Beware of the Home Bears

I can explain Cal's season. This coaching career...no idea how that happens.

There is nothing more perplexing in all of college football than the California Bears. Perhaps the career arc of Lane Kiffin, but that’s not up for debate right now.

Cal is essentially fielding two entirely different teams this season. You have the home Bears and road Bears. One team looks like a national title contender, the other slightly better than New Mexico.

Home Bears are 4-0 and outscoring opponents by an average margin of 38.8 points per game. Road Bears are 1-4 and losing by an average margin of 15.4 points per game.

It’s just your average 54.2 point differential. If I was a Cal fan, this would leave me in therapy, but that’s their problem to deal with.

The competition partly explains the wild swing in performance. Cal’s road opponents are a combined 26-19 while teams they play at home are 15-21. None of the teams on the home schedule have a winning record.

Yes, it’s reasonable to expect less success against that road schedule, but a difference in margin of 54.2 points? No way.

Cal is clearly a much better team at home. For Oregon, that means the level of competition is better than the Bears’ 5-4 record would indicate. After all, home Bears lead the nation in scoring defense and are second in scoring offense.

One could say that with quarterback Kevin Riley out for the season, whatever Cal had going at home is gone. After all, only Andrew Luck had a better rating at home among Pac-10 QBs.

But there’s still that defense. Home Bears only give up 8.5 points per game. Since 2007, no team has been tougher on Chip Kelly’s offense than Cal.

Am I predicting home Bears to win? Of course not. But a competitive game is at least as reasonable as “Oregon 18, Washington 13″ in the third quarter and that actually happened.

California Bears Home/Road Splits

Courtesy of cfbstats.com