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Oregon Ducks @ California Golden Bears Football Recap

Oregon 15, California 13

It almost happened, but almost doesn’t count, and as a result, the Oregon Ducks are still on track to play for the 2010 BCS national championship of the Football Bowl Subdivision.

“It,” of course, is the upset that the California Golden Bears almost pulled off against their neighbors to the north. Cal coach Jeff Tedford was the offensive coordinator on the 2001 Oregon team that finished the bowls No. 2 in the nation behind the champion Miami Hurricanes. Since coming to California, Tedford hasn’t won a conference title, but he has made the Golden Bears better than when he arrived in Berkeley. Saturday night near Strawberry Canyon, the Bears – in their Memorial Stadium comfort zone – very nearly knocked Oregon out of the running for the national title, but thanks to a very bizarre turn of events, the Ducks lived another two weeks and will now get ready for their next test against Arizona on Nov. 26.

What prevented Cal from producing a 16-15 win that would have sent shock waves across the United States and its legions of football fans? It’s something that you hardly ever see in a pigskin passion play, a plot twist so improbable that it defies description: an illegal-motion penalty… on a placekicker.

Giorgio Tavecchio is the man in those Southwest Airlines commercials right now. He’s the man who is asked, “Wanna get away?” He’d like to do just that after he cost his team a piece of history thanks to a bonehead move on Saturday night.

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At a previous point in this 2010 campaign, Tavecchio – a diminutive figure who has remained small in money situations – missed a 40-yard kick that would have given Cal a road win at Arizona; what should have been a 12-10 Bear win turned into a 10-9 loss for the Berkeley boys. Saturday night, when he prepared to try a 24-yard kick to give his team a one-point lead over Oregon in the fourth quarter, Tavecchio shouldn’t have been sweating. This was a 24-yard kick, not a 44- or 54-yarder.

Still, he found a way to blink. Tavecchio moved before the ball was snapped, and as a result, his made 24-yarder was stricken from the record books, and he had to line up again with five yards added to his distance.

It’s one thing to miss a 29-yard field goal as Tavecchio did on his re-try, but it’s quite another to blot out a 24-yard make because the kicker moves too early and brings about his own humiliation. Yes, Cal played with passion and physicality. Yes, the Golden Bears outfoxed Oregon at the point of contact and handled the Ducks with more dexterity and deftness than any other defense in college football this season. Yet, if Cal merely had a half-decent kicker who could avoid committing the most basic forms of penalties, the Bears just might have remained perfect at home this season.

What’s a college football season without one more wildly improbable and amazingly abrupt left turn into the land of the wacky? Stay tuned. The Pac-10’s season is not yet over.

By Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer