So, the Bears are finally eligible for a bowl game.  But where are we going bowling?  I know I’d like to get started on planning my holiday vacation.  Being a computer nerd, I decided to whip up a small computer program to simulate the rest of the Pac-10 season and then determine the odds of Cal landing in each bowl location — or, Tedford forbid, the possibility of missing bowl season altogether!  Anyway, here’s what I found out.

First of all, one interesting tidbit that I’ve heard is that the Emerald Bowl is extremely interested in hosting the Bears.  Some ‘inside’ information, courtesy of Erin Proudfoot:

- Both the Emerald and Las Vegas bowls get either the #4 or #5 Pac-10 team.  He told me that these two bowls switch off every year as to which gets to pick first and it’s the Emerald Bowl’s turn this year.  They really want us - so they would probably pick us if we were EITHER #4 or #5.  IF THIS IS TRUE, we ain’t going to Vegas. 

- $40 face value tickets in the view section are being sold at a group discount until Nov. 30 - 25 or more tickets for $25 each with no service charges except $5 shipping.  I don’t know where the Cal section would be.

That’s fine with me; I didn’t really want to go to Las Vegas anyway.  Anyway, to refresh your memories, here’s the Pac-10’s current bowl partnerships:

1st : Rose - BCS (Pasadena, CA)
2nd : Holiday (San Diego, CA)
3rd : Sun (El Paso, TX)
4th : Emerald (San Francisco, CA)
5th : Las Vegas (Las Vegas, NV)
6th : Armed Forces (Ft. Worth, TX)

To make my predictions a little simpler, I made a few assumptions about bowl season.  Everything I assumed is stuff I would regard as 90% or more likely to happen, so we’ll call it 100% to make it easier on ourselves.

Assumptions:

- Oregon will make a BCS game if they win two of their next three (they’re high enough in the standings that I think they can afford another loss).

- If either USC or Arizona State win out, they will also make a BCS game.

- Since Cal has been to San Diego two of the past three years, the Holiday Bowl will pass on Cal if they have the choice.

- Since the Emerald really wants Cal, any 4th or 5th place tie will send the Bears across the Bay for the bowl season.  Thus, I give Cal a 0% chance of landing in Las Vegas.

- Having no special reason for or against us, the Sun and Armed Forces are rather indifferent, and all tied teams would have an equal shot at landing in that bowl game.  Thus, if we tie for 3rd with one other team, we would have a 50% shot of landing in the Sun, and a 50% shot at falling to the Emerald.

Methodology:

This section is for numbers nerds only; if you don’t care how I came up with these percentages, skip to the ‘Results’ section below.

First, I found some gamblers’ power ratings online.  These are the numbers used to calculate the point spread of games, and I figured they would help give me an accurate picture of how likely each team would be to win each game.  Using the power ratings, I projected what the point spread would be for each remaining game involving a Pac-10 team.  I then crafted a crude mathematical relationship between the size of the point spread and the odds that the favorite would win the game (basically a linear function).

Given these odds, I then went and simulated the likelihood of each combination of outcomes for games involving Pac-10 teams, coming up with around 65,000 different combinations.  Matching the likelihood of each combination with the bowl destination for Cal that such a combination would produce, I then added all these tiny percentages up.  Simple, right?

Results:

Emerald - 53.6% - This is the most common result for Cal.  It’s actually surprisingly likely; with 3 games left to play, I would consider any result that is over 35% to be abnormally large.  Still, it’s not quite large enough to warrant running out and purchasing your BART tickets yet.

Sun - 30.72% - The next most likely result, this is the only other destination with a good chance of occurring.  I have no idea how interested the Sun Bowl is in Cal, but I will note that in its 73-year history, Cal is the only Pac-10 team to never have played in the Sun Bowl.

Holiday - 7.14% - I like San Diego, but I have a feeling that the Holiday Bowl organizers would like a different team this year.  However, if Cal wins out and both Oregon and ASU make BCS games, this is probably where we’d end up.

No Bowl - 4.39% - Conversely, if Cal loses out, they may not make a bowl game at all.  Of course, this scenario also requires one of the bottom 4 teams (Arizona, Stanford, Washington and Washington State) to make a miracle run, win out, and get bowl eligible.  I wouldn’t worry about this one too much.

Armed Forces - 4.08% - 6th place in the Pac-10, or 7th place with two teams in the BCS.  Another ‘not likely, don’t worry about it’ scenario.

Rose - 0.04% - How you like them Rose Bowl odds?  Yeah, not good.  Beat USC and then worry about it.

BCS at-large - 0.03% - Even slimmer than our Rose Bowl chances.  This scenario requires Cal to win out and finish in 2nd place.  They would have 9 wins, and I *think* they would get to the top-14 in the BCS standings, but I can’t even be sure of that.  Again, this is nothing to worry about.

Las Vegas - 0.00% - As I discussed above, I think the Emerald would take us if Cal were 4th OR 5th, so I think we have no shot at landing in Las Vegas.  Oh well.

• Ted Miller’s Pac-10 Notebook has a few things this week: Mike Stoops is going to be back, Longshore thinks higher expectations at Cal are a sign that the program has reached big-time status, our Bears have had a 1,000 yard rusher for six straight years, and Cal is on track to play in a bowl game for a fifth consecutive year.  Go Bears.
• Ivan Maisel raises the possibility in his I-Formation that the Las Vegas Bowl and the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl will not have Pac-10 teams this year, because not enough of them will have good enough records.
• This week’s Forde Yard Dash talks about how the SEC and Pac-10 would match up team-for-team.  Going by Sagarin Ratings, Georgia would be favored against our Bears by 2.4.
• Bowl Projections!  Maisel has Cal in the Sun Bowl against Cincinnati, and Schlabach has our Bears in the Emerald Bowl against Georgia Tech.  Man…both sound unappealling.  I wouldn’t have minded seeing Georgia Tech last year when Calvin Johnson was still around, but who do they have now?  Ah…some RB named Choice.  Right.
• Arizona head coach Lute Olson is taking an indefinite leave of absence.  He seems like a good enough guy - at least, Steve Kerr and Richard Jefferson seem to really like him, so what the hell.  Let’s wish him the best.
• Apparently Ben Braun has done a decent job recruiting this year!  Not that this should be that big of a surprise; I’ve always thought of him as Ron Zook-lite.  Not as good a recruiter, and not as bad a coach…although the latter might have been amended, because Zook has done so well recruiting that it’s hard to screw up that much talent.  Let’s see if Braun can do anything more with these guys than get to the second round.
• More news!  Rulon Davis is going to miss yet another game, and Chris Conte had ten tackles in his starting debut last week.  Of course, when the most notable thing about your secondary is how well they tackle…
• Notes and quotes on our Bears - Tedford calls the USC defense the best he’s ever seen, Hawk isn’t thinking about the NFL right now, Andrew Larson is a finalist for this year’s Ray Guy award, and this reporter thinks perhaps the Bears can try bend-but-not-break this week.  PLEASE GOD NO
• Tedford still thinks Longshore is getting better.  That’s what Andy Reid keeps saying about Donovan.
• Getcha popcorn ready picks in.

Well, with Oregon’s victory over Arizona State, the Pac-10 is pretty much Oregon’s to lose.  Win out, and the very worst they could do would be a berth in the Rose Bowl; if either LSU or Ohio State stumbles (or possibly even if they don’t!), Oregon could be playing in the National Championship Game.

(Aside:  you’ve heard of the concept of referees making ‘make-up’ calls, giving a team the benefit of a 50/50 call after they know they screwed up a previous call that went against the same team.  Do you think voters would put Oregon in the NCG as a make-up call for screwing them over in 2001?)

Even if Oregon doesn’t make it to the NCG, the Pac-10 still has a very good shot at getting two teams into the BCS derby.  Both USC and Arizona State will probably be eligible for the BCS at-large bid (top 14 finish) if either can win out, and you’d have to think either team would be attractive to bowl organizers.  Any BCS bowl will jump at the chance to snag USC (just like how the Sugar Bowl took an obviously inferior Notre Dame team last year), and you gotta believe the Fiesta Bowl would be interested in an 11-1 Arizona State team.  Of course, at least one of these teams will lose on Thanksgiving Night, as USC visits Arizona State for a nationally-televised Thursday Night game on ESPN.  The Pac-10’s TV deals have been much maligned (and rightly so), but they sure got it right with this game, which if ASU and USC win this weekend, will be pretty much a BCS playoff game.

Pac-10 Standings

Team	Wins	Losses
Oregon	5	1
Arizona State	5	1
UCLA	4	2
USC	4	2
Oregon State	3	3
California	3	3
Arizona	3	4
Stanford	2	5
Washington	1	5
Washington State	1	5

Of course, Oregon hasn’t won anything yet.  Granted, Arizona State needs help to win the Pac-10, and USC needs a lot of help, but neither is still out of it.  Cal and Oregon State are pretty much out of it, although mathematically, both are still alive.  Surprisingly still in control of their own destiny?  UCLA.  Yes, the Bruins are 5-4 with 4 embarrassing losses, but because they haven’t lost to any of the Pac-10 leaders yet, they could still go to the Rose Bowl if they win out.  (Scary thought.  You’ve gotta think Bruins Nation’s worst nightmare is an 8-4 UCLA team in the Rose Bowl — how could they ever get rid of Karl Dorrell?)  Of course, with games against Arizona State, Oregon and USC, UCLA is more likely to lose all 3 and end up missing bowl season entirely, but I would bet they pull off at least one of those games.

On the flip side, of course, the bottom 4 teams in the Pac-10 (Arizona, Stanford, Washington, and Washington State) all have 6 losses, and it doesn’t look likely that any of them will make a bowl game.  In fact, Stanford visits Washington State this weekend in a post-season elimination game.  The odds are long for all of these teams, but I personally hope that Stanford wins this weekend, then beats Notre Dame over Thanksgiving weekend, just so we can crush their flickering bowl hopes in the Big Game.  Am I vindictive?  Sure.  But Big Game is more fun when Stanford has something besides pride to play for.

And where is Cal in this Pac-10 jumble?  Sadly, somewhere in the middle.  Still, we’re bowl eligible, and that should still be cause for (minor) celebration, but expectations were much higher than this.  Anyway, people keep asking me which bowl Cal will end up in, and I’ve got some answers, but my ramblings are already running long, so they’ll have to wait for my next post.

——

On a completely different topic, I’ve been trying to remember the anti-fight song lyrics to one of the Trojans’s songs.  You know, the slower one.  You know the one I’m talking about.  Anyway, here’s what I’ve got so far:

It’s boring and it’s slow!
It’s the only song we know!
Your mother is a ho!
Your sister can’t say ‘no’!
O.J. killed Nico’!

Anybody remember the other lyrics?  Were there other lyrics?  Got any of your own?  I’d love to hear ‘em!