by Michelle Richardson

What a shocker by Cal in a 31-24 win over Northwestern: I was one of the people with my mouth open because the Cal Bears took my card in the pick em, this could be the tide turning for Cal. They’ve had some many years in missing bowl games and last year they won only one game and maybe former head coach Jeff Tedford’s exit might have brought in a change and right now it’s new blood with head coach Sonny Dykes.

Part of that new blood is new students and a new attitude at Cal, I always say sometimes it takes a change in management to change how a place works and I’m hoping that there is another team in the Pac 12 that will be competitive this year. If you rank the big time conferences the Pac 12 is at the bottom. UCS is not impressive, Stanford I’m not sure if they’re kind of a bubble team or a team that’s been pretty much running the Pac 12 the last few years.

Mike Leach at Washington State took over and made the Cougars his team and the team has got better and better every year. This is his third year and all of those recruits are all his, I’m looking forward to seeing whats going on and not like USC whose changed coaches in the last few years. I’m very excited that Cal turned it around and beat a team in the Big Ten and their hoping to be number one and to show some strength in their schedule.

Notre Dame’s win over Rice 48-17 not surprising: Don’t get confused this win by the Fighting Irish is not a tone setter for the season, it’s Rice its not going to set any tone unless your playing Rice in baseball I’d say no. Notre Dame was supposed to win this game and win this game handedly. Had Rice won I would tell you that Norte Dame could stick a fork in it.

This is not a game where you can say Notre Dame beat Rice the Fighting Irish are going all the way, no there not, I need to see the Irish play a Michigan and play more top ten teams. When Notre Dame starts getting into their part of the ACC schedule we’ll see. The Irish play Michigan for the last time this year we’ll see then. Right now no, that game meant nothing except that’s the first game of the season for the Lucky Charms.

USC controversies: Josh Shaw’s fake balcony jump and he was also named in a burglary report in L.A. I don’t feel sorry for him and I know he’s a young man and he’ll make mistakes but he lied and said he went and jumped do really think somebody is going to follow up on that? His nephew was drowning and he jumped two stories do think people are going to follow up on that. USC is going to follow up on that because the school is concerned now about their reputation.

You have the L.A.Times and Sports Illustrated making this a national story is Shaw stupid? Then there is the fact that he lied. You could lie about a whole lot of things but you don’t lie about people’s lives being in peril and you don’t lie about people dying. Because you believe in karma and it mighht come back on you in a bad way.

That was just a horrible, horrible, thing that Shaw did and I truly, truly hope that he learned his lesson and he’s eligble for the NFL draft, doesn’t Shaw know he’s affecting his draft stock? My thing is if Shaw just said he jumped off the balcony and he did something stupid and he hurt his ankle that would show more character than saying he saved two kids from a burning building. This lying is ridiculous and you put yourself in a bad position with the team over something that was completely stupid and illegal, I don’t have a place for you on my team.

Michelle Richardson does NCAA Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com. You can hear the rest of her commentary on the soundcloud audio below the column