but a caveat regarding heightened expectations.  Does this mean if our team sucks this year, Braun will finally get the boot?  Gosh, I hope so.  Not that I definitely want Braun fired, but I’m tired of excuses for mediocre seasons.  That sort of stuff seems to fly at Cal more than at most big time schools.  How many other D-1A schools would have put up with 5 years of Tom Holmoe?
 
– Responding to a question about where CAL fans were seated at the USC game last year [terrible seats way off in a corner outside of the footprint of the football field configuration], Sandy said that attempts have been made to change the location of the CAL seating for the 2008 game down at USC, but no progress has yet been made.  Cal may return the favor to the Trojans when USC comes to Berkeley this Fall….like maybe putting the Trojan fans up on Tightwad Hill!!??…..

Seriously.  Those seats were GARBAGE!  We just CAN’T let them get away with stunts like that.

One final thought, a pet peeve of mine : why do people insist on writing ‘CAL’ in all caps?  It’s not an acronym, it’s an abbreviation.  It’s just as stupid as writing Ucla with lowercase letters, as though it were a word.  It’s Cal, people, not CAL.  Oh, and why do people from other parts of the country refer to this state as ‘Cali’?  What’s with that?  Don’t get me started…

So, in conclusion, Go Bears!

 <Update>  Here’s the official announcement from Virginia Tech regarding ESPN GameDay.