Cardinal Badgered By Skeptics

Even before Stanford rolled over Cal and made it into its first Rose Bowl since the 1971-72 season, jokes about the Cardinal playing Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl were flying.

Sports Illustrated said the only thing that could stop Wisconsin’s Ron Dayne was exhaustion from running for so many yards. Others have wondered if a team has ever opened the season with a 52-point loss and ended it with another.

But down in Palo Alto, Calif., the Cardinal believes it can stop the Badgers and their 35.6 points per game. Not to mention Wisconsin’s seven-game winning streak.

“We’ve been beat up in the press all season,” Stanford defensive coordinator Kent Baer told the Contra Costa Times. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: You can’t be a bad defensive team and win seven games in this conference.”

Oh, really? Well, the stats say otherwise.

Stanford is 110th of 114 teams in Division I in total defense. It is 88th in pass efficiency defense and 50th in rush defense. And holding Cal, the worst offense in the Pac-10 and one of the worst in the nation, from scoring does not mean you can stop anybody else. In fact, even after holding Cal to 130 yards and no offensive touchdowns, the Cardinal are still last in the Pac-10 in pass defense and overall defense.

But Baer can point to his run defense as one small positive. The Cardinal is allowing only 138.6 rushing yards per game and is fifth in rush defense in the Pac-10. That also puts Stanford a middle-of-the-road 50th in Division-I rush defense. And even in the blowout loss to open the season against Texas, the run defense held its own.

“I remember one thing Tyrone (Willingham) said in the third quarter of that Texas game,” secondary coach Denny Schuler told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He said, `Well, we’re stopping the (Texas) running game.”’

That was a running game minus former Division-I rushing record-holder Ricky Williams. Wisconsin, on the other hand, has a running game featuring the newly crowned Division-I record holder, Ron Dayne.

Bad news Bears

Cal coach Tom Holmoe finished his third year just like the previous two - with a losing record. To make matters worse, Holmoe is 0-9 in November.

Cal has also not had a winning season since 1993. The Bears have not had a winning conference record since 1991 and have had a winning conference record in only two of the past 20 seasons.

And no team has gone longer since its last Rose Bowl berth than the Bears, who went to Pasadena in January 1959. Arizona has never been to Rose Bowl, but has been in the Pac-10 since 1978.

A new pro bowl

June Jones had had enough of the NFL. The NFL had had enough of Dennis Erickson.

Now those two coaches are among 16 finalists for the Football News Coach of the Year award.

Erickson, fired by the Seahawks last year, has revitalized a team that had endured 28 consecutive losing seasons. The Beavers won seven overall games, four in the Pac-10.

Jones, who left San Diego when salaries and Ryan Leaf got to be too much, turned around a team that had a 0-12 record in 1998 and a 17-game losing streak. This year the Rainbows have eight wins and are WAC champs.

The two programs headed by former AFC West coaches will meet in the O’ahu Bowl on Christmas Day.

Nobody’s watching

Arizona or Arizona State will end up in the Aloha Bowl on Christmas Day. But it’s doubtful that many of either schools fans care.

“I wouldn’t expect that a lot of people would go,” Don Bocchi, executive director of the Sun Angel Foundation, a booster organization that supports ASU athletics, told the Arizona Republic.

“Our bowl game was kind of the Notre Dame game,” added Vic Cegles, an associate athletic director at ASU who is responsible for bowl issues. “We have great fans, but I don’t anticipate many of them would be able to make it to Hawaii.”

Washington and Oregon, two teams that traditionally travel well, only managed to sell about 1,000 tickets each to last year’s Hawaii bowl doubleheader. In light of that, the Pac-10 decided to cover up to 75 percent of the team’s ticket obligations.

So instead of being obligated to sell 7,500 tickets at $45 apiece, Arizona or ASU would only have to sell 1,875 tickets.

That could save the team participating in the bowl more than $250,000. Which could come in handy since the Hawaii bowls are seen as a break-even proposition. Each team is paid $750,000 for participating in the bowl. Charter planes can cost upwards of $300,000. Add in the food and lodging bill and suddenly $750,000 doesn’t seem like that much.

Players of the week

Oregon running back Rueben Droughns was named offensive player of the week following his 197 yards in a 25-14 win over Oregon State. Stanford linebacker Marc Stockbauer is defensive player of the week. Stockbauer had seven tackles, recovered a fumble and broke up a pass in the Cardinal’s 31-13 win in the Big Game. Cal’s Deltha O’Neal was named specialist of the week. O’Neal had a punt and kick return for touchdown and accounted for all of Cal’s 13 points against Stanford. O’Neal has been named player of the week four times this season.