The Implications of a Smoky Weekend as Cal Faces Colorado Saturday

On a Saturday that could've seen the city teeming with throngs of blue and gold clad fans, coming off a momentum building win in LA, instead the UC Berkeley campus was essentially a ghost town. A decision was made Friday to postpone the Big Game until the weekend of December 1st, after classes had been cancelled due to the air quality stemming from the Camp Fire.

Anecdotally, I can say that was the right decision. I live about 7 or 8 miles from Berkeley, and as a healthy, 26 year old in decent shape, I've been having some issues with breathing. It'd be hard to imagine two teams worth playing in a haze that's demonstrably worse in air quality than last years' Washington State game, along with a poor fan atmosphere (the attendance at last year's Washington State game was the lowest since 2002). It wasn't going to work for anyone, not to mention the recruiting aspect likely being an issue (those that hadn't already made it up cancelled their visits after the announcement).

Cal even cancelled a Thursday MBB contest against Detroit Mercy, along with moving today's women's basketball game to Palo Alto. It's been one of the stranger weekends we've had in Northern California in a while

So now the Bears have two more games on the year, a rivalry game that's for once the final game of the year, and a game against a Colorado team that just fired its head coach.

Colorado pulled the plug on Mike MacIntyre Sunday morning, something CU AD Rick George said was a culmination of many factors, as aside from the sterling 2016 season, Colorado hadn't had a season better than 5-7 and was 0-9 in their attempts to gain bowl eligibility over the previous two seasons. They dropped a 30-7 contest against Utah Saturday, a week after a 31-7 loss to Washington State, which followed blowing a 31-3 lead to Oregon State. MacIntyre, the former San Jose State coach, went 30-44 with his time in Boulder (14-39 in conference play).

With that, the Bears will be facing the Buffaloes while they're being led by QB coach Kurt Roper, who worked under Duke coach David Cutcliff for a significant portion of his career. Roper notably developed Eli Manning over his final two years at Ole Miss and was also at Tennessee when they played Cal in 2006-07.

A Handful of Early Notes

- Cal's 1-3 in the past decade against interim coaches, 1-1 under Justin Wilcox (against Oregon State and UCLA a year ago). The other two losses came under Sonny Dykes, to USC teams that had fired their coach midseason.

- This should aid the Bears in getting a number of receivers back. Jordan Duncan and Moe Ways were likely to play this weekend against Stanford, but another week means more time to ostensibly get Vic Wharton and Kanawai Noa back as well.

- Colorado is offensively an 11 personnel team, lot of pistol looks under OC Darren Chiaverini. WR Laviska Shenault is one of the best wideouts in college football, catching over 80% of his targets, being tough to take down (27 avoided tackles per PFF), and the Buffs will use him in wildcat situations. Shenault had been banged up recently, but appeared to be all the way back against Utah. QB Steven Montez has had another year to grow and RB Travon McMillan has done solid work after his transfer from Virginia Tech.

- Defensively the Buffs are led by Nate Landman, the first recruit Justin Wilcox went after after being hired. Landman, like Jordan Kunaszyk and Evan Weaver, has been routinely excellent in playing sideline to sideline for Colorado, and lineman Mustafa Johnson has tallied 41 QB pressures, impressive for an interior defensive lineman.

- Air quality impacts are supposed to last through Tuesday, as the AQI is below 200 again (the NCAA threshold where teams will consider cancelling games), but still in the unhealthy range. After Tuesday, the AQI is projected to drop below 100, per SparetheAir.org.

It was a bit of a short notice bye week for the Bears, who had prepared to face Stanford and may get them in a less favorable position, with wideout JJ Arcega-Whiteside healing up, amongst other members of the Cardinal. Now they have to shift gears before shifting back, but in the meantime, a couple of Bears did some charity work.

Junior defensive end Lone Toailoa and senior long snapper Alonso Vera worked with Marshawn Lynch and his Fam First foundation to hand out turkeys and other canned goods to those in need for the Thanksgiving holiday upcoming.

Otherwise, knowing many members of the Cal squad, Jordan Kunaszyk especially, were probably studying the Colorado-Utah game, as they look to improve their standing to get to the best bowl game they can get.