Team preview: California

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(All information as of June 20, 2008)

Just when it appeared that Jeff Tedford and his program were going to reach the mountaintop of college football, not only did the Bears stumble, they more or less took the most disheartening descent imaginable.

As of the morning of Oct. 13, many believed Cal was the best college football team in the country. The Bears were 5-0 and ranked No. 2 entering a home game that night against Oregon State. Between that morning and New Year's Eve, Cal won exactly one game while losing six in a collapse so monumental it was all but unexplainable. It's not like half the starting lineup on both sides of the football went down simultaneously in the first quarter of the Oregon State game.

And while some have blamed the now infamous final play that night by a redshirt freshman quarterback making his first start, Cal should never have been in that situation to begin with. Still, even that was just one game. What happened thereafter? No matter, it was without question the roughest season of Tedford's otherwise remarkable six-year run at Berkeley.

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