Bay Area Teams Headed in Opposite Directions; Bruin Blues; Alabama's Hot Seat; NIL Numbers; Valkyries Shine; 49ers' Nightmares Revisited

Cal Romps, Stanford Stalls.

You know you're a good team when you win 35-3 and complain afterwards about playing poorly. And you know you're in trouble when you only gain 19 yards rushing in a game.

Cal thumped Texas Southern 35-3, but felt it didn't play well offensively. Freshman quarterback Jaron-Keave Sagapolutele completed 26 of 37 passes for 259 and said he had a bad day. 

No question Cal is on the rise with Sagapolutele (above).

The Bears, 2-0, have won the last four Big Games and gone to bowl games the last two seasons.

Meanwhile, Stanford was embarrassed by BYU, 27-3. Embarrassed by two illegal substitution penalties, several illegal motion penalties, minus 18 yards rushing in the first half, and an inept offense that totalled only 161 yards on the day.

The Cardinal are 0-2, having lost 23-20 in the opener to a Hawaii team that was hammered by Arizona 40-6 a week later, and look to be on their way to another 3-9 (or worse) season. 

QB Ben Gulbranson, the sixth-year transfer from Oregon State, had another poor outing, and you have to wonder why interim coach Frank Reich isn't giving former five-star recruit Elijah Brown a look.

This week Stanford faces a Boston College team that has scored 106 points in two games, losing 42-40 in overtime at Michigan State last week, while Cal hosts Minnesota in a battle of unbeatens.

Transfers Reign: Out of 136 starting quarterbacks in major college football (FBS) in Week 1, 89 were transfers. 

Bruin Blues: UCLA is 0-2 after getting embarrassed by Utah 43-10 and upset by UNLV, 30-23. The Bruins' ultra-hyped $2M transfer QB from Tennessee, Nico Iamaleava, has had a rough start. He was only 11-22 for 136 yards against Utah, then played better against UNLV (passing for 255 and running for 59 and a TD), but threw an interception with 52 seconds left as the Bruins were driving for the tying score.

Another big issue for UCLA is home attendance. 

For the Utah game, the Rose Bowl looked two-thirds empty. UCLA announced an attendance of 35,032, but the actual crowd that came through the gates was 27,785, according to the LA times Ben Bolch.

Alabama's Hot Seat: Wise words from ESPN College Game Day's Desmond Howard, the former Heisman Trophy winner from Michigan and Super Bowl MVP with the Green Bay Packers, speaking about coach Kalen DeBoer's hot seat at Alabama:

"He had a great thing going in Washington. To follow a legend (Nick Saban), you never ever want to follow a legend. You want to be the guy who followed the guy who followed the legend."

NIL Stats: The College Sports Commission, created as part of the House Settlement to oversee third party NIL deals, is charged with making sure they serve a valid business purpose and meet "market value."

Skeptics, including this writer, have suggested it will be difficult to manage this arena and that lawsuits will surely follow when deals are turned down.

Last week the commission released its "NIL Deal Flow Report" through August 31 and claimed that 8,359 deals worth $79.8 million had been cleared, and that only 332 had not been cleared. 

Oops!

Problem was, the numbers were all incorrect.

A couple of days later, the Commission corrected the bogus numbers, saying instead that it had cleared only 6,090 deals worth $35 million rather than the nearly $80M originally reported.

Seems the 8,359 represents the total number submitted, not approved.

The Collective Association (an organization of third party collectives charged with raising NIL money and doing deals with players), wasted no time gloating over the commission's mistake: 

"The recent correction of CSC's NIL data highlights exactly what collectives have been experiencing: a system lacking clarity, accuracy and speed. With even more deals pending than previously reported, more student-athletes face unacceptable delays and uncertainty in accessing the resources they depend on for basic needs like rent, transportation and education-related expenses."

Valkyries Shine: The Golden State Valkyries have done something no other expansion team has ever done--make the playoffs in their first year.

Most experts figured the Valkyries would be lucky to win 10 games this season. Instead, they've won 22 games and clinched a spot in the WNBA playoffs.

All credit to coach Natalie Nakase, a former assistant with the Las Vegas Aces during their back-to-back championships, for taking a team of castoffs and foreign players (many of whom missed several games because of the EuroBasket Tournament in June) to the post-season. 

Nakase has also had to overcome injuries to several key players, including one that sidelined All-Star Kayla Thornton for the second half of the season and another that claimed Cecilia Zandalasini just when she was emerging as an offensive force.

Nakase should be a unanimous choice for WNBA Coach of the Year.

Nightmares Revisited: The 49ers escaped with a win yesterday, but not before experiencing many of the horrors of last year's 6-11 season.

Injuries to key players, namely George Kittle and Jauan Jennings. Poor special teams play, with Jake Moody missing a chip shot field goal and having another one blocked. And ill-timed interceptions on forced passes by quarterback Brock Purdy. 

In fact, the game-winning TD pass looked like a third Purdy interception, but reserve tight end Jake Tonges snatched it away from Seahawks' defender Riq Woolen for the score.

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.