Local boy Jacob Gowan is Stanford’s long-snapper on this year’s outstanding Cardinal football team. He is also a coach’s dream because he is a fine Division I athlete playing varsity football while attending Stanford on an academic scholarship. This allows the football coaches to have an extra athletic scholarship to bring in an extra player.
Jacob Gowan was one of those special kids who always brought a joy to the football or basketball team wherever he played. Jacob has had one redshirt season at Stanford so he will return to play one more season next year. As a straight-A student, Jacob has also won an academic scholarship to study in Germany.
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I think UC Berkeley’s Athletic Director Sandy Barbour should have given Cal Head Football coach Tedford a wake up call with all the newspaper publicity, but not fire the guy. Coach Tedford had been one of the chief fundraisers in raising money to construct the new football facilities at Cal. I think the added responsibilities affected his recruiting ability.
But now that he's gone, I hope Cal can hire Gary Patterson, now the head coach at Texas A&M. Patterson started his coaching career as an assistant coach at UC Davis.
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I was so glad that 49ers quarterback Alex Smith got to play for a real offensive coach in Jim Harbaugh. Smith took his team to the NFC Championship game. His team lost to the NY Giants because of fumbles by Kyle Williams while receiving kicks. As a result of his steadily improving performance, Smith received a huge $26 million contract from the Niners for the next three years.
But the tall, speedy, strong-armed Colin Kaepernick from Turlock — the Turlock Tornado — was the second string quarterback right at Smith's shoulder. Kaepernick is a more gifted athlete than Smith. But Smith has more experience.
So Alex Smith started this season and was playing well. He's a conservative quarterback who makes few errors. He compliments the 49ers great defense. Then Smith got a serious concussion three weeks ago and Colin Kaepernick took his place as starting quarterback for the 49ers a week ago Monday night, November 19.
Since then Kaepernick has played beautifully for the 49ers and his team has won with him as the starter. His physical gifts were obvious to any fan of the game, but could he get the team into the correct formations and audible to another formation when necessary to make a play have its best chance at success? Yes, to all the mental questions. He is an improvement over Alex Smith.
The only disagreement I would have was the way Coach Harbaugh handled the situation considering Smith’s feelings.
After the first game Smith missed because of the NFL’s concussion protocol, I would have issued a statement saying that Smith has been cleared to play this week but I’m giving Smith another week off just to be safe unless Kaepernick gets hurt. Then if Kaepernick had another big day, which he did in New Orleans, the change to Kaepernick as the starter would have been almost automatic. With Kaepernick as the 49ers starting quarterback the Niners have blown out the Chicago Bears and on Sunday they beat the Saints in New Orleans 31-21.
Aldon Smith has proven his first-round draft pick value. In some of the earlier games I felt they were using the 49ers great defensive tackle Justin Smith to clutch two linemen and hold open space for the lightning quick Aldon Smith to rush for untouched sacks. That ploy is illegal and I am guessing that the 49ers were warned by the league officials not to do it anymore. But Aldon Smith is getting his sacks now through his own ability. Plus, Justin Smith is also getting sacks.
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It was wonderful that Buster Posey won the National League Most Valuable Player award, and double wonderful he did it coming off a serious injury. He is the first catcher since Johnny Bench to win that award.
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