SFCityBear said:

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wifeisafurd said:

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Thank you for that condescending definition.

I think you were very clear in your earlier post:

"In sports, the word "competitive" means having a desire, a will, to compete, and to play the game hard, make it a competitive game. It is very seldom in college basketball history that a team is undefeated for a full season. There have been only a handful of teams which have done that."

We disagree about what being competitive means in the context of a power 5 basketball program. That said, I think most stakeholders in the team would argue my criteria of looking at victories is a more critical criteria than being competitive for a portion of a game against a decent team.

As for Fox, my views are stated above, and he seems competent enough, over time, to get the team beyond the Pac basement. His ceiling probably will be determined on his recruiting ability. I hope he succeeds. It is really hard to evaluate a coach based on this season.

---

I apologize for the condescension. It was unintentional.

I agree with you that wins are very important. I consider wins and developing the character of young players as the two most important things. A coach is usually judged on the basis of wins. I feel that teaching them to be competitive is a process that takes time, improving little by little, which will lead to wins, which is the objective. Fans are maybe a little too obsessed with winning sometimes, and there is nothing wrong with that.

---

Okay, I'm on board with this.

BeachedBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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Stanford Jonah said:

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I say Cal isn't competitive. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be debated.

Victories against the Nicholls States of the world mean nothing to me.

When Cal decides to start caring about their men's major sports, I'll decide to start caring. If they don't care, why should I?

---

Look, Cal is not a good team. That is not debatable.

Cal is a losing team. That is not debatable.

Cal doesn't have many good wins. That is not debatable.

The words "good", "losing", "wins" have concrete meanings in all dictionaries of English language.

What some are doing here is knowingly or unknowingly corrupting the word, "competitive" to mean what they want it to mean, which is "not good" or "losing", or "not winning". That is my gripe.

I actually think that you are the one corrupting the term and are frustrated that just about everyone is calling you on it.

Competitive in the basketball sense refers to how a player or a team COMPETES, not the result of how they competed. It means getting ahead of your opponent in a game or staying with him, keeping the score close, ane giving yourself a chance to win the game.

Which dictionary is that in?

I wrote that the game was competitive for 35 minutes. If Cal had lost on a bucket at the buzzer, would any of you have considered Cal to have been competitive in that game? If the lost on a free throw at the end, would you then say they were competitive? What if Cal had tied the score and sent the game to overtime, where they lost, would you have admitted they were competitive? No, you probably wouldn't. So why not just say that Cal didn't win, or Cal lost again, or Cal wasn't any good again? Instead of corrupting the word "competitive" to mean something not found in any dictionary?

Modern society in America, at least, permits the corruption of many words. Whether this is a defect in our schools as to how we teach the English language, or just changes in our culture which have caused us to lose respect for our history, which includes our dictionaries, and lose respect for one another to the point where we say whatever the hell we want to say, no matter who it offends.

What you describe had been going on for as long as language exists wherever it exists. This has nothing to do with 'Modern society in America'. That type of argument sort of reeks of a political angle attempting to leverage fear or nostalgia as an excuse to say 'whatever the hell you want'

Take the word "impeachment", for example. The Republican Party stupidly started the corruption of the word by impeaching Bill Clinton for lying to a grand jury over some incident which was not a "high crime or misdemeanor". This was purely vindictive, wanting to punish Clinton just to weaken him and his presidency. Not wanting to be outdone, the Democrats impeached Donald Trump, accusing his campaign of a mded up story of consorting with Russians and branding Trump as a Russian spy, all without a shred of evidence. This was purely vindictive, and started even before Trump assumed the Presidency. Now they choose to impeach Trump a second time over a speech which was not in any way inciting insurrection and violence, based on the definition of his words and the words used in the indictment. This is vindictive, only meant to punish someone they don't like, and want to prevent from running for President again. It is also absurd, a farce, because the purpose of impeachment is to make a case to have a trial and remove the President from office, and he will already have been removed from office by the election and the inauguration of President Biden.

Whoops - your underwear is showing. This last paragraph sort of just goes off the rails. Are you suggesting that Trump is as 'competitive' as Clinton?

---

My comments in bold are above. I responded earlier about semantics and am surprised SFCity is choosing this hill to plant his flag. Although I agree with much of what he says about basketball - I feel compelled to respond to this latest rant that reflects very poorly on him IMHO.

BTW - I don't even think Cal was competitive (in his sense) for 35 minutes. I think they other team was 'playing down to our level'.

---

Beached Bear,

I left this post and thread alone for some time, because it had become so contentious, all over the definition of a word. I always felt that you in particular are a reasonable man. I was surprised when you wrote this post, which I consider harsh. I felt that if I had upset a reasonable fan like you, then I needed to stop and think over my post and the responses to it again.

All I was trying to do was to say something positive about the team after a tough loss. It was a game where most fans and maybe even the players had expected to lose, maybe even get blown out, but oddly enough the Bears had stayed close, within a bucket or two for most of the game, only to lose it very suddenly with one Oregon player getting red hot, and Cal going ice cold for just a few minutes. I tried to paint this as Cal maybe starting to improve a little from a slow start to the season.

As you rightly pointed out, it could very well have been that Oregon had played so poorly as to let Cal stay in the game, score-wise for a long time. This often happens in sports where a strong team will not get up for a game with a weaker opponent, playing down to their opponent's level. And it usually happens that the stronger team will wake up and win the game at the end.

Even now, I have not made up my mind which was true, that Cal had improved and hung tough or that Oregon played down to Cal's level. We now have the benefit of a little more data on how good the two teams are. Cal has played decently in several losses, and finally beat Colorado, maybe a team they should not have been able to beat. Many BI posters are saying that Cal seems to be showing some improvement. Meanwhile, Oregon has dropped out of the top 25 for a month now, after two losses to teams they should never have lost to at home, Oregon State and Washington State. Duarte missed the OSU game, but still I don't feel they should have lost that one, if they were a top 25 team playing at home. The win over AZ in Tucson was, I suppose, a good win even though AZ is still unranked. We will find out more about how good Cal is and how good Oregon is in their upcoming game at Haas.

As to the word, "competitive", I've been using it since I was 9 years old and entering junior tennis tournaments, where I filled out entry banks which asked for the "competitor's name" and when the people running the tournaments called us competitors. I was a good competitor, but not a great one. I won most of my matches, but I never won a tournament. It was the same in golf tournaments I played in. When I played basketball, we were always taught to compete. Sometimes we competed well and we won, and sometimes we competed well and we lost. We seldom had competed poorly and won, but on occasion we did not compete well, but we won, often due to the opponent competing worse than we did.

I had pushback from Oaktown, who as I understood it, had the notion that you had to win the game, or you were not competitive at all. It did not square with the definition I had heard and used all my life since I first found out that there were sports to watch and participate in. It seemed illogical to me, since you cannot win every game (except for only a few times in college basketball history). The word competitive is to participate in a competition and describes the degree or level which we compete, and says nothing about final result, a win or loss. Oaktown, you, and others feel the word means something else. I did not expect the level of disagreement I received, and so I will respect that. You and everyone else are entitled to believe what ever definition you want. Based on all the response, most everyone on the Bear Insider believes that you are not competitive in a game unless you end up winning the game. I think this is an esoteric definition, Maybe only believed here on the basketball board. It may be true for other fans, or other sports, I don't know. I'm not here to argue with people. I will respect your view here, and I will try to refrain from ever using the word competitive here unless it conforms with your definition.

Dear Beached: The 'political comments" by SFCB actually reflect very well on him. 99% off impeachments are politically motivated. Please see the history of impeachments. Surely you remember that the Democratic Party has tried to impeach EVERY republican president since Eisenhower with the exception of Gerald Ford. And, if ford hadn't been beaten by Jimmy Carter, he was next on the menu. BTW, now that the precedent has been set for the impeachment of former presidents, both alive and deceased, watch for future impeachments to become as ubiquitous as ketchup on hamburgers. our founding Fathers would be appalled. SFCB knows more about basketball and politics than the combined efforts of 30 or so young novices on this board.

Clearly, "competitive" means almost as good, as good or better than your competition. Fox needs two more years to ascertain if his teams meet the common-sense definition.

helltopay1 said:

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Dear Beached: The 'political comments" by SFCB actually reflect very well on him. 99% off impeachments are politically motivated. Please see the history of impeachments. Surely you remember that the Democratic Party has tried to impeach EVERY republican president since Eisenhower with the exception of Gerald Ford.

---

You have already forgotten that Reagan, George HW Bush and his son George W Bush were Republican presidents? I guess I missed their impeachment hearings, even though Reagan and Bush both committed offenses far worse than sort of lying about getting a blowjob.

The Demos in the House tried to impeach all three of the Presidents you mentioned, but, the proceedings never got to the Senate.

SFCityBear said:

---

BeachedBear said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

Stanford Jonah said:

---

I say Cal isn't competitive. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be debated.

Victories against the Nicholls States of the world mean nothing to me.

When Cal decides to start caring about their men's major sports, I'll decide to start caring. If they don't care, why should I?

---

Look, Cal is not a good team. That is not debatable.

Cal is a losing team. That is not debatable.

Cal doesn't have many good wins. That is not debatable.

The words "good", "losing", "wins" have concrete meanings in all dictionaries of English language.

What some are doing here is knowingly or unknowingly corrupting the word, "competitive" to mean what they want it to mean, which is "not good" or "losing", or "not winning". That is my gripe.

I actually think that you are the one corrupting the term and are frustrated that just about everyone is calling you on it.

Competitive in the basketball sense refers to how a player or a team COMPETES, not the result of how they competed. It means getting ahead of your opponent in a game or staying with him, keeping the score close, ane giving yourself a chance to win the game.

Which dictionary is that in?

I wrote that the game was competitive for 35 minutes. If Cal had lost on a bucket at the buzzer, would any of you have considered Cal to have been competitive in that game? If the lost on a free throw at the end, would you then say they were competitive? What if Cal had tied the score and sent the game to overtime, where they lost, would you have admitted they were competitive? No, you probably wouldn't. So why not just say that Cal didn't win, or Cal lost again, or Cal wasn't any good again? Instead of corrupting the word "competitive" to mean something not found in any dictionary?

Modern society in America, at least, permits the corruption of many words. Whether this is a defect in our schools as to how we teach the English language, or just changes in our culture which have caused us to lose respect for our history, which includes our dictionaries, and lose respect for one another to the point where we say whatever the hell we want to say, no matter who it offends.

What you describe had been going on for as long as language exists wherever it exists. This has nothing to do with 'Modern society in America'. That type of argument sort of reeks of a political angle attempting to leverage fear or nostalgia as an excuse to say 'whatever the hell you want'

Take the word "impeachment", for example. The Republican Party stupidly started the corruption of the word by impeaching Bill Clinton for lying to a grand jury over some incident which was not a "high crime or misdemeanor". This was purely vindictive, wanting to punish Clinton just to weaken him and his presidency. Not wanting to be outdone, the Democrats impeached Donald Trump, accusing his campaign of a mded up story of consorting with Russians and branding Trump as a Russian spy, all without a shred of evidence. This was purely vindictive, and started even before Trump assumed the Presidency. Now they choose to impeach Trump a second time over a speech which was not in any way inciting insurrection and violence, based on the definition of his words and the words used in the indictment. This is vindictive, only meant to punish someone they don't like, and want to prevent from running for President again. It is also absurd, a farce, because the purpose of impeachment is to make a case to have a trial and remove the President from office, and he will already have been removed from office by the election and the inauguration of President Biden.

Whoops - your underwear is showing. This last paragraph sort of just goes off the rails. Are you suggesting that Trump is as 'competitive' as Clinton?

---

My comments in bold are above. I responded earlier about semantics and am surprised SFCity is choosing this hill to plant his flag. Although I agree with much of what he says about basketball - I feel compelled to respond to this latest rant that reflects very poorly on him IMHO.

BTW - I don't even think Cal was competitive (in his sense) for 35 minutes. I think they other team was 'playing down to our level'.

---

Beached Bear,

I left this post and thread alone for some time, because it had become so contentious, all over the definition of a word. I always felt that you in particular are a reasonable man. I was surprised when you wrote this post, which I consider harsh. I felt that if I had upset a reasonable fan like you, then I needed to stop and think over my post and the responses to it again.

All I was trying to do was to say something positive about the team after a tough loss. It was a game where most fans and maybe even the players had expected to lose, maybe even get blown out, but oddly enough the Bears had stayed close, within a bucket or two for most of the game, only to lose it very suddenly with one Oregon player getting red hot, and Cal going ice cold for just a few minutes. I tried to paint this as Cal maybe starting to improve a little from a slow start to the season.

As you rightly pointed out, it could very well have been that Oregon had played so poorly as to let Cal stay in the game, score-wise for a long time. This often happens in sports where a strong team will not get up for a game with a weaker opponent, playing down to their opponent's level. And it usually happens that the stronger team will wake up and win the game at the end.

Even now, I have not made up my mind which was true, that Cal had improved and hung tough or that Oregon played down to Cal's level. We now have the benefit of a little more data on how good the two teams are. Cal has played decently in several losses, and finally beat Colorado, maybe a team they should not have been able to beat. Many BI posters are saying that Cal seems to be showing some improvement. Meanwhile, Oregon has dropped out of the top 25 for a month now, after two losses to teams they should never have lost to at home, Oregon State and Washington State. Duarte missed the OSU game, but still I don't feel they should have lost that one, if they were a top 25 team playing at home. The win over AZ in Tucson was, I suppose, a good win even though AZ is still unranked. We will find out more about how good Cal is and how good Oregon is in their upcoming game at Haas.

As to the word, "competitive", I've been using it since I was 9 years old and entering junior tennis tournaments, where I filled out entry banks which asked for the "competitor's name" and when the people running the tournaments called us competitors. I was a good competitor, but not a great one. I won most of my matches, but I never won a tournament. It was the same in golf tournaments I played in. When I played basketball, we were always taught to compete. Sometimes we competed well and we won, and sometimes we competed well and we lost. We seldom had competed poorly and won, but on occasion we did not compete well, but we won, often due to the opponent competing worse than we did.

I had pushback from Oaktown, who as I understood it, had the notion that you had to win the game, or you were not competitive at all. It did not square with the definition I had heard and used all my life since I first found out that there were sports to watch and participate in. It seemed illogical to me, since you cannot win every game (except for only a few times in college basketball history). The word competitive is to participate in a competition and describes the degree or level which we compete, and says nothing about final result, a win or loss. Oaktown, you, and others feel the word means something else. I did not expect the level of disagreement I received, and so I will respect that. You and everyone else are entitled to believe what ever definition you want. Based on all the response, most everyone on the Bear Insider believes that you are not competitive in a game unless you end up winning the game. I think this is an esoteric definition, Maybe only believed here on the basketball board. It may be true for other fans, or other sports, I don't know. I'm not here to argue with people. I will respect your view here, and I will try to refrain from ever using the word competitive here unless it conforms with your definition.

---

You need to consider this in context. I had let this all go a while ago and had to refresh my memory. Coming back to it a month later seems a bit odd and just re-inforces my point below.

At the time you started this thread and we played Oregon, you wanted to say something positive. I get that - we all appreciate it. And there are many ways to do that. However, the context of the discourse, which YOU engaged in, was NOT so much about saying something positive, but about YOU BEING RIGHT (about semantics - having nothing to do with the team's performance). I questioned why you chose to plant your flag on that battlefield.

Then your response turned very strange and took it a step further. I felt compelled to respond - because I disagreed and thought you were being a bit too provocative with the impeachment rhetoric. I pointed out the flaws that I saw in your points and attempted to insert a bit of humor.

The context of the entire discourse indicates that your priorities seem to be:

1. You feeling that everyone thinks you are right
2. Political Rhetoric
3. Monolithic Semanticism
4. Competitive nature of this years team.
5. Being positive about Cal Bball

You claim #5, but say #1-#3. You had so many choices to flip those priorities and you didn't. Sorry - but that comes across to most people as a form of deception and damages your credibility.

BeachedBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

---

BeachedBear said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

Stanford Jonah said:

---

I say Cal isn't competitive. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be debated.

Victories against the Nicholls States of the world mean nothing to me.

When Cal decides to start caring about their men's major sports, I'll decide to start caring. If they don't care, why should I?

---

Look, Cal is not a good team. That is not debatable.

Cal is a losing team. That is not debatable.

Cal doesn't have many good wins. That is not debatable.

The words "good", "losing", "wins" have concrete meanings in all dictionaries of English language.

What some are doing here is knowingly or unknowingly corrupting the word, "competitive" to mean what they want it to mean, which is "not good" or "losing", or "not winning". That is my gripe.

I actually think that you are the one corrupting the term and are frustrated that just about everyone is calling you on it.

Competitive in the basketball sense refers to how a player or a team COMPETES, not the result of how they competed. It means getting ahead of your opponent in a game or staying with him, keeping the score close, ane giving yourself a chance to win the game.

Which dictionary is that in?

I wrote that the game was competitive for 35 minutes. If Cal had lost on a bucket at the buzzer, would any of you have considered Cal to have been competitive in that game? If the lost on a free throw at the end, would you then say they were competitive? What if Cal had tied the score and sent the game to overtime, where they lost, would you have admitted they were competitive? No, you probably wouldn't. So why not just say that Cal didn't win, or Cal lost again, or Cal wasn't any good again? Instead of corrupting the word "competitive" to mean something not found in any dictionary?

Modern society in America, at least, permits the corruption of many words. Whether this is a defect in our schools as to how we teach the English language, or just changes in our culture which have caused us to lose respect for our history, which includes our dictionaries, and lose respect for one another to the point where we say whatever the hell we want to say, no matter who it offends.

What you describe had been going on for as long as language exists wherever it exists. This has nothing to do with 'Modern society in America'. That type of argument sort of reeks of a political angle attempting to leverage fear or nostalgia as an excuse to say 'whatever the hell you want'

Take the word "impeachment", for example. The Republican Party stupidly started the corruption of the word by impeaching Bill Clinton for lying to a grand jury over some incident which was not a "high crime or misdemeanor". This was purely vindictive, wanting to punish Clinton just to weaken him and his presidency. Not wanting to be outdone, the Democrats impeached Donald Trump, accusing his campaign of a mded up story of consorting with Russians and branding Trump as a Russian spy, all without a shred of evidence. This was purely vindictive, and started even before Trump assumed the Presidency. Now they choose to impeach Trump a second time over a speech which was not in any way inciting insurrection and violence, based on the definition of his words and the words used in the indictment. This is vindictive, only meant to punish someone they don't like, and want to prevent from running for President again. It is also absurd, a farce, because the purpose of impeachment is to make a case to have a trial and remove the President from office, and he will already have been removed from office by the election and the inauguration of President Biden.

Whoops - your underwear is showing. This last paragraph sort of just goes off the rails. Are you suggesting that Trump is as 'competitive' as Clinton?

---

My comments in bold are above. I responded earlier about semantics and am surprised SFCity is choosing this hill to plant his flag. Although I agree with much of what he says about basketball - I feel compelled to respond to this latest rant that reflects very poorly on him IMHO.

BTW - I don't even think Cal was competitive (in his sense) for 35 minutes. I think they other team was 'playing down to our level'.

---

Beached Bear,

I left this post and thread alone for some time, because it had become so contentious, all over the definition of a word. I always felt that you in particular are a reasonable man. I was surprised when you wrote this post, which I consider harsh. I felt that if I had upset a reasonable fan like you, then I needed to stop and think over my post and the responses to it again.

All I was trying to do was to say something positive about the team after a tough loss. It was a game where most fans and maybe even the players had expected to lose, maybe even get blown out, but oddly enough the Bears had stayed close, within a bucket or two for most of the game, only to lose it very suddenly with one Oregon player getting red hot, and Cal going ice cold for just a few minutes. I tried to paint this as Cal maybe starting to improve a little from a slow start to the season.

As you rightly pointed out, it could very well have been that Oregon had played so poorly as to let Cal stay in the game, score-wise for a long time. This often happens in sports where a strong team will not get up for a game with a weaker opponent, playing down to their opponent's level. And it usually happens that the stronger team will wake up and win the game at the end.

Even now, I have not made up my mind which was true, that Cal had improved and hung tough or that Oregon played down to Cal's level. We now have the benefit of a little more data on how good the two teams are. Cal has played decently in several losses, and finally beat Colorado, maybe a team they should not have been able to beat. Many BI posters are saying that Cal seems to be showing some improvement. Meanwhile, Oregon has dropped out of the top 25 for a month now, after two losses to teams they should never have lost to at home, Oregon State and Washington State. Duarte missed the OSU game, but still I don't feel they should have lost that one, if they were a top 25 team playing at home. The win over AZ in Tucson was, I suppose, a good win even though AZ is still unranked. We will find out more about how good Cal is and how good Oregon is in their upcoming game at Haas.

As to the word, "competitive", I've been using it since I was 9 years old and entering junior tennis tournaments, where I filled out entry banks which asked for the "competitor's name" and when the people running the tournaments called us competitors. I was a good competitor, but not a great one. I won most of my matches, but I never won a tournament. It was the same in golf tournaments I played in. When I played basketball, we were always taught to compete. Sometimes we competed well and we won, and sometimes we competed well and we lost. We seldom had competed poorly and won, but on occasion we did not compete well, but we won, often due to the opponent competing worse than we did.

I had pushback from Oaktown, who as I understood it, had the notion that you had to win the game, or you were not competitive at all. It did not square with the definition I had heard and used all my life since I first found out that there were sports to watch and participate in. It seemed illogical to me, since you cannot win every game (except for only a few times in college basketball history). The word competitive is to participate in a competition and describes the degree or level which we compete, and says nothing about final result, a win or loss. Oaktown, you, and others feel the word means something else. I did not expect the level of disagreement I received, and so I will respect that. You and everyone else are entitled to believe what ever definition you want. Based on all the response, most everyone on the Bear Insider believes that you are not competitive in a game unless you end up winning the game. I think this is an esoteric definition, Maybe only believed here on the basketball board. It may be true for other fans, or other sports, I don't know. I'm not here to argue with people. I will respect your view here, and I will try to refrain from ever using the word competitive here unless it conforms with your definition.

---

You need to consider this in context. I had let this all go a while ago and had to refresh my memory. Coming back to it a month later seems a bit odd and just re-inforces my point below.

At the time you started this thread and we played Oregon, you wanted to say something positive. I get that - we all appreciate it. And there are many ways to do that. However, the context of the discourse, which YOU engaged in, was NOT so much about saying something positive, but about YOU BEING RIGHT (about semantics - having nothing to do with the team's performance). I questioned why you chose to plant your flag on that battlefield.

Then your response turned very strange and took it a step further. I felt compelled to respond - because I disagreed and thought you were being a bit too provocative with the impeachment rhetoric. I pointed out the flaws that I saw in your points and attempted to insert a bit of humor.

The context of the entire discourse indicates that your priorities seem to be:

1. You feeling that everyone thinks you are right
2. Political Rhetoric
3. Monolithic Semanticism
4. Competitive nature of this years team.
5. Being positive about Cal Bball

You claim #5, but say #1-#3. You had so many choices to flip those priorities and you didn't. Sorry - but that comes across to most people as a form of deception and damages your credibility.

---

Boy what a heavy duty response. Point number 1 above is completely false. Just scroll up, SFCB states that based on all responses everyone on BI feels a team is NOT competitive in a game unless they end up winning the game.
Its not complicated. Cal is a team with a losing record and has many flaws. Despite that, if a team takes them lightly or doesn't play their best game Cal is well capable of playing them tough or beating them - see Cal vs. Colorado last Saturday. In a normal world that makes the Cal Bears basketball team competitive. Simple.

You forgot 0.5...lack of brevity.

SFCityBear said:

---

BeachedBear said:

---

SFCityBear said:

---

Stanford Jonah said:

---

I say Cal isn't competitive. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be debated.

Victories against the Nicholls States of the world mean nothing to me.

When Cal decides to start caring about their men's major sports, I'll decide to start caring. If they don't care, why should I?

---

Look, Cal is not a good team. That is not debatable.

Cal is a losing team. That is not debatable.

Cal doesn't have many good wins. That is not debatable.

The words "good", "losing", "wins" have concrete meanings in all dictionaries of English language.

What some are doing here is knowingly or unknowingly corrupting the word, "competitive" to mean what they want it to mean, which is "not good" or "losing", or "not winning". That is my gripe.

I actually think that you are the one corrupting the term and are frustrated that just about everyone is calling you on it.

Competitive in the basketball sense refers to how a player or a team COMPETES, not the result of how they competed. It means getting ahead of your opponent in a game or staying with him, keeping the score close, ane giving yourself a chance to win the game.

Which dictionary is that in?

I wrote that the game was competitive for 35 minutes. If Cal had lost on a bucket at the buzzer, would any of you have considered Cal to have been competitive in that game? If the lost on a free throw at the end, would you then say they were competitive? What if Cal had tied the score and sent the game to overtime, where they lost, would you have admitted they were competitive? No, you probably wouldn't. So why not just say that Cal didn't win, or Cal lost again, or Cal wasn't any good again? Instead of corrupting the word "competitive" to mean something not found in any dictionary?

Modern society in America, at least, permits the corruption of many words. Whether this is a defect in our schools as to how we teach the English language, or just changes in our culture which have caused us to lose respect for our history, which includes our dictionaries, and lose respect for one another to the point where we say whatever the hell we want to say, no matter who it offends.

What you describe had been going on for as long as language exists wherever it exists. This has nothing to do with 'Modern society in America'. That type of argument sort of reeks of a political angle attempting to leverage fear or nostalgia as an excuse to say 'whatever the hell you want'

Take the word "impeachment", for example. The Republican Party stupidly started the corruption of the word by impeaching Bill Clinton for lying to a grand jury over some incident which was not a "high crime or misdemeanor". This was purely vindictive, wanting to punish Clinton just to weaken him and his presidency. Not wanting to be outdone, the Democrats impeached Donald Trump, accusing his campaign of a mded up story of consorting with Russians and branding Trump as a Russian spy, all without a shred of evidence. This was purely vindictive, and started even before Trump assumed the Presidency. Now they choose to impeach Trump a second time over a speech which was not in any way inciting insurrection and violence, based on the definition of his words and the words used in the indictment. This is vindictive, only meant to punish someone they don't like, and want to prevent from running for President again. It is also absurd, a farce, because the purpose of impeachment is to make a case to have a trial and remove the President from office, and he will already have been removed from office by the election and the inauguration of President Biden.

Whoops - your underwear is showing. This last paragraph sort of just goes off the rails. Are you suggesting that Trump is as 'competitive' as Clinton?

---

My comments in bold are above. I responded earlier about semantics and am surprised SFCity is choosing this hill to plant his flag. Although I agree with much of what he says about basketball - I feel compelled to respond to this latest rant that reflects very poorly on him IMHO.

BTW - I don't even think Cal was competitive (in his sense) for 35 minutes. I think they other team was 'playing down to our level'.

---

Beached Bear,

I left this post and thread alone for some time, because it had become so contentious, all over the definition of a word. I always felt that you in particular are a reasonable man. I was surprised when you wrote this post, which I consider harsh. I felt that if I had upset a reasonable fan like you, then I needed to stop and think over my post and the responses to it again.

All I was trying to do was to say something positive about the team after a tough loss. It was a game where most fans and maybe even the players had expected to lose, maybe even get blown out, but oddly enough the Bears had stayed close, within a bucket or two for most of the game, only to lose it very suddenly with one Oregon player getting red hot, and Cal going ice cold for just a few minutes. I tried to paint this as Cal maybe starting to improve a little from a slow start to the season.

As you rightly pointed out, it could very well have been that Oregon had played so poorly as to let Cal stay in the game, score-wise for a long time. This often happens in sports where a strong team will not get up for a game with a weaker opponent, playing down to their opponent's level. And it usually happens that the stronger team will wake up and win the game at the end.

Even now, I have not made up my mind which was true, that Cal had improved and hung tough or that Oregon played down to Cal's level. We now have the benefit of a little more data on how good the two teams are. Cal has played decently in several losses, and finally beat Colorado, maybe a team they should not have been able to beat. Many BI posters are saying that Cal seems to be showing some improvement. Meanwhile, Oregon has dropped out of the top 25 for a month now, after two losses to teams they should never have lost to at home, Oregon State and Washington State. Duarte missed the OSU game, but still I don't feel they should have lost that one, if they were a top 25 team playing at home. The win over AZ in Tucson was, I suppose, a good win even though AZ is still unranked. We will find out more about how good Cal is and how good Oregon is in their upcoming game at Haas.

As to the word, "competitive", I've been using it since I was 9 years old and entering junior tennis tournaments, where I filled out entry banks which asked for the "competitor's name" and when the people running the tournaments called us competitors. I was a good competitor, but not a great one. I won most of my matches, but I never won a tournament. It was the same in golf tournaments I played in. When I played basketball, we were always taught to compete. Sometimes we competed well and we won, and sometimes we competed well and we lost. We seldom had competed poorly and won, but on occasion we did not compete well, but we won, often due to the opponent competing worse than we did.

I had pushback from Oaktown, who as I understood it, had the notion that you had to win the game, or you were not competitive at all. It did not square with the definition I had heard and used all my life since I first found out that there were sports to watch and participate in. It seemed illogical to me, since you cannot win every game (except for only a few times in college basketball history). The word competitive is to participate in a competition and describes the degree or level which we compete, and says nothing about final result, a win or loss. Oaktown, you, and others feel the word means something else. I did not expect the level of disagreement I received, and so I will respect that. You and everyone else are entitled to believe what ever definition you want. Based on all the response, most everyone on the Bear Insider believes that you are not competitive in a game unless you end up winning the game. I think this is an esoteric definition, Maybe only believed here on the basketball board. It may be true for other fans, or other sports, I don't know. I'm not here to argue with people. I will respect your view here, and I will try to refrain from ever using the word competitive here unless it conforms with your definition.

---

There was absolutely no point in bringing this up again and I would not engage you except that you did what you often do - intentionally incorrectly state the other person's argument so you can make your position look less rigid. I never said you have to win the game to be competitive. I said losing by 13 is not competitive. I said when a team with a poor record hangs tough with a team with a good record, then gets its doors blown off, it was not competitive. No one here has argued that you are not competitive unless you win the game. That is ridiculous and you are painting with that brush to make you feel better that us young'ns have corrupted the language instead of you basically using semantics to defend an indefensible point

You argue a definition of competitive that is so ridiculous that even you don't use it. Whether it is calling yourself a competitor because you signed an entry form that said "competitor" or the basic implication that trying hard makes one competitive. If that was really what you thought, why do you say you just wanted to say something positive? Why would it be positive to say "Hooray! We didn't forfeit! We signed up for the game and we showed up!" That is a positive statement to you?

Do you think a little league team is competitive with the Yankees if they show up and try really hard? When they lose 100000 to nothing, we're they competitive? Am I defiling the language or are you? I will reiterate that in order to win this argument you watered down the meaning of the word to the point that your original post was meaningless. By your definition 99% of NCAA teams, if not 100% are competitive

Your post was the equivalent of a participation trophy.

And further, even if you are competitive in a game, that does not make you competitive as a team or a program. So when you are losing almost all of your games to quality competition, as we were, and you hang tough in a game and then lose by 13, no, you are not competitive. You do not have to win a game for the game to have been competitive, but sooner or later a team needs actual wins to be described as competitive. When you are in the bottom third of the conference four years running usually last, losing by 13 is not enough to say "who says we aren't competitive?" The answer to that question is everyone.

RedlessWardrobe said:

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BeachedBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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BeachedBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

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Stanford Jonah said:

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I say Cal isn't competitive. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be debated.

Victories against the Nicholls States of the world mean nothing to me.

When Cal decides to start caring about their men's major sports, I'll decide to start caring. If they don't care, why should I?

---

Look, Cal is not a good team. That is not debatable.

Cal is a losing team. That is not debatable.

Cal doesn't have many good wins. That is not debatable.

The words "good", "losing", "wins" have concrete meanings in all dictionaries of English language.

What some are doing here is knowingly or unknowingly corrupting the word, "competitive" to mean what they want it to mean, which is "not good" or "losing", or "not winning". That is my gripe.

I actually think that you are the one corrupting the term and are frustrated that just about everyone is calling you on it.

Competitive in the basketball sense refers to how a player or a team COMPETES, not the result of how they competed. It means getting ahead of your opponent in a game or staying with him, keeping the score close, ane giving yourself a chance to win the game.

Which dictionary is that in?

I wrote that the game was competitive for 35 minutes. If Cal had lost on a bucket at the buzzer, would any of you have considered Cal to have been competitive in that game? If the lost on a free throw at the end, would you then say they were competitive? What if Cal had tied the score and sent the game to overtime, where they lost, would you have admitted they were competitive? No, you probably wouldn't. So why not just say that Cal didn't win, or Cal lost again, or Cal wasn't any good again? Instead of corrupting the word "competitive" to mean something not found in any dictionary?

Modern society in America, at least, permits the corruption of many words. Whether this is a defect in our schools as to how we teach the English language, or just changes in our culture which have caused us to lose respect for our history, which includes our dictionaries, and lose respect for one another to the point where we say whatever the hell we want to say, no matter who it offends.

What you describe had been going on for as long as language exists wherever it exists. This has nothing to do with 'Modern society in America'. That type of argument sort of reeks of a political angle attempting to leverage fear or nostalgia as an excuse to say 'whatever the hell you want'

Take the word "impeachment", for example. The Republican Party stupidly started the corruption of the word by impeaching Bill Clinton for lying to a grand jury over some incident which was not a "high crime or misdemeanor". This was purely vindictive, wanting to punish Clinton just to weaken him and his presidency. Not wanting to be outdone, the Democrats impeached Donald Trump, accusing his campaign of a mded up story of consorting with Russians and branding Trump as a Russian spy, all without a shred of evidence. This was purely vindictive, and started even before Trump assumed the Presidency. Now they choose to impeach Trump a second time over a speech which was not in any way inciting insurrection and violence, based on the definition of his words and the words used in the indictment. This is vindictive, only meant to punish someone they don't like, and want to prevent from running for President again. It is also absurd, a farce, because the purpose of impeachment is to make a case to have a trial and remove the President from office, and he will already have been removed from office by the election and the inauguration of President Biden.

Whoops - your underwear is showing. This last paragraph sort of just goes off the rails. Are you suggesting that Trump is as 'competitive' as Clinton?

---

My comments in bold are above. I responded earlier about semantics and am surprised SFCity is choosing this hill to plant his flag. Although I agree with much of what he says about basketball - I feel compelled to respond to this latest rant that reflects very poorly on him IMHO.

BTW - I don't even think Cal was competitive (in his sense) for 35 minutes. I think they other team was 'playing down to our level'.

---

Beached Bear,

I left this post and thread alone for some time, because it had become so contentious, all over the definition of a word. I always felt that you in particular are a reasonable man. I was surprised when you wrote this post, which I consider harsh. I felt that if I had upset a reasonable fan like you, then I needed to stop and think over my post and the responses to it again.

All I was trying to do was to say something positive about the team after a tough loss. It was a game where most fans and maybe even the players had expected to lose, maybe even get blown out, but oddly enough the Bears had stayed close, within a bucket or two for most of the game, only to lose it very suddenly with one Oregon player getting red hot, and Cal going ice cold for just a few minutes. I tried to paint this as Cal maybe starting to improve a little from a slow start to the season.

As you rightly pointed out, it could very well have been that Oregon had played so poorly as to let Cal stay in the game, score-wise for a long time. This often happens in sports where a strong team will not get up for a game with a weaker opponent, playing down to their opponent's level. And it usually happens that the stronger team will wake up and win the game at the end.

Even now, I have not made up my mind which was true, that Cal had improved and hung tough or that Oregon played down to Cal's level. We now have the benefit of a little more data on how good the two teams are. Cal has played decently in several losses, and finally beat Colorado, maybe a team they should not have been able to beat. Many BI posters are saying that Cal seems to be showing some improvement. Meanwhile, Oregon has dropped out of the top 25 for a month now, after two losses to teams they should never have lost to at home, Oregon State and Washington State. Duarte missed the OSU game, but still I don't feel they should have lost that one, if they were a top 25 team playing at home. The win over AZ in Tucson was, I suppose, a good win even though AZ is still unranked. We will find out more about how good Cal is and how good Oregon is in their upcoming game at Haas.

As to the word, "competitive", I've been using it since I was 9 years old and entering junior tennis tournaments, where I filled out entry banks which asked for the "competitor's name" and when the people running the tournaments called us competitors. I was a good competitor, but not a great one. I won most of my matches, but I never won a tournament. It was the same in golf tournaments I played in. When I played basketball, we were always taught to compete. Sometimes we competed well and we won, and sometimes we competed well and we lost. We seldom had competed poorly and won, but on occasion we did not compete well, but we won, often due to the opponent competing worse than we did.

I had pushback from Oaktown, who as I understood it, had the notion that you had to win the game, or you were not competitive at all. It did not square with the definition I had heard and used all my life since I first found out that there were sports to watch and participate in. It seemed illogical to me, since you cannot win every game (except for only a few times in college basketball history). The word competitive is to participate in a competition and describes the degree or level which we compete, and says nothing about final result, a win or loss. Oaktown, you, and others feel the word means something else. I did not expect the level of disagreement I received, and so I will respect that. You and everyone else are entitled to believe what ever definition you want. Based on all the response, most everyone on the Bear Insider believes that you are not competitive in a game unless you end up winning the game. I think this is an esoteric definition, Maybe only believed here on the basketball board. It may be true for other fans, or other sports, I don't know. I'm not here to argue with people. I will respect your view here, and I will try to refrain from ever using the word competitive here unless it conforms with your definition.

---

You need to consider this in context. I had let this all go a while ago and had to refresh my memory. Coming back to it a month later seems a bit odd and just re-inforces my point below.

At the time you started this thread and we played Oregon, you wanted to say something positive. I get that - we all appreciate it. And there are many ways to do that. However, the context of the discourse, which YOU engaged in, was NOT so much about saying something positive, but about YOU BEING RIGHT (about semantics - having nothing to do with the team's performance). I questioned why you chose to plant your flag on that battlefield.

Then your response turned very strange and took it a step further. I felt compelled to respond - because I disagreed and thought you were being a bit too provocative with the impeachment rhetoric. I pointed out the flaws that I saw in your points and attempted to insert a bit of humor.

The context of the entire discourse indicates that your priorities seem to be:

1. You feeling that everyone thinks you are right
2. Political Rhetoric
3. Monolithic Semanticism
4. Competitive nature of this years team.
5. Being positive about Cal Bball

You claim #5, but say #1-#3. You had so many choices to flip those priorities and you didn't. Sorry - but that comes across to most people as a form of deception and damages your credibility.

---

Boy what a heavy duty response. Point number 1 above is completely false. Just scroll up, SFCB states that based on all responses everyone on BI feels a team is NOT competitive in a game unless they end up winning the game.
Its not complicated. Cal is a team with a losing record and has many flaws. Despite that, if a team takes them lightly or doesn't play their best game Cal is well capable of playing them tough or beating them - see Cal vs. Colorado last Saturday. In a normal world that makes the Cal Bears basketball team competitive. Simple.

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No matter your definition of "competitive" I think we all agree that beating first place Colorado makes us more "competitive" than hanging with middle of the PAC-12 teams for a half and then getting blown out in the second half and losing by double digits. I think we all agree the team is more competitive now than it was when this thread was started.

Its one game. Lets see if they win anymore.

BeachedBear said:

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SFCityBear said:

---

BeachedBear said:

---

SFCityBear said:

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Stanford Jonah said:

---

I say Cal isn't competitive. Some things are so obvious that they don't need to be debated.

Victories against the Nicholls States of the world mean nothing to me.

When Cal decides to start caring about their men's major sports, I'll decide to start caring. If they don't care, why should I?

---

Look, Cal is not a good team. That is not debatable.

Cal is a losing team. That is not debatable.

Cal doesn't have many good wins. That is not debatable.

The words "good", "losing", "wins" have concrete meanings in all dictionaries of English language.

What some are doing here is knowingly or unknowingly corrupting the word, "competitive" to mean what they want it to mean, which is "not good" or "losing", or "not winning". That is my gripe.

I actually think that you are the one corrupting the term and are frustrated that just about everyone is calling you on it.

Competitive in the basketball sense refers to how a player or a team COMPETES, not the result of how they competed. It means getting ahead of your opponent in a game or staying with him, keeping the score close, ane giving yourself a chance to win the game.

Which dictionary is that in?

I wrote that the game was competitive for 35 minutes. If Cal had lost on a bucket at the buzzer, would any of you have considered Cal to have been competitive in that game? If the lost on a free throw at the end, would you then say they were competitive? What if Cal had tied the score and sent the game to overtime, where they lost, would you have admitted they were competitive? No, you probably wouldn't. So why not just say that Cal didn't win, or Cal lost again, or Cal wasn't any good again? Instead of corrupting the word "competitive" to mean something not found in any dictionary?

Modern society in America, at least, permits the corruption of many words. Whether this is a defect in our schools as to how we teach the English language, or just changes in our culture which have caused us to lose respect for our history, which includes our dictionaries, and lose respect for one another to the point where we say whatever the hell we want to say, no matter who it offends.

What you describe had been going on for as long as language exists wherever it exists. This has nothing to do with 'Modern society in America'. That type of argument sort of reeks of a political angle attempting to leverage fear or nostalgia as an excuse to say 'whatever the hell you want'

Take the word "impeachment", for example. The Republican Party stupidly started the corruption of the word by impeaching Bill Clinton for lying to a grand jury over some incident which was not a "high crime or misdemeanor". This was purely vindictive, wanting to punish Clinton just to weaken him and his presidency. Not wanting to be outdone, the Democrats impeached Donald Trump, accusing his campaign of a mded up story of consorting with Russians and branding Trump as a Russian spy, all without a shred of evidence. This was purely vindictive, and started even before Trump assumed the Presidency. Now they choose to impeach Trump a second time over a speech which was not in any way inciting insurrection and violence, based on the definition of his words and the words used in the indictment. This is vindictive, only meant to punish someone they don't like, and want to prevent from running for President again. It is also absurd, a farce, because the purpose of impeachment is to make a case to have a trial and remove the President from office, and he will already have been removed from office by the election and the inauguration of President Biden.

Whoops - your underwear is showing. This last paragraph sort of just goes off the rails. Are you suggesting that Trump is as 'competitive' as Clinton?

---

My comments in bold are above. I responded earlier about semantics and am surprised SFCity is choosing this hill to plant his flag. Although I agree with much of what he says about basketball - I feel compelled to respond to this latest rant that reflects very poorly on him IMHO.

BTW - I don't even think Cal was competitive (in his sense) for 35 minutes. I think they other team was 'playing down to our level'.

---

Beached Bear,

I left this post and thread alone for some time, because it had become so contentious, all over the definition of a word. I always felt that you in particular are a reasonable man. I was surprised when you wrote this post, which I consider harsh. I felt that if I had upset a reasonable fan like you, then I needed to stop and think over my post and the responses to it again.

All I was trying to do was to say something positive about the team after a tough loss. It was a game where most fans and maybe even the players had expected to lose, maybe even get blown out, but oddly enough the Bears had stayed close, within a bucket or two for most of the game, only to lose it very suddenly with one Oregon player getting red hot, and Cal going ice cold for just a few minutes. I tried to paint this as Cal maybe starting to improve a little from a slow start to the season.

As you rightly pointed out, it could very well have been that Oregon had played so poorly as to let Cal stay in the game, score-wise for a long time. This often happens in sports where a strong team will not get up for a game with a weaker opponent, playing down to their opponent's level. And it usually happens that the stronger team will wake up and win the game at the end.

Even now, I have not made up my mind which was true, that Cal had improved and hung tough or that Oregon played down to Cal's level. We now have the benefit of a little more data on how good the two teams are. Cal has played decently in several losses, and finally beat Colorado, maybe a team they should not have been able to beat. Many BI posters are saying that Cal seems to be showing some improvement. Meanwhile, Oregon has dropped out of the top 25 for a month now, after two losses to teams they should never have lost to at home, Oregon State and Washington State. Duarte missed the OSU game, but still I don't feel they should have lost that one, if they were a top 25 team playing at home. The win over AZ in Tucson was, I suppose, a good win even though AZ is still unranked. We will find out more about how good Cal is and how good Oregon is in their upcoming game at Haas.

As to the word, "competitive", I've been using it since I was 9 years old and entering junior tennis tournaments, where I filled out entry banks which asked for the "competitor's name" and when the people running the tournaments called us competitors. I was a good competitor, but not a great one. I won most of my matches, but I never won a tournament. It was the same in golf tournaments I played in. When I played basketball, we were always taught to compete. Sometimes we competed well and we won, and sometimes we competed well and we lost. We seldom had competed poorly and won, but on occasion we did not compete well, but we won, often due to the opponent competing worse than we did.

I had pushback from Oaktown, who as I understood it, had the notion that you had to win the game, or you were not competitive at all. It did not square with the definition I had heard and used all my life since I first found out that there were sports to watch and participate in. It seemed illogical to me, since you cannot win every game (except for only a few times in college basketball history). The word competitive is to participate in a competition and describes the degree or level which we compete, and says nothing about final result, a win or loss. Oaktown, you, and others feel the word means something else. I did not expect the level of disagreement I received, and so I will respect that. You and everyone else are entitled to believe what ever definition you want. Based on all the response, most everyone on the Bear Insider believes that you are not competitive in a game unless you end up winning the game. I think this is an esoteric definition, Maybe only believed here on the basketball board. It may be true for other fans, or other sports, I don't know. I'm not here to argue with people. I will respect your view here, and I will try to refrain from ever using the word competitive here unless it conforms with your definition.

---

You need to consider this in context. I had let this all go a while ago and had to refresh my memory. Coming back to it a month later seems a bit odd and just re-inforces my point below.

At the time you started this thread and we played Oregon, you wanted to say something positive. I get that - we all appreciate it. And there are many ways to do that. However, the context of the discourse, which YOU engaged in, was NOT so much about saying something positive, but about YOU BEING RIGHT (about semantics - having nothing to do with the team's performance). I questioned why you chose to plant your flag on that battlefield.

Then your response turned very strange and took it a step further. I felt compelled to respond - because I disagreed and thought you were being a bit too provocative with the impeachment rhetoric. I pointed out the flaws that I saw in your points and attempted to insert a bit of humor.

The context of the entire discourse indicates that your priorities seem to be:

1. You feeling that everyone thinks you are right
2. Political Rhetoric
3. Monolithic Semanticism
4. Competitive nature of this years team.
5. Being positive about Cal Bball

You claim #5, but say #1-#3. You had so many choices to flip those priorities and you didn't. Sorry - but that comes across to most people as a form of deception and damages your credibility.

---

You sound like you are new to SFCity or sumptin'.

Again - competitive means you look forward to selection Sunday. This is not Cal. Not by a million miles. Instead I am looking to forward to skiing the high chutes at breck that day. Lets hope for Fresh powder the night prior.

helltopay1 said:

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The Demos in the House tried to impeach all three of the Presidents you mentioned, but, the proceedings never got to the Senate.

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By that weak measure "the Republicans" have "tried to impeach" every Democratic president since FDR except for Kennedy and Carter.
Including:
Truman
Johnson
Clinton
Obama
Biden

Chapman_is_Gone said:

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calumnus said:

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helltopay1 said:

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The Demos in the House tried to impeach all three of the Presidents you mentioned, but, the proceedings never got to the Senate.

---

By that weak measure "the Republicans" have "tried to impeach" every Democratic president since FDR except for Kennedy and Carter.
Including:
Truman
Johnson
Clinton
Obama
Biden

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Take your politics and shove it up your ass. This is a Cal sports board.

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I did not introduce politics to this thread. I was only responding to Helltopay's post with the facts.