[pincemob]

I'll say tragedy.  They had some very bad luck and it sort of illustrates the fine line that often exists between success and failure.  The article explains well what happened in 2003, where at 10-1 they were left out of the BCS which at the time had two fewer teams than it does now.  It also happened in a brutal way where Mack Brown from Texas lobbied publicly and privately to voters who re-arranged their rankings at the last minute to get Texas in the Rose Bowl (double ouch!), prompting the NCAA to force coaches to disclose their votes.  Cal would rebound from all of that and go 10-3 in 2006 and then the 2007 season happened.  They had won what looked like their toughest games against Tennessee and on the road at Oregon (Dennis Dixon era) but their QB (Longshore) got hurt in the Oregon game.  They were #2 in the country but lost 6 of 8 with Kevin Riley playing QB, the first lost coming when he ran out the clock by mistake on the goal line going in for the win vs. OSU when they had a chance to be #1 because LSU had lost.  Tragic.

Imagine if our Orange Bowl team had instead been a Holiday Bowl team, and if the next year Andrew Luck got hurt when we were 6-0 forcing Josh Nunes into action.  Then picture Nunes running out the clock at the end of a game (mistakenly) and us losing our hope at a title because of it.  With the character and coaching our teams have had,  I doubt we would have spiraled like Cal did, but at the same time we would have missed the chance at the program- changing momentum which landed us these recent amazing recruiting classes.  The academic decay is the reason I can't feel too bad for them though. 

[pincemob]

I'll say tragedy.  They had some very bad luck and it sort of illustrates the fine line that often exists between success and failure.  The article explains well what happened in 2003, where at 10-1 they were left out of the BCS which at the time had two fewer teams than it does now.  It also happened in a brutal way where Mack Brown from Texas lobbied publicly and privately to voters who re-arranged their rankings at the last minute to get Texas in the Rose Bowl (double ouch!), prompting the NCAA to force coaches to disclose their votes.  Cal would rebound from all of that and go 10-3 in 2006 and then the 2007 season happened.  They had won what looked like their toughest games against Tennessee and on the road at Oregon (Dennis Dixon era) but their QB (Longshore) got hurt in the Oregon game.  They were #2 in the country but lost 6 of 8 with Kevin Riley playing QB, the first lost coming when he ran out the clock by mistake on the goal line going in for the win vs. OSU when they had a chance to be #1 because LSU had lost.  Tragic.

Imagine if our Orange Bowl team had instead been a Holiday Bowl team, and if the next year Andrew Luck got hurt when we were 6-0 forcing Josh Nunes into action.  Then picture Nunes running out the clock at the end of a game (mistakenly) and us losing our hope at a title because of it.  With the character and coaching our teams have had,  I doubt we would have spiraled like Cal did, but at the same time we would have missed the chance at the program- changing momentum which landed us these recent amazing recruiting classes.  The academic decay is the reason I can't feel too bad for them though.