Tomorrow, I’m getting married to a wonderful woman that I love very much.  That in itself would be enough to qualify me as lucky, but this girl’s even better.  One of the best parts of our relationship is that we’re passionate about many of the same things; we can share in this passion, and it brings us closer together.  It’s unfortunate when you feel you have to hide your obsession from your partner, as though it were something to be ashamed of; I’m certainly glad I don’t have to go sneaking around so that I can attend fantasy baseball drafts or some such nonsense.

What makes me truly lucky is that my girl shares my passion for Cal, and Cal football in particular.  We do road trips and alumni events together.  We watch college football together at home (she got just as crazy-excited during the Boise State - Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl as I did).  I can spend (some of) my spare time blogging about Cal, and she not only tolerates it, she sends me links and inside information so that I can write about it.

In fact, we have planned an August wedding so that it would not conflict with Cal football Saturdays; no one wants to get married with one earpiece tuned to Starkey.  We’ve even planned our Honeymoon to end on August 31st, just in time to get back for the big game vs. Tennessee.  How many girls would approve of that?  Thus, I won’t be blogging for the next two weeks, but I’m sure you’ll understand.  TwistNHook, Yellow Fever and HydroTech will still be here, and TwistNHook will post the rest of my road trip series for me while I’m gone.

There are a thousand other great things about this girl, but you probably don’t care to hear about those.  In fact, you may not care to hear about my personal life at all.  All I really want to say is, if you find a girl like this, hold on to her, ‘cause she’s rare, and she’s special, and she’s worth everything you’ll ever do to try and make her happy.

GO BEARS!!!

Lots of college football previews and predictions from the usual suspects, as well as a few random bits on the Pac-10.

• ESPN.com’s first Power 16 of the year places our Bears at 14, which isn’t too far removed from their USA Today Poll rank of 12, so I’m not going to get worked up over it.  There’s some analysis there, but what’s surprising is that there’s only one mention of THA1.
• And the first Heisman Watch at ESPN.com has THA1 at 6, with two third place votes, a fourth, and three fifth place votes, out of 14 voters.  Darren McFadden got 13 firsts and one fifth…I wonder what the reasoning was behind that one.
• Here we have Ivan Maisel and Mark Schlabach’s first Bowl Projections - Maisel has our Bears going to the Sun Bowl to play Notre Dame, and Schlabach has them going to the Holiday Bowl (again) to play Nebraska.  There isn’t anything wrong with either of those matchups per se, and I’d be looking forward to going to either, but Maisel implicitly has our Bears third in the Pac-10 behind Oregon, and while Schlabach has them second, he doesn’t think they’ll be high enough in the BCS standings to earn a Rose Bowl berth.
• Maisel also weighs in and says this year, the Pac-10 is better than the Big 10.  Duh.
• However, Pat Forde says the SEC is better than the Pac-10, essentially because those in the South have nothing else to live for.  Well, I can’t argue with that reasoning.
• Todd McShay has his early rankings for draft prospects among this year’s senior class and draft-eligible juniors - Longshore is no. 6 among junior QBs, Justin Forsett is no. 7 among senior RBs, DeSean is THA1 among junior WRs, Craig Stevens is no. 12 among senior TEs, Alex Mack is no. 7 among junior OLs, and no DL, LB, or DBs make his list.  Without doing further research, I’m inclined to take McShay’s list as it is, and the lack of mention of any of our defensive players is more than a bit disconcerting.
• SI.com has a scouting report on its top 20 teams…and our Bears barely made the list.  Seems a little low, but they have the chance to prove them wrong on the first weekend of the year, anyway.
• Preview from CBS Sportsline which has this little nugget -"WR Nyan Boateng, a transfer from Florida who has to redshirt this season, was arrested in Gainesville, Fla., in late July on a charge of burglary residence, battery and criminal mischief."  Whoops.
• Bruce Feldman blogs about the top college fantasy football players,with a cryptic comment about DeSean’s thoughts on USC which, "I’m pretty sure will only make the USC-Cal game just that much more intense."  I tried to pick up the college football preview edition Feldman mentioned yesterday, but it wasn’t available at the Borders I checked out.  However, going back to the Heisman Watch linked above, those comments were probably what Feldman paraphrased there - "To me, DeSean Jackson is the wild card in this race. As a dynamic and elusive receiver-return man, he’s in the mold of one of his heroes, former Heisman winner Desmond Howard. Jackson might benefit more than anyone from the new kickoff rules because he will get more chances to break runs. Jackson’s style is conducive to a Heisman run, especially if he gets off to a fast start in Cal’s revenge game against Tennessee in the season opener. His real spotlight game, however, comes in October when USC visits Cal. Jackson is still smarting over catching only two passes against his favorite childhood team. He says knocking off USC would be better than winning the Heisman. If Jackson sparks that victory, he might get both."
• Not that this should really be surprising in any way, but apparently getting arrested for theft in LA just isn’t that big a deal.
• Oregon doesn’t want to play on Smurf Turf, so they want to move the game to…China?
• I have no idea why this is news.
• Checking in again at Bills camp, Jeffri Chadiha says Dick Jauron doesn’t want to have one feature back.
• Basketball!  Yes, there’s another sport out there, that unfortunately because of Ben Braun, we just don’t care about that much.  Anyway, here’s a Pac-10 preview from ESPN.com, which posits that the conference will be the best in the nation, and that our Bears have the three best big men no one talks about.  I guess that’s a good thing.