by Morris Phillips and Michael Duca

BERKELEY–Ted Agu 21, Cal defensive lineman’s story personally is not a sad story, his life at Cal started as a walk on, he was well respected by his by teammates, he worked very hard to get where he was, he caught the eye of his coaches former head coach Jeff Tedford and current head coach Sonny Dykes. He was a major factor in the Cal football program, he was found to have the sickle cell trait which can manifest itself in numerous ways.

Mr.Agu never had any previous symptoms before this came out this week, what were finding out is that the sickle cell trait which obviously effects the African American athletes is really a major factor in some of the deaths that happens to NCAA athletes. It’s one of the major causes of scholarship athletes in the NCAA. It’s a sad story but hopefully people will find out about this desease but more important about Mr.Agu and what a positive spirit he was.

As for African Americans it’s always been known that the issue of sickle cell trait is out there for many and as years have gone by it’s kind of taken a back seat. Now according to statistics the sickle cell trait comes up frequently when tyring to account for the best of athletes. Everybody needs to open their eyes and find out a little bit more and we plan to find out a little bit more about this we hope we can do something in the future can be done that can prevent that.

The shock of this has devastated the entire Cal campus on Monday, no one saw this coming and Mr.Agu himself didn’t know he had the sickle cell trait, he was speaking when he was felled on Friday at the workout, they got him back to the facility and that’s when he fainted and these workouts are supervised by the medical staff. They were there and we still lost them and it’s unfortunate and it really is and we hope we can learn something from his death.

Now looking forward to the football program and the loss of Mr.Agu for next fall, the program will try to rebound from football players who had some of the worst test exams in the nation, the team suffering loses last season and the worst case now with the death of Mr.Agu. The recruiting class that was just signed Dykes would have hoped it would have been in the top three.

The Cal class is probably not in the top half of the Pac 12, there won’t be that immediate help coming and it would appear it will be later rather than sooner. You can’t judge what happened to Cal last year versus a whole lot of circumstances and probably outside of Dykes control but you have to say one thing their sure testing him on his resolve and his ability as a coach in this tough situation.

The Ted Agu situation doesn’t add to the negativity surrounding the program and Dykes can get things turned around and people will love him. This didn’t happen in the first year but we give coach Dykes a pass.

Michael Duca and Morris Phillips cover the Cal Bears for game day and commentary for Sportstalk radio