ESPN Power Rankings -RIP

6,134 Views | 37 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by Sebastabear
Sebastabear
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Oh my God, this is actually hysterical. I mean obviously this site has gone way down hill since they fired everyone (including Uncle Ted) but they've now become completely untethered from reality. They just came up with their WEEKLY power rankings based on THIS WEEK'S GAME and Cal is . . . wait for it . . . 8th in the conference. EIGHTH!!!!! One behind the 1-2 Cardinal. It just doesn't get funnier than this. The comments are hysterical too.

http://www.espn.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/109717/pac-12-week-3-power-rankings-cal-wraps-up-a-perfect-nonconference
okaydo
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Yogi58
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I'll never understand why people care about this stuff
LACalFan
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Yogi Bear said:

I'll never understand why people care about this stuff
I don't understand why you read and comment on threads that you claim to have no interest in
ducky23
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Seriously dude. Just change your name to thread nazi already
hanky1
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PAC-12 blog is garbage without Ted Miller
510 Bear
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Well, if this Kyle Bonagura fellow is correct and we don't know anything after week 3, my Pac-12 power rankings are Cal #1, Oregon State #2, Arizona #3, furd #11, and USC #12.
Sebastabear
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Yogi Bear said:

I'll never understand why people care about this stuff
You're just wrong. And it's not close. People want to ***** about game attendance? What do you think is a huge factor in that? It's perception of the program. And that perception is driven in part by sports publications. To say what ESPN says about us is irrelevant is naive at best.
BerlinerBaer
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I like this guy's take.

http://hardcorehusky.com/forums/#/discussion/41909/pac-12-power-rankings
calbear93
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Sebastabear said:

Oh my God, this is actually hysterical. I mean obviously this site has gone way down hill since they fired everyone (including Uncle Ted) but they've now become completely untethered from reality. They just came up with their WEEKLY power rankings based on THIS WEEK'S GAME and Cal is . . . wait for it . . . 8th in the conference. EIGHTH!!!!! One behind the 1-2 Cardinal. It just doesn't get funnier than this. The comments are hysterical too.

http://www.espn.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/109717/pac-12-week-3-power-rankings-cal-wraps-up-a-perfect-nonconference
Good to know that actual performance has little to do with the ranking.
kjkbear
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Our team is 3-0. I haven't enjoyed Cal football this much since before Tedford threw his clipboard. . I have no idea if the team will win another game in September. I do know I'll be at all home games with my son through the rest of the season. Thank you team and coaches. Go Bears!
sycasey
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This is why no one should release any rankings until at least a month into the season. What the hell does anyone know until the teams have played enough games?

There's a reason the only group whose rankings mean anything (the playoff selection committee) doesn't do any rankings until halfway through the season.
okaydo
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Chantel Jennings was laid off at ESPN's Pac-12 Blog and now works for The Athletic.

01Bear
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dunno if any of you read the comments, but i'm wondering if "steve norton" is really amy...
Sebastabear
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01Bear said:

dunno if any of you read the comments, but i'm wondering if "steve norton" is really amy...
I was actually thinking Kyle Bonagura was Amy

Looking at the comments, I don't think you mean Steve Norton. He reads like a run of the mill USC fan and actually takes shots at Stanford and UW (and complements our schedule).
01Bear
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Sebastabear said:

01Bear said:

dunno if any of you read the comments, but i'm wondering if "steve norton" is really amy...
I was actually thinking Kyle Bonagura was Amy

Looking at the comments, I don't think you mean Steve Norton. He actually seems to be a Cal fan.

the comments from steve norton include the following:

"LOL! KAL has a football team? Along with it's bankrupt athletic program? Wake me when this joke is over...you had to rally late to beat Weber frickin' State at home and you think you should be ranked ahead of Oregon? It must be all those years of stellar KAL football that the pollsters seemingly don't remember.."

and

"Kal won't be heard from again after USC...sorry..."

i mean i know cal fans are a masochistic, self-deprecating and depressed lot, but i've never heard of any cal fans refer to cal as "kal" let alone suggest it doesn't have a football program...also, i've never heard a cal fan refer to our team as "you"...but with some negabears, you never know...

that said, upon further review, it's possible that this steve norton fellow is an oregon fan...do we know if amy jumped ship from the sc bandwagon for the ducks's bandwagon?
Sebastabear
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01Bear said:

Sebastabear said:

01Bear said:

dunno if any of you read the comments, but i'm wondering if "steve norton" is really amy...
I was actually thinking Kyle Bonagura was Amy

Looking at the comments, I don't think you mean Steve Norton. He actually seems to be a Cal fan.

the comments from steve norton include the following:

"LOL! KAL has a football team? Along with it's bankrupt athletic program? Wake me when this joke is over...you had to rally late to beat Weber frickin' State at home and you think you should be ranked ahead of Oregon? It must be all those years of stellar KAL football that the pollsters seemingly don't remember.."

and

"Kal won't be heard from again after USC...sorry..."

i mean i know cal fans are a masochistic, self-deprecating and depressed lot, but i've never heard of any cal fans refer to cal as "kal" let alone suggest it doesn't have a football program...also, i've never heard a cal fan refer to our team as "you"...but with some negabears, you never know...

that said, upon further review, it's possible that this steve norton fellow is an oregon fan...do we know if amy jumped ship from the sc bandwagon for the ducks's bandwagon?
Ha. I actually edited my post right after I made it because I saw the "Kal won't be heard from again after USC", but I'm not seeing the other you cite at all. Weird. But I'm still sticking with my original position that this isn't Amy - I thought USC but there are several shots at UW in there. I think you are right that this is probably an Oregon fan.

Anyway, nice to see a number of comments in there talking up Cal.
01Bear
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no worries...i'm just happy to see cal doing well on the football field, again...i mean, i love the team (even in the down years), but seeing the boys get some wins makes me so proud of them and happy for them--not to mention swelling my own heart with school pride...

as for the power ranking, iirc, it was originally meant to reflect how the teams stacked up each week based on the team's perfromance from that week--not be a ranking of the teams based on how they were likely to shake up by the season's end...under ted miller* the teams would often change positions in the power rankings because of that...maybe kyle bonagura didn't get the memo or maybe he just wants to do things differently (read worse) than uncle ted...

regardless, i'm hoping cal pulls of the upset next saturday...i would not be averse to seeing a repeat of the 2003 game with a cal victory in triple ot...i can still remember the sound of yhe victory cannon as it went off after cal pulled off the victory**...it was a great win...


*seriously, why did espn get rid of the one guy who made the pac-12 blog even readable and replace him with this hack?

**confession time, i was a bad bear fan back then...even though i graduated a couple years earlier and still lived just downhill from the stadium (at dwight and piedmont), i did not attend the game...instead, i watched it from the comfort of my couch...mea culpa...
okaydo
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01Bear said:


*seriously, why did espn get rid of the one guy who made the pac-12 blog even readable and replace him with this hack?



Kyle was there last year. And he was there in recent years (?). He's reported from Cal games before. But was the only one of the 4 Pac-12 Bloggers to survive.
FloriDreaming
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Sebastabear said:

Oh my God, this is actually hysterical. I mean obviously this site has gone way down hill since they fired everyone (including Uncle Ted) but they've now become completely untethered from reality. They just came up with their WEEKLY power rankings based on THIS WEEK'S GAME and Cal is . . . wait for it . . . 8th in the conference. EIGHTH!!!!! One behind the 1-2 Cardinal. It just doesn't get funnier than this. The comments are hysterical too.

http://www.espn.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/109717/pac-12-week-3-power-rankings-cal-wraps-up-a-perfect-nonconference
8th in the conference means about 7 wins and a bowl. Last time I checked the win consensus was (drumroll) 7 wins. Which would mean Cal goes 4-5 in conference. Which would put Cal somewhere between 6th and 8th place.

Yah, Cal is really getting screwed on those power rankings.

Unless the consensus has shifted from "a bowl is a great season" to "WE'RE GOING TO THE ROSE BOWL!!" in which case that has more to do with Cal fans drinking too much Kool Aid than anything the media is doing wrong.

Why can't Cal fans just be happy with a great coach and a program that's turning around? 6-7 wins and a bowl would be FANTASTIC for this program and a huge building block for Wilcox and Co. The media consensus is that will happen. Can we at least TRY being happy for one week??
59bear
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It's going to take a while to remove the stench of the Dykes years for most folks, especially any who haven't actually seen the improvement this coaching staff has wrought with the inherited material. Our 3 opponents are arguably better than those of half (or more) the conference to date but they also aren't certain bowl teams.
tim94501
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Uthaithani said:

Sebastabear said:

Oh my God, this is actually hysterical. I mean obviously this site has gone way down hill since they fired everyone (including Uncle Ted) but they've now become completely untethered from reality. They just came up with their WEEKLY power rankings based on THIS WEEK'S GAME and Cal is . . . wait for it . . . 8th in the conference. EIGHTH!!!!! One behind the 1-2 Cardinal. It just doesn't get funnier than this. The comments are hysterical too.

http://www.espn.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/109717/pac-12-week-3-power-rankings-cal-wraps-up-a-perfect-nonconference
8th in the conference means about 7 wins and a bowl. Last time I checked the win consensus was (drumroll) 7 wins. Which would mean Cal goes 4-5 in conference. Which would put Cal somewhere between 6th and 8th place.

Yah, Cal is really getting screwed on those power rankings.

Unless the consensus has shifted from "a bowl is a great season" to "WE'RE GOING TO THE ROSE BOWL!!" in which case that has more to do with Cal fans drinking too much Kool Aid than anything the media is doing wrong.

Why can't Cal fans just be happy with a great coach and a program that's turning around? 6-7 wins and a bowl would be FANTASTIC for this program and a huge building block for Wilcox and Co. The media consensus is that will happen. Can we at least TRY being happy for one week??


Apparently you don't get the concept of "power rankings"
Sebastabear
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tim94501 said:

Uthaithani said:

Sebastabear said:

Oh my God, this is actually hysterical. I mean obviously this site has gone way down hill since they fired everyone (including Uncle Ted) but they've now become completely untethered from reality. They just came up with their WEEKLY power rankings based on THIS WEEK'S GAME and Cal is . . . wait for it . . . 8th in the conference. EIGHTH!!!!! One behind the 1-2 Cardinal. It just doesn't get funnier than this. The comments are hysterical too.

http://www.espn.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/109717/pac-12-week-3-power-rankings-cal-wraps-up-a-perfect-nonconference
8th in the conference means about 7 wins and a bowl. Last time I checked the win consensus was (drumroll) 7 wins. Which would mean Cal goes 4-5 in conference. Which would put Cal somewhere between 6th and 8th place.

Yah, Cal is really getting screwed on those power rankings.

Unless the consensus has shifted from "a bowl is a great season" to "WE'RE GOING TO THE ROSE BOWL!!" in which case that has more to do with Cal fans drinking too much Kool Aid than anything the media is doing wrong.

Why can't Cal fans just be happy with a great coach and a program that's turning around? 6-7 wins and a bowl would be FANTASTIC for this program and a huge building block for Wilcox and Co. The media consensus is that will happen. Can we at least TRY being happy for one week??


Apparently you don't get the concept of "power rankings"
Yup. I tried to communicate this by putting "weekly" in all caps. This is supposed to be a ranking based on THIS PARTICULAR WEEK'S PERFORMANCE!!!! (I'm adding exclamation marks in addition to all caps now - different colored fonts and italics coming soon).

It is not a projection of where we stand in a bunch of theoretical head to head matches. Bottom line, no 1-2 team (whose only victory was against Rice) should be anywhere other than the bottom of this poll - ok well maybe they are better than Oregon State.

Perceptions matter. They matter for ticket sales, they matter for recruiting and they matter for attracting/retaining coaches. To pretend otherwise is silly.

And this ranking is a travesty.
Bear8
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For all those who hate Sonny Dykes and his regime, peruse the Roster and see how many of those Dykes recruited players on defense have come through in the clutch. Several of the commits were disrespected because the rating agencies had them as 2 and 3 star recruits. Even as 3 stars, they were rated low on the scale. Dykes is entitled to some "props" and JW acknowledged as much recently. Many of these players have come of age and Dykes and staff saw their potential. Wilcox and his staff have developed these lesser guys into terrific athletes on defense - I'm thinking of Cam Goode, Tre Beck, Cam Bynum, Devonte Downs, Ray Davison, Malik Psalms, among others. Dykes also brought in some talented transfers, such as: Looney and Wharton.

Yes, great coaching makes a difference and the Dykes regime didn't do enough on the defensive side of the ball. But they did see talent and they know talent ultimately will reveal itself. One can only hope that talent continues this season.
BearGoggles
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Bear8 said:

For all those who hate Sonny Dykes and his regime, peruse the Roster and see how many of those Dykes recruited players on defense have come through in the clutch. Several of the commits were disrespected because the rating agencies had them as 2 and 3 star recruits. Even as 3 stars, they were rated low on the scale. Dykes is entitled to some "props" and JW acknowledged as much recently. Many of these players have come of age and Dykes and staff saw their potential. Wilcox and his staff have developed these lesser guys into terrific athletes on defense - I'm thinking of Cam Goode, Tre Beck, Cam Bynum, Devonte Downs, Ray Davison, Malik Psalms, among others. Dykes also brought in some talented transfers, such as: Looney and Wharton.

Yes, great coaching makes a difference and the Dykes regime didn't do enough on the defensive side of the ball. But they did see talent and they know talent ultimately will reveal itself. One can only hope that talent continues this season.
Agree with this. I would add that Dykes found kids who could clean up the academic issues which were significant and presented immediate APR consequences. Glad he's gone, but he seems to have brought in high quality student athletes - Dykes and his staff just couldn't couldn't coach them up on the playing field.
sketchy9
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Someone's opinion that they mentioned this in another thread, and one that seems logical to me: Dykes wasn't let go necessarily because of on-the-field performance (he wasn't Nick Saban in this regard, but he was far from the worst), but because of his constant offseason flirtations with other programs.

In other words, it's not surprising that there are respectable players that he brought in. He didn't do enough to coach them up while they were here, but as a middling coach in a power 5 conference, you would expect him to have recruited some talent, and it turns out he did.
sycasey
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Bear8 said:

For all those who hate Sonny Dykes and his regime, peruse the Roster and see how many of those Dykes recruited players on defense have come through in the clutch. Several of the commits were disrespected because the rating agencies had them as 2 and 3 star recruits. Even as 3 stars, they were rated low on the scale. Dykes is entitled to some "props" and JW acknowledged as much recently. Many of these players have come of age and Dykes and staff saw their potential. Wilcox and his staff have developed these lesser guys into terrific athletes on defense - I'm thinking of Cam Goode, Tre Beck, Cam Bynum, Devonte Downs, Ray Davison, Malik Psalms, among others. Dykes also brought in some talented transfers, such as: Looney and Wharton.

Yes, great coaching makes a difference and the Dykes regime didn't do enough on the defensive side of the ball. But they did see talent and they know talent ultimately will reveal itself. One can only hope that talent continues this season.
Okay, but it seems to me that Cal almost always has "talent" on the roster. It just looks bad when the coaching is bad. Tom Holmoe was probably the worst head coach we've ever had, but then Tedford took his players and won 7 games. Gilbertson's teams mostly sucked but still managed to get players drafted to the NFL.

We're in a good recruiting state and in the major conference on the west coast. We should always have at least respectable talent on the roster. Not sure how much I'd attribute that to Dykes and how much just to the existing fundamentals.
Bear8
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Sycasey, I was only focusing on the defensive side. He recruited pretty well there in his last two years. Dykes was not immune to the criticism of bad defense and tried to do something about it. I think we're going to miss Jacob Peeler and Spavital for the recruits they were able to spin our way.
sycasey
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Bear8 said:

Sycasey, I was only focusing on the defensive side. He recruited pretty well there in his last two years. Dykes was not immune to the criticism of bad defense and tried to do something about it. I think we're going to miss Jacob Peeler and Spavital for the recruits they were able to spin our way.
Sure, but I suspect that if Dykes were still around those players wouldn't be looking good right now.
59bear
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sycasey said:

Bear8 said:

Sycasey, I was only focusing on the defensive side. He recruited pretty well there in his last two years. Dykes was not immune to the criticism of bad defense and tried to do something about it. I think we're going to miss Jacob Peeler and Spavital for the recruits they were able to spin our way.
Sure, but I suspect that if Dykes were still around those players wouldn't be looking good right now.
Amen.
01Bear
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okaydo said:

01Bear said:


*seriously, why did espn get rid of the one guy who made the pac-12 blog even readable and replace him with this hack?



Kyle was there last year. And he was there in recent years (?). He's reported from Cal games before. But was the only one of the 4 Pac-12 Bloggers to survive.



thanks, okaydo, but i am familiar with kyle bonagura's history with the blog...in fact, i was a regular reader back in the days when it was run just by ted miller...while i found some of the writers that were added to the blog later to be "ok," by and large, i preferred ted miller's writings...kyle bonagura never really impressed me, and now that he's running the pac-12 blog (by default), it's become even less impressive...
TheFiatLux
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01Bear said:




i mean i know cal fans are a masochistic, self-deprecating and depressed lot,
This reminds me of one of my favorite posts from the old board, i think back in the mid / late 2000s when we switched to the new site... and people were commenting on the new features and someone posted

"Being a typical self hating Cal fans, I tried to block myself... but alas you can't do that."

I still laugh at that.
TheFiatLux
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okaydo said:


i'm just curious, why do you always do screen captures instead of just embedding the tweets?
Sebastabear
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Wilner just put us at 5th. Stanford at 10th. This Wilner guy is growing on me

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/20/power-ratings-usc-holds-the-top-spot-as-cal-climbs-stanford-falls-and-the-middle-remains-murky-plus-a-guest-appearance/
tim94501
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Wilner actually has us 4th considering he has SDSU ahead of us.
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