By Dennis J. Freeman
San Diego, CA-Speed. It kept coming against the Cal Golden Bears in its matchup against hated foe Texas in the 34th Bridgeport Education Holiday Bowl at Snapdragon Stadium by Qualcomm in San Diego. Unfortunately, for Cal, the speed came from all angles, interrupting their game plan. The speed of Texas, especially on defense, was simply too much for Cal to overcome.
Every time Cal quarterback Zach Maynard looked up to take a snap from center, Texas (8-5) had a couple of defenders in his face. What looked like a promising start turned into s bear of a game offensively for Maynard and Cal, which got roughed up pretty good by Texas’ stout defense.
Texas quarterback David Ash caught a touchdown pass and threw for another score to lead the Longhorns to a sluggish 21-10 victory against Cal, before a nationally televised audience and a crowd of 56, 313 in attendance. Ash’s 47-yard touchdown pass to Marquise Goodwin in the third quarter gave Texas the lead for good, putting the Longhorns up 14-10.
Ash and Texas scored the first touchdown of the game when he caught a 4-yard touchdown pass from Jaxon Shipley in the second quarter. But it was the Texas defense that was the star of this game. Texas linebacker Keenan Robinson, the game’s defensive MVP, spearheaded an aggressive Longhorn’s defense that corralled Maynard and Cal’s explosive offense. Texas forced Cal into turning the ball over five turnovers, a fact not lost on coach Mack Brown.
“The difference in this ballgame, like the difference most of them, were the turnovers,” Brown said. “We didn’t take advantage of the turnovers early in the game. We didn’t score a couple of times after a turnover, but we came back, and I thought two significant things that happened: Defense played great. The defense forced turnovers.”
Cal’s football team came into the Bridgeport Education Holiday Bowl looking for some sort of redemption against perennial power Texas for leapfrogging them in the national polls to play in the 2005 Rose Bowl. That seems to be eons ago. By now one would think that Cal (7-6) would have gotten over the snub and moved on.
However, listening to former players, alumni and fans, the Cal football program and its followers clearly have not forgotten the fact that the Golden Bears carried a 10-1 record for the 2004 season and were ranked No. 4 in the national polls. Oh, by the way, that Cal team was led by a fella named Aaron Rodgers, a guy likely to be named the NFL’s MVP this season and this past Super Bowl’s most valuable player.
Brown and his Texas team went on to the Rose Bowl and defeated Michigan behind the scintillating of quarterback Vince Young. Meanwhile, Rodgers and Cal turned belly-up against Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl, losing 45-31, in a blowout defeat.
Binny Strang, a former Cal wide receiver who caught a couple of touchdown passes from Rodgers, remembers the dejection that Cal felt after being passed over the Rose Bowl. Strang said what has kept Cal in the national spotlight all these years has been the steady hand of coach Jeff Tedford.
“Coach Tedford has been there so long; He’s the winningest coach in Cal football history,” Strang said. “He does a great job in bringing in quality recruits. You don’t have to worry about scandals and all that other stuff. We win, and we win the good way.”
Cal had hoped to turn the clock forward and exact its revenge against the Longhorns. Brown and Texas had better ideas about how the game would turn out.
Instead of going along with Cal’s agenda and rolling over for goodness sake, and despite coming into the game with a sub-par Texas season, Brown and the Longhorns decided to play spoiler and ruined Cal’s coming out party. Texas was able to snuff out any Cal heroics by taking the ball away from them.
“They did a nice job of stripping it,” Tedford said afterward. “We’ve done a pretty good job of not turning it over…They put their hands on the ball, their hats on the ball, stripped us and we had some miscues as well. It’s really no explanation for it.”
The speed of the Texas defense had a lot to do with those forced turnovers. The Longhorn’s defense also made life miserable for Maynard, when not getting sacked or thrown around like a rag dog, was often hit and hurried on obvious passing situations.
“They put a lot of pressure on the quarterback. I thought that Zach was under siege pretty much all day today,” Tedford said. “They beat us upfront, brought some blitzes, got clean, got home runs and pressured Zach a lot. He was under pressure all day long.”
Dennis has covered and written about politics, crime, race, sports, and entertainment. Dennis currently covers the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, and Olympic sports. Dennis is the editor of News4usonline.com and serves as the publisher of the Compton Bulletin newspaper. He earned a journalism degree from Howard University. Email Dennis at dfreeman@news4usonline.com
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