Is There Life After Death?
By Chris Haugh November 2, 2009 | 3:24 pm
Posted in: M. Soccer
Welcome to the Cal athletics emergency room and trauma center.
Unfortunately, we just had to declare T.O.D. for the Cal men’s soccer team last night at 7:13 p.m. It will surely be missed.
But actually, when Oregon State’s Colin Mitchell scored in the 13th minute against the Bears it was about over for the once-No. 4 nationally ranked team. With five conference losses, a record one game over .500 and no ranking whatsoever, its hard to see a selection committee plucking Cal out of its futbol sorrows and into the College Cup later this month.
I wholeheartedly believed the 2009 Bears could contend with the best in the nation, and they did.
Just not enough.
They opened the season with a 2-1 loss in overtime to then-No. 1 Maryland, obliterated a ranked USF squad and pulled out a classy 1-0 victory over Stanford. But for some reason Cal seemed incapable of showing up for the meat of its Pac-10 schedule. Games against teams they were perfectly capable of outclassing, out-talenting and out-everythinging (just go with it) and didn’t.
The most mind-boggling part of this season comes with four games against two Pac-10 bottom feeders. The Bears dropped two games to Washington and another two games to San Diego State.
What?!
If you drop four games like that — two at home, mind you — it pretty much sets you up for a few pressure-packed games against perennial superpowers like, say, UCLA who managed to, once again, beat Cal twice.
However, that’s just the way sports go sometimes, I guess. You hear it all the time from the T.V. talking heads: athletic endeavors are unpredictable and capricious. Even the scrawniest of the Davids can raise up and proverbially concuss a Goliath — that’s why we watch right?
Well, I would argue that’s wrong especially if your team has all the trappings of a title contender. There is nothing wrong with a good team doing good and a bad team doing bad. The Bears deserved a better season and for some reason it didn’t come to fruition.
With that said, the Bears have one last chance to sucker-punch a rival from the grave. On Nov. 14th at Laird Q. Cagan Stadium, against Stanford, Cal’s swan song can be a booming solo performance with Pac-10 ramifications or it can slip into the historical records without a peep.
I promise that the afterlife (sorry, I mean the off-season) will be much much sweeter with the former.
Tags: Cal men's soccer, College Cup, Pac-10 soccer, The fat lady sang













Just like that, “Points and Shoot” is back again.