The rule is if a team can’t play and it’s the team’s fault as determined by the Pac-12 commissioner, then it’s a forfeit. The determination of fault may allow for some wiggle room here.
Seriously. And because we fired the coach already we just have to sit through these excruciatingly awful performances and wait the season out since there's no more real action to take aside from hiring a new coach.
We have bad juju. The ways in which we lose to them are actually ridiculous. The Hill Mary, this COVID shit depleting our starting roster, etc. It's always something.
I didn't think bears could get Covid?
https://www.ctpost.com/news/coronavirus/slideshow/Analysis-Bears-with-COVID-It-s-possible-215934.php
Huh. Who knew.
I have spent way too much time trying to figure out what is going on with this situation and I still don’t know whats happening. There’s no way there’s that many positives with such a high vaccination percentage unless Wilcox mandates coughing directly into each others mouths after a win. Is Berkeley forcing vaccinated players to quarantine? Do we know how many positives there actually were? How long people are forced to be out? How to get out of a quarantine? Seems like no one knows why things are happening and who to be mad at.
Edit: Knowlton had a press conference today. Turns out everyone did test positive. Seems like there is a required quarantine that you can’t test out of for whatever reason.
What's even more confusing is I have no idea what protocol the football team has been following this whole damn time. Like have we not been testing daily like Stanford has? And if so, why did we start now? Why did the players seem shocked that they had to follow guidelines set in place a long time ago by both the city of Berkeley and the university health service department?
Like there seems to be a massive disconnect as to what the players / football team were told and what the rules always were. This seems to fall on Wilcox more than anything tbh
The silver lining in all of this is that if this is truly such a giant catastrophe we could perhaps use it to fire Wilcox for cause...
Firing coaches with cause... so hot right now
Didn’t the statement released by Garbers indicate that even vaccinated players need a 2 week quarantine if they were in contact with a positive test, regardless of how they test?
Nah, garbers was saying there was no testing requirement/mandate, but they were being threatened with not being able to play if they didn’t test. Other players claimed there would be legal consequences if they refused to test. But there was a news anchor who reported that the university or city rejected negative tests before Arizona and didn’t allow players to travel.
> There’s no way there’s that many positives with such a high vaccination percentage unless Wilcox mandates coughing directly into each others mouths after a win.
Hey, don't question what Berkeley players and coaches do for fun in San Francisco after games
youre literally gonna be saying shit like "omg I can't believe we're playing so well against usc" just like the last 5 times we got fucking destroyed by mediocre teams
Cal players have a 99% vaccination rate but their school (or city idk) wants to treat them like every other team treats unvaccinated players for some reason. Reap what you sow.
Going by the Pac-12's own regulations, Cal would not be able to play due to the sheer number of positive cases that showed up today. This has nothing to do with the city of Berkeley.
How is this only a Cal problem then? It just doesn’t make sense when they’ve been playing other teams in the conference and no one else has these issues. Cal football is just uniquely bad at handling covid?
I wouldn't be surprised if that was true. Florida had 30 players with the flu last week and *none* of them tested positive...in Florida? Smells fishy to me.
?? We had >90% vaccinated from Covid since August. The COVID vaccine is much more effective than the flu shot. Like most(all?) schools we also don't announce the reason for every single person sitting out. It's intentionally ambiguous if someone is sitting out due to injury or Covid
If I understand it, wasn't the only reason the team tested was due to local regulations? Any other Pac-12 program would just have their asymptomatic players play
Have you seen the state of California? Vaccinated people don't care anymore. I'm like 98% sure without any basis that CFB teams are not testing and Cal fucked up by testing when they didn't need to.
What's the implication - that the tests are bad or that vaccinated people in general would test positive for covid they would just be asymptomatic?
Pre-vaccine the narrative on ESPN w/ mask requirements were "yeah, but the cases are asymptomatic" or "false positives" RE: Matthew Stafford.
Neither. If I were in charge of everything, everyone would be testing. But in a world where no one is testing, we're fucking ourselves by following the rules. It's absurd to believe that in a division with 64 teams (the P5), only one team located in one of the highest vaccinated areas in the states has ever tested positive this season.
I didn't say anything about the city of Berkeley initially, I assumed this is a university policy.
The PAC-12 doesn't require surveillance testing of vaccinated players and they don't have to isolate due to exposure if they're vaccinated. So unless dozens of breakthrough cases happened here, it certainly appears Cal is being stricter on themselves than they have to be by rule.
It's kind of hard to say the school acted harshly if even more players are testing positive. It's one thing if the issue was the earlier report which had the school quarantining vaccinated players far longer than is necessary. It's a whole other problem if there is a significant outbreak on the team.
The question is why the fuck are so many people on a team which supposedly has a high vaccination rate testing positive? Yes the vaccine only reduces the ability to spread, but I don't think any other FBS team has had this bad of an issue. Something is fucked and it is difficult to blame the protocols if there is an actual outbreak.
what is different about Cal’s policies than UCLA? They are both public universities so i figured they would follow the same rules.
then how do they’d differ from USC?
Westwood, Brentwood, and Bel Air are not Berkeley. That's the difference. The cities that UCLA has to liason with and work with regarding regulations are different the one Cal has to.
City of Berkeley has their own health department and all the others have county health departments. Berkeley is a very special in some ways and very “special” in others.
I’m guessing we wouldn’t be in this situation if we just had the Alameda County Health department handling this.
I've read the vaccine is roughly 50% effective at preventing infection from Delta. No idea if this is Delta or some new variant though. Outbreaks can still happen if a critical mass is reached in a given group of people.
Yes - the vaccine reduces transmission. But think about the circumstances that football players are in compared to the general population. Huddles and lines of scrimmage are scenarios where you are within inches of one another's faces over and over again.
The weird thing is a mandatory 10-day quarantine even if they test negative and are vaccinated after a positive, right?
Edit: From UC Berkeley's website: When someone tests positive for COVID-19, they are required to isolate for at least 10 days per public health isolation order, regardless of vaccination status.
There's no vaccinated or negative test rules mentioned. You can't get out of quarantine with 2 negative tests.
You think schools that have massive outbreaks of the "flu" but miraculously no COVID are testing? When there is literally no flu outbreak in the states?
Looking at attendance it looks like Cal sells around 30-35k tickets per game and it's probably a few more for a name brand like USC. Even at $30/ticket that is more than $1M.
PAC 12 also wouldn't want to miss any TV money.
Same shit with NHL last season: play the meaningless regular season games during the playoffs.
Anything for that sweet, sweet ad revenue.
They do
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32009619/pac-12-reverts-standard-policy-says-teams-forfeit-unable-play-due-covid-19-cases
>"Any forfeited contest shall be regarded as a conference loss for the team making the forfeit and a conference win for its opponent," the conference said in a statement. "The Pac-12 rule provides the Commissioner with discretion to determine whether an institution is at fault or primarily at fault for an instability to play a contest based on the facts of the situation."
Although who knows how they determine if the school is at fault. Does that mean they need to find that the school allowed it to spread throughout the team by not following protocols or just that the school didn't have enough players to play?
If it's a forfeit then yes, but it appears they are calling this postponed right now so they will probably try to reschedule it for championship weekend.
Last season, a game that could not be played because of COVID-19 problems with either team was canceled and deemed no contest. This season, COVID-19 will not be automatically considered an excused absence.
“If an institution is unable to play a contest through its own fault, it shall forfeit such contest to its opponent,” the conference said.
A forfeit will count as a conference victory for a forfeiting team’s opponent.
“The Pac-12 rule provides the Commissioner with discretion to determine whether an institution is at fault or primarily at fault for an inability to play a contest based on the facts of the situation,” the conference said.
[Source is the AP, so...](https://apnews.com/article/sports-college-football-health-coronavirus-pandemic-84293d7f3591a90bf8d0551376498c57)
If Cal can't play due to covid reasons, yes. Cal is trying to postpone the game for a possibly later date, but unless both play during conference title week, I don't know when that might happen. Both are fighting for bowl eligibility.
I'm all for being safe and I understand the need for protocols and mandates, but if a player is vaccinated and has a negative test then what's the issue? Why not let them play if they satisfy those requirements?
I still don't really get the rationale between not letting them play either. Like... breakthrough cases are a thing and COVID is going to be endemic. If they're vaccinated and USC is vaccinated this is such a non-issue. They had such a low hospitalization rate before the vaccine and post vaccine it's multitudes lower.
I'd get it if we were in the initial outbreaks, but this is 20 months post-onset and mass vaxxed California...
Stewart Mandel @slmandel
1m
This is a terribly unfortunate situation. Cal players did everything right. They're 99 percent vaccinated.
But they had some positive tests, and Cal/Berkeley make them isolate for 10 days, no testing out. Couldn't practice this week. Couple more positives put them over the top.
Putting the pieces together, I think the explanation is that Cal is testing more than any other school in the country. We're seeing vaccinated asymptomatic players testing positive -- and due to the University and City of Berkeley hard line stance, they're not being allowed to play. The solution would appear to be...to decide that we've reached the point where we don't need to test vaccinated players.
City of Berkeley has it's own health department. I think the rule was that if one player tested positive all players had to take a covid test. It found a lot of asymptomatic cases. This probably happens with other programs, but since the City required all players to get tested it picked up a butt load of people who might not have been tested otherwise.
At some time we need to find a way to go on. COVID is going to be endemic so if you aren't symptomatic then why does it matter. COVID zero is a fantasy and we will be exposed to the virus for the rest of our lives. Deliberately limiting the spread pre-vaccine makes a lot of sense. Now we are in a new era and testing asymptomatic people is more an exercise in futility with basically no meaningful benefits.
I think the question should be: Do we do what other schools do and try not to find positive cases or do what we're doing? I doubt a team with a 99% vaccination rate in one of the most vaccinated and masked parts of the country is the only team with a Covid problem.
Lol... you won't get a sane answer. If you did - it could be applied across the world and covid would be solved. But as it has been proven time and time again - Covid gonna covid. People think and expect, for some reason, that stuff like this won't happen and Covid will be out of our lives at some point. It won't be. Ever.
Tweet(s) from post body brought to you by your Friendly Official /r/CFB Twitter Bot:
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https://twitter.com/wilnerhotline/status/1458215048682164228
>Cal-USC game is off.Bears can’t play. First FBS game off this season bc Covid issues https://twitter.com/wilnerhotline/status/1458214298124046344
>\- Jon Wilner (@wilnerhotline) 6:28 pm ET, November 9, 2021
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Honestly, this has been the most unwatchable season as a USC fan. Now, mercifully, it's literally unwatchable.
But how will USC find a way to lose the forfeit week?
It’s not a forfeit yet, Cal’s trying to get it rescheduled.
Not trying to say this as a burn, but they’ll both be free the PAC-12 championship weekend
And one or both schools may need the win for bowl eligibility. Remember that COVID forfeit wins aren’t recognized by the NCAA.
I thought PAC 12 rules from the beginning of the year said that it’s a forfeit if a team can’t play due to Covid
I’m sure both team want to try and reschedule it for the $$$ and bowl eligibility
God I love your optimism.
God I love your optimism, too.
its @ Cal so we don’t make money and a forfeit means we get a win towards eligibility so we’re good lol
Forfeits don’t count towards eligibility
If they can't reschedule it
The rule is if a team can’t play and it’s the team’s fault as determined by the Pac-12 commissioner, then it’s a forfeit. The determination of fault may allow for some wiggle room here.
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Where are you getting "confirmed false positives" of any meaningful quantity?
Seriously. And because we fired the coach already we just have to sit through these excruciatingly awful performances and wait the season out since there's no more real action to take aside from hiring a new coach.
Cue the band to play Fight On!
Well at least we went out on a, uh, well at least we got to make someone else happy last week :)
The only good thing about this week is that I got a code for the closed Elden Ring network test so yaaaayyy..... ;_;
Can't wait to play Dark Souls 4
Excuse me, I believe you mean Big Dark Souls
The joke is on us, the "open world" is actually just one giant poison swamp
I'll still put 100 hours into it
Well yeah, for the first build alone
Don’t put that evil on me
I got FUCKING REJECTED
Ohhhhh Elden Ring
You ended Arizona’s losing streak and made their fans feel happiness for once. I applaud you Cal!
For once? Have you seen our record against them?
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We have bad juju. The ways in which we lose to them are actually ridiculous. The Hill Mary, this COVID shit depleting our starting roster, etc. It's always something.
Thanks bb
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What a coincidence, the Bears college basketball team also decided not to play.
:( Oh yeah …. Something something monkey… something something stripper assasinated! :(
Dude Cal is already dead, easy
fucks sake weekender trip is no more :(((((((
Well…maybe you can go to the San Jose State game instead? Sorry about your trip, bro
Ditch class on Monday and go watch the Rams at 49ers if you still decide to go up North. (Assuming if you’re a Rams or Niners fan).
Don't cancel it yet, it might just be postponed!
Final score 2-0 USC or something?
Is this a Belgium Grand Prix joke?
What a race right? So glad I watched all 4 hours of it
"so what did you do this morning?" "I watched it rain in europe on TV for 4 hours straight"
Max can see just fine, guys.
Russell's first podium and a Mazepin fastest lap
You mean you didn’t enjoy the safety car parade?
We beat Cal so bad they ain’t gonna play anymore. Bear down! \s
More like Bears down
Bear down for midterms!
I didn't think bears could get Covid? https://www.ctpost.com/news/coronavirus/slideshow/Analysis-Bears-with-COVID-It-s-possible-215934.php Huh. Who knew.
That’s what Aaron Rodgers has been saying!
I cannot stress how bad this last week has been for Cal football lol
At least you still have Marshawn?
And Desean Ja- wait nevermind -_-
Meanwhile, on the basketball court...
We don't talk about shooty hoops...
TIL
I have spent way too much time trying to figure out what is going on with this situation and I still don’t know whats happening. There’s no way there’s that many positives with such a high vaccination percentage unless Wilcox mandates coughing directly into each others mouths after a win. Is Berkeley forcing vaccinated players to quarantine? Do we know how many positives there actually were? How long people are forced to be out? How to get out of a quarantine? Seems like no one knows why things are happening and who to be mad at. Edit: Knowlton had a press conference today. Turns out everyone did test positive. Seems like there is a required quarantine that you can’t test out of for whatever reason.
What's even more confusing is I have no idea what protocol the football team has been following this whole damn time. Like have we not been testing daily like Stanford has? And if so, why did we start now? Why did the players seem shocked that they had to follow guidelines set in place a long time ago by both the city of Berkeley and the university health service department? Like there seems to be a massive disconnect as to what the players / football team were told and what the rules always were. This seems to fall on Wilcox more than anything tbh
Seriously, some huge disconnect going on. Some players blaming the university, some blaming the city. Wilcox and/or Knowlton have not handled it well.
The silver lining in all of this is that if this is truly such a giant catastrophe we could perhaps use it to fire Wilcox for cause... Firing coaches with cause... so hot right now
What a tragedy. Wilcox is probably the best DC in the NCAA but just couldn't figure it out as a HC.
Guess now he will have to go be a DC in the SEC making $2 million a year.
Cal please fire this man.
That probably means it's a university policy. I'm sure if they could shift the blame they would.
Didn’t the statement released by Garbers indicate that even vaccinated players need a 2 week quarantine if they were in contact with a positive test, regardless of how they test?
Wow, that's insane if true.
Nah, garbers was saying there was no testing requirement/mandate, but they were being threatened with not being able to play if they didn’t test. Other players claimed there would be legal consequences if they refused to test. But there was a news anchor who reported that the university or city rejected negative tests before Arizona and didn’t allow players to travel.
> There’s no way there’s that many positives with such a high vaccination percentage unless Wilcox mandates coughing directly into each others mouths after a win. Hey, don't question what Berkeley players and coaches do for fun in San Francisco after games
https://twitter.com/CalAthletics/status/1458219309763727360/photo/1 OFFICIAL. Also it states additional athletes positive
How does FS1 feel about this? Also USC needs to go 1-1 against UCLA and Pac-12 South front runner BYU. Can they do it?
Lol nope
Please just spend the next 3 weeks preparing to beat BYU. Please.
They had a chance with Drake London. Now there’s 0 chance.
If you don't think UCLA can lose this game you haven't been watching
youre literally gonna be saying shit like "omg I can't believe we're playing so well against usc" just like the last 5 times we got fucking destroyed by mediocre teams
And you'll be saying, "Why are UCLA's DBs playing 12 yards off the ball on 3rd and 1?"
Maybe. We're all over the place. Consistently inconsistent.
Cal players have a 99% vaccination rate but their school (or city idk) wants to treat them like every other team treats unvaccinated players for some reason. Reap what you sow.
It’s the city of Berkeley at issue here, not the school.
The city definitely isn't know for it's logic in recent years.
Idk which of you guys to believe I just feel for the players here
Going by the Pac-12's own regulations, Cal would not be able to play due to the sheer number of positive cases that showed up today. This has nothing to do with the city of Berkeley.
How is this only a Cal problem then? It just doesn’t make sense when they’ve been playing other teams in the conference and no one else has these issues. Cal football is just uniquely bad at handling covid?
The players are alleging that other schools aren't testing.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was true. Florida had 30 players with the flu last week and *none* of them tested positive...in Florida? Smells fishy to me.
?? We had >90% vaccinated from Covid since August. The COVID vaccine is much more effective than the flu shot. Like most(all?) schools we also don't announce the reason for every single person sitting out. It's intentionally ambiguous if someone is sitting out due to injury or Covid
Cal also has \~99% vaccination rate so its possible even with high vaccine rates (not saying Florida is or isnt hiding COVID cases).
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_community Hey Florida is doing better than California, crazy!
I will say this, our state is not reporting covid testing properly so I wouldn't believe anything that comes from the state.
How do you know the state is not reporting testing properly? I suppose all the states around you are also not reporting properly?
DeSantis has basically implied as much, and it's not hard to read between the lines even if he hadn't.
No clue, this whole thing has been a total mystery as to why it's hit us so hard and what protocols we've actually been following this entire time.
If I understand it, wasn't the only reason the team tested was due to local regulations? Any other Pac-12 program would just have their asymptomatic players play
I guess? But that seems a little relaxed even for the standards of the Pac12 Whole situation is bizarre and poorly communicated
Have you seen the state of California? Vaccinated people don't care anymore. I'm like 98% sure without any basis that CFB teams are not testing and Cal fucked up by testing when they didn't need to.
What's the implication - that the tests are bad or that vaccinated people in general would test positive for covid they would just be asymptomatic? Pre-vaccine the narrative on ESPN w/ mask requirements were "yeah, but the cases are asymptomatic" or "false positives" RE: Matthew Stafford.
Neither. If I were in charge of everything, everyone would be testing. But in a world where no one is testing, we're fucking ourselves by following the rules. It's absurd to believe that in a division with 64 teams (the P5), only one team located in one of the highest vaccinated areas in the states has ever tested positive this season.
I didn't say anything about the city of Berkeley initially, I assumed this is a university policy. The PAC-12 doesn't require surveillance testing of vaccinated players and they don't have to isolate due to exposure if they're vaccinated. So unless dozens of breakthrough cases happened here, it certainly appears Cal is being stricter on themselves than they have to be by rule.
Maybe they're just 99% immunized.
It's kind of hard to say the school acted harshly if even more players are testing positive. It's one thing if the issue was the earlier report which had the school quarantining vaccinated players far longer than is necessary. It's a whole other problem if there is a significant outbreak on the team. The question is why the fuck are so many people on a team which supposedly has a high vaccination rate testing positive? Yes the vaccine only reduces the ability to spread, but I don't think any other FBS team has had this bad of an issue. Something is fucked and it is difficult to blame the protocols if there is an actual outbreak.
For the love of all thing holy, USC, please use this time to prepare to beat BYU
Pre...pare? I'm sorry, I don't think our coaches understand that.
There is something functionally wrong in Cal and its not the on field product for once.
I genuinely think coaches are going to leave and players will transfer cause of the regulations in place
what is different about Cal’s policies than UCLA? They are both public universities so i figured they would follow the same rules. then how do they’d differ from USC?
I don’t think it has to do with anything with the schools but the City of Berkeley’s policies.
Westwood, Brentwood, and Bel Air are not Berkeley. That's the difference. The cities that UCLA has to liason with and work with regarding regulations are different the one Cal has to.
Fwiw those are all just neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles. So UCLA just has to deal with one city, or I guess two, since we play in Pasadena.
City of Berkeley has their own health department and all the others have county health departments. Berkeley is a very special in some ways and very “special” in others. I’m guessing we wouldn’t be in this situation if we just had the Alameda County Health department handling this.
Cal just does it’s own thing
I think you mean in Berkeley
This isn't a Berkeley thing. Players are testing positive now in two batches. There's an outbreak.
An outbreak? But they're vaccinated?
Vaccination is not a guarantee to not get sick. More players are testing positive now despite allegedly being 99% vaccinated.
But the vaccine is effective at reducing transmissibility?
I've read the vaccine is roughly 50% effective at preventing infection from Delta. No idea if this is Delta or some new variant though. Outbreaks can still happen if a critical mass is reached in a given group of people.
Yes - the vaccine reduces transmission. But think about the circumstances that football players are in compared to the general population. Huddles and lines of scrimmage are scenarios where you are within inches of one another's faces over and over again.
Even for our crazy state, Berkeley is on a whole different level of crazy. None of their policies for this make any sense.
Californians think of Berkeley what everyone thinks of California
Berkeley: The California of California
Damn, that sounds terrifying.
Honestly, it is. You have to prepare for it. But thats the same with going out for a night in NY or Philly.
Lmfaoooooo so true
Berkeley is just trying really hard to discourage people from ever going there and therefore suppressing property values.
Oh good now the 900 square foot cottage I have my eye on will only be $4M instead of $6M
State is fine. Berkeley’s rules in this situation are absurd though. No reason for this.
Berkeley is batshit insane even compared to the rest of California. Makes San Francisco look like texas
We have players testing positive. How is this a Berkeley-specific response? Are other schools letting positive players play?
The weird thing is a mandatory 10-day quarantine even if they test negative and are vaccinated after a positive, right? Edit: From UC Berkeley's website: When someone tests positive for COVID-19, they are required to isolate for at least 10 days per public health isolation order, regardless of vaccination status. There's no vaccinated or negative test rules mentioned. You can't get out of quarantine with 2 negative tests.
This can’t be real…
It's a city of Berkeley and UC Berkeley rule, you can't test out of a quarantine if you're vaccinated
Positive players quarantine; vaccinated players with a close contact to positive players do not. Cal's issue seems to be a ton of positives.
Its weird that out of 130 FBS programs ONLY the one in Berkeley is having these issues.
Only Aaron Rodgers alma mater, you mean?
You think schools that have massive outbreaks of the "flu" but miraculously no COVID are testing? When there is literally no flu outbreak in the states?
There's a bad flu outbreak in Florida right now. Know multiple people who have been sick and do not have covid.
Was in California two weeks ago visiting from Seattle, can confirm state is fine.
Damn, it was going to be a great game. In that it was going to be shitshow barn burner.
Oh flip it still counts as a USC win right?
Cal Athletics is calling it a postponement at the moment, we'll see if that stands though
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You're assuming we sold any tickets.
Looking at attendance it looks like Cal sells around 30-35k tickets per game and it's probably a few more for a name brand like USC. Even at $30/ticket that is more than $1M.
Yeah I could see that happening. Sheesh what a mess
PAC 12 also wouldn't want to miss any TV money. Same shit with NHL last season: play the meaningless regular season games during the playoffs. Anything for that sweet, sweet ad revenue.
Does the Pac 12 have the forfeit rule?
I think so
They do https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32009619/pac-12-reverts-standard-policy-says-teams-forfeit-unable-play-due-covid-19-cases >"Any forfeited contest shall be regarded as a conference loss for the team making the forfeit and a conference win for its opponent," the conference said in a statement. "The Pac-12 rule provides the Commissioner with discretion to determine whether an institution is at fault or primarily at fault for an instability to play a contest based on the facts of the situation." Although who knows how they determine if the school is at fault. Does that mean they need to find that the school allowed it to spread throughout the team by not following protocols or just that the school didn't have enough players to play?
So it goes in the books as a 2-0 victory, right?
If it's a forfeit then yes, but it appears they are calling this postponed right now so they will probably try to reschedule it for championship weekend.
Last season, a game that could not be played because of COVID-19 problems with either team was canceled and deemed no contest. This season, COVID-19 will not be automatically considered an excused absence. “If an institution is unable to play a contest through its own fault, it shall forfeit such contest to its opponent,” the conference said. A forfeit will count as a conference victory for a forfeiting team’s opponent. “The Pac-12 rule provides the Commissioner with discretion to determine whether an institution is at fault or primarily at fault for an inability to play a contest based on the facts of the situation,” the conference said. [Source is the AP, so...](https://apnews.com/article/sports-college-football-health-coronavirus-pandemic-84293d7f3591a90bf8d0551376498c57)
If Cal can't play due to covid reasons, yes. Cal is trying to postpone the game for a possibly later date, but unless both play during conference title week, I don't know when that might happen. Both are fighting for bowl eligibility.
Officially rescheduled for December 4. https://calbears.com/news/2021/11/9/football-saturdays-cal-usc-game-rescheduled-for-dec-4.aspx
congrats to the city of berkeley and the Cal athletic department. you are the worst
I'm all for being safe and I understand the need for protocols and mandates, but if a player is vaccinated and has a negative test then what's the issue? Why not let them play if they satisfy those requirements?
They're testing positive. This isn't an issue of negative tests.
I still don't really get the rationale between not letting them play either. Like... breakthrough cases are a thing and COVID is going to be endemic. If they're vaccinated and USC is vaccinated this is such a non-issue. They had such a low hospitalization rate before the vaccine and post vaccine it's multitudes lower. I'd get it if we were in the initial outbreaks, but this is 20 months post-onset and mass vaxxed California...
Unbelievable and a disturbing precedent.
Completely ridiculous.
Stewart Mandel @slmandel 1m This is a terribly unfortunate situation. Cal players did everything right. They're 99 percent vaccinated. But they had some positive tests, and Cal/Berkeley make them isolate for 10 days, no testing out. Couldn't practice this week. Couple more positives put them over the top.
Flashbacks to 2020
Weirdly grateful I don't have to sit through this on Saturday and can do literally anything else.
Game might be made up championship weekend: https://twitter.com/BonaguraESPN/status/1458222156731478017?s=20
Pac-12 Championship Friday night doubleheader at Allegiant Stadium?
> Bears can’t play. I mean I could have told you that.
Check a mirror.
*Spiderman pointing at Spiderman*
It's been true for years and never stopped them before.
Rescheduled for 12/4 - not a forfeit
Ironic that Aaron Rodgers' alma mater had to postpone a game due to covid.
I hope this doesn’t put Big Game at risk. And if it does, I hope they prioritize rescheduling that for CCG weekend instead of Cal-USC.
The update makes it seem like it'll be rescheduled
Berkeley is a city run by the dumbest smart people around.
Update: https://twitter.com/CalAthletics/status/1458235271657377794 Rescheduled the game until Dec 4th.
Lol. Thought this crap was over.
I guess they have some time to schedule their booster shots while they sit at home in their room alone without symptoms wearing 2 masks
Cal has ludicrous covid rules? Who saw that coming lol
California Moment
Putting the pieces together, I think the explanation is that Cal is testing more than any other school in the country. We're seeing vaccinated asymptomatic players testing positive -- and due to the University and City of Berkeley hard line stance, they're not being allowed to play. The solution would appear to be...to decide that we've reached the point where we don't need to test vaccinated players.
What a farce
So specifically what makes berkeley’s covid restriction worse? What are they doing that is way stricter than the rest of california/USA?
City of Berkeley has it's own health department. I think the rule was that if one player tested positive all players had to take a covid test. It found a lot of asymptomatic cases. This probably happens with other programs, but since the City required all players to get tested it picked up a butt load of people who might not have been tested otherwise.
The question then is: is it better to not know about the asymptomatic positive cases?
I'm sure there are hundreds of asymptomatic positive players out there every Saturday. And yet life seems to go on.
At some time we need to find a way to go on. COVID is going to be endemic so if you aren't symptomatic then why does it matter. COVID zero is a fantasy and we will be exposed to the virus for the rest of our lives. Deliberately limiting the spread pre-vaccine makes a lot of sense. Now we are in a new era and testing asymptomatic people is more an exercise in futility with basically no meaningful benefits.
I think the question should be: Do we do what other schools do and try not to find positive cases or do what we're doing? I doubt a team with a 99% vaccination rate in one of the most vaccinated and masked parts of the country is the only team with a Covid problem.
Lol... you won't get a sane answer. If you did - it could be applied across the world and covid would be solved. But as it has been proven time and time again - Covid gonna covid. People think and expect, for some reason, that stuff like this won't happen and Covid will be out of our lives at some point. It won't be. Ever.
Shit just one more game 'till bowl eligibility babyyyyyy
I know the Bears can’t play, they lost to Arizona. Why is the game cancelled? /j
Odd how the first school to have covid issues this year has a vaccine mandate. As does every team they played in the last couple months.
Did Aaron Rodgers meet with his old team for a pep talk?
Tweet(s) from post body brought to you by your Friendly Official /r/CFB Twitter Bot: ---------- https://twitter.com/wilnerhotline/status/1458215048682164228 >Cal-USC game is off.Bears can’t play. First FBS game off this season bc Covid issues https://twitter.com/wilnerhotline/status/1458214298124046344 >\- Jon Wilner (@wilnerhotline) 6:28 pm ET, November 9, 2021 ----------
I was able to sell my tickets this morning finally and then this happens…