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To Clarify: Fucking Berkeley
DoogCourics
Member Posts: 5,739
As we all know the game is cancelled, but shockingly it isn’t on the Pac-12 for once. Per John Wilner: It is strictly being called off by the City of Berkeley Public Health, and only them. Not even Alameda County is calling the game off. City of Berkeley has jurisdiction.
Now the conference and Larry Scott still suck Ballz, I’m not saying they don’t, so don’t twist. But apparently the Pac-12, Cal, and UW all want this game to go down. The cancellation is not due to the Pac-12 testing plan or any of their policies. If the game was at Stanford, USC, UCLA, literally any other city, it’s still on.
Cal is without their entire offensive line due to Berkeley city policies. Not the starting line, the entire position group. Everyone has to quarantine at home for 14 days. Only one player is positive. He is asymptomatic. All other players in contact with him have continued to test negatively since they were last in contact with him. Cal’s protocol and the Pac-12 protocol and the entire testing system that the season was delayed for to make sure was in place..... all of it worked. The kid tested positive and was separated before he could spread it to his teammates.
Cal devised an entire system that would work with Berkeley’s regulations on social distancing, player pods, etc., etc., all to avoid this very situation. Had one player tested positive and was quarantined immediately, and all players around him continued to test negative, those players would not need to be quarantined. Those were the agreements. The City of Berkeley Public Health has decided to overrule those previous conditions.
Justin Wilcox is pissed. Jimmy Lake is pissed. Apparently even the Pac-12 is pissed. Wilcox and the conference have asked what needs to happen to never have this situation again, and they haven’t gotten an answer.
For once this isn’t on the conference. If this game was played in any other city, it still goes on. If it was any other position group besides OL and QB, the game goes on. Players play out of position and lets go. At this point, 14 day quarantine rules has likely fucked Cal for next week’s game against ASU, and it isn’t out of the realm of possibility this happens to Cal again this year. It doesn’t seem like there will be a rampant cancelling of games through the Pac-12 this season. Unless it’s in Berkeley.
I’m not here to discuss the virus, restrictions and policies, politics, or anything like that. Take it to the Tug. I’m just here to watch football and discuss football with you jackasses.
But seriously. WTF Berkeley?
FYFMFE.
Now the conference and Larry Scott still suck Ballz, I’m not saying they don’t, so don’t twist. But apparently the Pac-12, Cal, and UW all want this game to go down. The cancellation is not due to the Pac-12 testing plan or any of their policies. If the game was at Stanford, USC, UCLA, literally any other city, it’s still on.
Cal is without their entire offensive line due to Berkeley city policies. Not the starting line, the entire position group. Everyone has to quarantine at home for 14 days. Only one player is positive. He is asymptomatic. All other players in contact with him have continued to test negatively since they were last in contact with him. Cal’s protocol and the Pac-12 protocol and the entire testing system that the season was delayed for to make sure was in place..... all of it worked. The kid tested positive and was separated before he could spread it to his teammates.
Cal devised an entire system that would work with Berkeley’s regulations on social distancing, player pods, etc., etc., all to avoid this very situation. Had one player tested positive and was quarantined immediately, and all players around him continued to test negative, those players would not need to be quarantined. Those were the agreements. The City of Berkeley Public Health has decided to overrule those previous conditions.
Justin Wilcox is pissed. Jimmy Lake is pissed. Apparently even the Pac-12 is pissed. Wilcox and the conference have asked what needs to happen to never have this situation again, and they haven’t gotten an answer.
For once this isn’t on the conference. If this game was played in any other city, it still goes on. If it was any other position group besides OL and QB, the game goes on. Players play out of position and lets go. At this point, 14 day quarantine rules has likely fucked Cal for next week’s game against ASU, and it isn’t out of the realm of possibility this happens to Cal again this year. It doesn’t seem like there will be a rampant cancelling of games through the Pac-12 this season. Unless it’s in Berkeley.
I’m not here to discuss the virus, restrictions and policies, politics, or anything like that. Take it to the Tug. I’m just here to watch football and discuss football with you jackasses.
But seriously. WTF Berkeley?
FYFMFE.
Comments
Hth
If this rationale stands and is enforced, Cal will likely have to play all its games on the road and should just say fuck it and call it a season. What's the poont? The odds of any team going through Nov, Dec and Jan w/o one positive is, I would think, pretty small, especially at large schools, which all but one of the schools in the P 12 are. Christ Cal is as big or bigger than UW ... well over 30K and Berkely, for those who haven't been, is kinda densley packed in there.
Every reporter that covers Cal (not just Wilner) that I’ve looked at have basically described Wilcox as furious during his press conference.
Wilcox talked to reporters on a Zoom call for about 30 minutes Thursday afternoon, hours after the Pac-12 announced that Cal’s season-opening game against Washington, scheduled for Saturday at Memorial Stadium, had been canceled.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, you know, got my blood boiling a little bit,” he said. “We respect the virus and the seriousness of it. (Players have) done a really good job of trying to do everything we’ve asked them to do, that the institution has asked them to do and we thought that the state and (Berkeley) public health office was asking them to do.
“So when the game gets taken away from you, that can be an emotional moment.”

One Cal player tested positive for COVID-19, the athletic department announced on Wednesday, and other players have been quarantined as a result of contact tracing. None of those in quarantine have tested positive, Wilcox said.
“Obviously disappointing day for us. I’m sick for our players and feel for them. I feel for the guys at Washington,” Wilcox said. "Everybody was looking forward to this game. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”
Wilcox had issue with the characterization that Cal requested the game be canceled.
“We did not request to cancel the game. We weren’t able to play the game. Maybe that’s what the paperwork says,” he said. “The contact tracing eliminated a lot of players and an entire position group and it was not going to be feasible.”
Wilcox is not permitted to reveal which position group was impacted, but it’s believed to be either the offensive or defensive line. He also said others, perhaps players and/or coaches, were implicated in the contact tracing.
It was the lack of any available players at one position group that forced Cal's hand.
“We had zero (players from that group) at practice for the last few days. It wasn’t feasible to put a team out there,” Wilcox said. “If it was certain positions where you could kind of sub guys, we would have done that, absolutely. But it wasn’t.”
Asked about the Nov. 14 game at ASU, Wilcox said, “I wish I knew the answer to that. That’s determined by the local public health office, not me, not our trainers and doctors, not Cal. That’s determined through the contact tracing of the local public health office, which is not affiliated with the university.”
Wilcox said the university has given Berkeley health some guidance on when it needs an answer that would clear the way to play in Tempe.
“We would hope to know sometime between tomorrow and Monday,” he said. “We do not have an answer on that yet. It was made known (to Berkeley health) that we would need to know this weekend or at the latest on Monday in order to move forward appropriately.”
Wilcox said the athletic department and university have tried since the start of the pandemic to implement protocols that meet or exceed all local and state health department guidelines. He said the university continually asks what more it can do to safeguard players and meet the contact tracing standards.
But he and his players look around and see other places where contact tracing is executed differently.
"I think the frustrating part is you see the differences throughout the state and the country on how these contact tracing process are taking place,” Wilcox said. “I think that’s where the players especially can get a little bit frustrated, as you can imagine, that there’s no consistency there.”
ESPN provided this explanation from Berkeley Public Health:
A spokesman for Berkeley Public Health told ESPN the negative test results do not allow someone to exit the quarantine protocol because the incubation period for COVID-19 is believed to be 14 days.
"The reason that the 14-day quarantine exists is that's the amount of time over which somebody could develop the disease," Matthai Chakko, a spokesman for Berkeley Public Health, told ESPN. "[A negative test] doesn't cure somebody's COVID-19 and it doesn't remove the chance that the virus may appear. That's what the quarantine order is based on."
OK!