The number of ranked teams that each power 4 team plays this season. pic.twitter.com/AMTseNYq9r

— College Football Live (@CollegeFBonX) August 7, 2025

Bobodeluxe said:

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"we lose our NIL and Portal advantage."

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Bearly Clad said:

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First off this isn't true. We have 2 (as of now) in SMU and Louisville. It's still an easy schedule but preseason rankings are meaningless. I actually think ranked wins should only be counted at the end of the season when you see how good the teams you played actually were.

For example: GT got credit for a top 10 win last year against an FSU team that went 2-10. Notre Dame will get credit for a top 10 win week 1 against Miami and Miami won't end up as a top 10 team. JMO but ranked wins should only be counted in the final season poll unless you wanna asterisk some for bad injury situations (a rash of them or losing a star or the starting QB, etc.)

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calumnus said:

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Bobodeluxe said:

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"we lose our NIL and Portal advantage."

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We had two Top 20 Portal Classes two years in a row leading into last season when NIL had to come from alums and not from the schools. Cal has one of the the largest/wealthiest alumni bases in D1. Sebasta and the California Legends Collective was killing it. That ends with the House Settlement.

The California Legends Collective has shut down. Now NIL comes from the schools and schools can use up $20 million of their media revenues on NIL. Cal's media revenues are half that amount and they need to cover coaches' salaries, scholarships and other expenses too.

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calumnus said:

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Bobodeluxe said:

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"we lose our NIL and Portal advantage."

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We had two Top 20 Portal Classes two years in a row leading into last season when NIL had to come from alums and not from the schools. Cal has one of the the largest/wealthiest alumni bases in D1. Sebasta and the California Legends Collective was killing it. That ends with the House Settlement.

The California Legends Collective has shut down. Now NIL comes from the schools and schools can use up $20 million of their media revenues on NIL. Cal's media revenues are half that amount and they need to cover coaches' salaries, scholarships and other expenses too.

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BearlyCareAnymore said:

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calumnus said:

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Bobodeluxe said:

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"we lose our NIL and Portal advantage."

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We had two Top 20 Portal Classes two years in a row leading into last season when NIL had to come from alums and not from the schools. Cal has one of the the largest/wealthiest alumni bases in D1. Sebasta and the California Legends Collective was killing it. That ends with the House Settlement.

The California Legends Collective has shut down. Now NIL comes from the schools and schools can use up $20 million of their media revenues on NIL. Cal's media revenues are half that amount and they need to cover coaches' salaries, scholarships and other expenses too.

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The transfer rankings were always massively misleading. They did not use the normal methodology or any methodology that would answer the simple question of who got the best players. Much like JC rankings of old individual player rankings were significantly inflated over high school which you could see when you would see guys who were 3 stars a year before turning into 4 stars without playing. You would see transfer classes from one team ranked higher than transfer classes from teams who had more players and a higher average per player rating which makes no sense unless you understand they were measuring impact which took into account your existing roster and the quality of players you lost. This resulted in many teams with high transfer portal rankings having little impact come season time. For instance, Colorado had the National #1 transfer ranking in 2023 and finished last in the pac. When you looked at it, their average player ranking was 69 which was not good. Cal ranked 19 with a 72 average player ranking. Michigan ranked 24 with a 79 ave player ranking.

Cal Legends did an awesome job and did their job. But the coaching staff never brought in top 20 personnel. Look at 2023 where our highest rated transfer was a QB who was abysmal. We had another highly rated transfer QB who was extremely poor. And we ended up starting a lightly recruited guy we had recruited out of high school. And the thing is we saw the players and they weren't top 20 class caliber. We didn't get better which no matter what you think of the coaches, same coach + better players should mean better results.

Both on a class level and individual level the expectations set by the misunderstanding of transfer portal rankings were unfair and unrealistic. And our high school recruiting was not good. Cal is where they are because none of these systems gave an advantage. Maybe it was less bad, but we were never advantaged.

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calumnus said:

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BearlyCareAnymore said:

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calumnus said:

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Bobodeluxe said:

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"we lose our NIL and Portal advantage."

---

We had two Top 20 Portal Classes two years in a row leading into last season when NIL had to come from alums and not from the schools. Cal has one of the the largest/wealthiest alumni bases in D1. Sebasta and the California Legends Collective was killing it. That ends with the House Settlement.

The California Legends Collective has shut down. Now NIL comes from the schools and schools can use up $20 million of their media revenues on NIL. Cal's media revenues are half that amount and they need to cover coaches' salaries, scholarships and other expenses too.

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The transfer rankings were always massively misleading. They did not use the normal methodology or any methodology that would answer the simple question of who got the best players. Much like JC rankings of old individual player rankings were significantly inflated over high school which you could see when you would see guys who were 3 stars a year before turning into 4 stars without playing. You would see transfer classes from one team ranked higher than transfer classes from teams who had more players and a higher average per player rating which makes no sense unless you understand they were measuring impact which took into account your existing roster and the quality of players you lost. This resulted in many teams with high transfer portal rankings having little impact come season time. For instance, Colorado had the National #1 transfer ranking in 2023 and finished last in the pac. When you looked at it, their average player ranking was 69 which was not good. Cal ranked 19 with a 72 average player ranking. Michigan ranked 24 with a 79 ave player ranking.

Cal Legends did an awesome job and did their job. But the coaching staff never brought in top 20 personnel. Look at 2023 where our highest rated transfer was a QB who was abysmal. We had another highly rated transfer QB who was extremely poor. And we ended up starting a lightly recruited guy we had recruited out of high school. And the thing is we saw the players and they weren't top 20 class caliber. We didn't get better which no matter what you think of the coaches, same coach + better players should mean better results.

Both on a class level and individual level the expectations set by the misunderstanding of transfer portal rankings were unfair and unrealistic. And our high school recruiting was not good. Cal is where they are because none of these systems gave an advantage. Maybe it was less bad, but we were never advantaged.

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Of course, it is all relative, we did extremely well in the Portal for a bottom dwelling program. Look at SMU. The point is, our best chance to make a splash (like SMU did with similar results in the Portal and similar ACC schedule) was last year and this year.

The huge opportunity to capitalize on the magic of the Calgorithm, our first Game Day (their "best" with the potential to be ESPN's darling) with a signature upset win on national TV has been lost.

The path only gets tougher going forward. The (probably brief) House Settlement era at a time of university budget crisis due to Federal cuts and attacks and increasing schedule difficulty will make it MORE difficult for us to break through and be perceived as "relevant" and a program the B1G will want to add in the next realignment. Not saying it is not possible, playing more top rated teams is an opportunity for upsets, but we had the easy path, it was the path SMU took and we squandered it.

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Sebastabear said:

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The Berkeley Bears lost more to the portal than they gained.

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I'm sorry but this is just untrue. Three of the four players from our secondary drafted into the NFL this year alone were acquired through the transfer portal. Justin has never had more than a single player drafted in a single year into the NFL since he's been here (and the guy drafted in 2024 was a transfer portal addition as well). This year we had four. None of them were here without NIL or the Collective. Depending on what happens with Vatikani, our entire starting offensive line this year will likely be portal transfer acquisitions. All of these guys were starters at their former schools. This is a hugely expensive and difficult group to recruit and (hopefully) we're going to see all that money pay off this fall. But regardless, none of them are here without the portal. We now have two of the highest ranked QBs we've had at Cal on the roster in decades. When was the last time we had a QB who even sniffed five stars? Our wide receiver room was completely rebuilt with the portal. Our new secondary is all portal. Etc., etc.

And in terms of who we lost, I'll say it again that not a one of Medoza, Ott, Endries or Thomas left over money. Ott and the Jett both are actually getting less (potentially significantly less) from their new schools than we offered them. We had the capacity to match whatever Texas offered Endires and I offered to do so. Fernando of course was a whole other soap opera. But all of these are gone because of how they felt about the coaching staff and the program. None of them are gone because of NIL. In fact, NIL allowed us to hang on to a bunch of guys we otherwise would have lost. Now, I realize you'll say that you just were referring to "the portal" and not NIL or the Collective specifically, but you're responding to a point about our financial advantage and leverage going away because of the House settlement. And you're basically saying "what advantage"? Which is a point I've seen you make dozens of times.

I can't make you believe that the Collective had any successes. Only you can decide that and given your repeated posts on this point you don't think it worked at all. Whatever. We came within 9 points of a 10 win regular season because we had talent and we wouldn't have done so without that talent. But field goals are our kryptonite and we made some super bizarre in game coaching decisions and the rest is history.

Regardless I will go to my grave believing that the Collective and those who contributed to it had a positive effect and I am very hopeful that some of the fruits of all that time and money will be seen this season. I thank all of our fans who made a difference and helped move this program in the right direction.

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BearlyCareAnymore said:

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Sebastabear said:

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Quote:

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The Berkeley Bears lost more to the portal than they gained.

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I'm sorry but this is just untrue. Three of the four players from our secondary drafted into the NFL this year alone were acquired through the transfer portal. Justin has never had more than a single player drafted in a single year into the NFL since he's been here (and the guy drafted in 2024 was a transfer portal addition as well). This year we had four. None of them were here without NIL or the Collective. Depending on what happens with Vatikani, our entire starting offensive line this year will likely be portal transfer acquisitions. All of these guys were starters at their former schools. This is a hugely expensive and difficult group to recruit and (hopefully) we're going to see all that money pay off this fall. But regardless, none of them are here without the portal. We now have two of the highest ranked QBs we've had at Cal on the roster in decades. When was the last time we had a QB who even sniffed five stars? Our wide receiver room was completely rebuilt with the portal. Our new secondary is all portal. Etc., etc.

And in terms of who we lost, I'll say it again that not a one of Medoza, Ott, Endries or Thomas left over money. Ott and the Jett both are actually getting less (potentially significantly less) from their new schools than we offered them. We had the capacity to match whatever Texas offered Endires and I offered to do so. Fernando of course was a whole other soap opera. But all of these are gone because of how they felt about the coaching staff and the program. None of them are gone because of NIL. In fact, NIL allowed us to hang on to a bunch of guys we otherwise would have lost. Now, I realize you'll say that you just were referring to "the portal" and not NIL or the Collective specifically, but you're responding to a point about our financial advantage and leverage going away because of the House settlement. And you're basically saying "what advantage"? Which is a point I've seen you make dozens of times.

I can't make you believe that the Collective had any successes. Only you can decide that and given your repeated posts on this point you don't think it worked at all. Whatever. We came within 9 points of a 10 win regular season because we had talent and we wouldn't have done so without that talent. But field goals are our kryptonite and we made some super bizarre in game coaching decisions and the rest is history.

Regardless I will go to my grave believing that the Collective and those who contributed to it had a positive effect and I am very hopeful that some of the fruits of all that time and money will be seen this season. I thank all of our fans who made a difference and helped move this program in the right direction.

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I think you misunderstand Bobo on this. He has been a clear and relentless critic of a system that has created, as I think he has put it several times, professional minor league football. I don't think it was ever casting aspersions to your efforts or the positive impact Cal Legends had. But two things could be true - the system is bad for college football and Cal and Cal Legends has had a very positive impact within a negative system. I don't necessarily agree completely with that position. I think Cal has been Cal under the old system and under the new system, although I would say it has taken a ton of effort by people like you to keep Cal running in the same place and without that we undoubtedly would have been in a world of hurt.

Absolutely no one thinks it is Cal Legends fault that we lost all the guys we did. But we lost them and under the old system we would not have.

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