Brendan Bigelow is iPhone 5

Did I get my iPhone 5 today? Yes. Do I love it? Yes. Am I going to stretch the boundaries of acceptable sportswriting similes to incorporate my iPhone 5 into a post about Cal football? Yes, yes I am. Let's get to it!

Brendan Bigelow is iPhone 5. There, I said it. That felt fantastic.

iPhone 5 is small, one of the thinnest, lightest phones on the market; so is Brendan Bigelow. He is listed at 5' 10", 190 lbs, and if there's anything I learned in my days as a for-realzies sportswriter, it's that sports information directors inflate specs like Galaxy S3 owners.

iPhone 5 is powerful, with the new A6 processor; so is Brendan Bigelow. He was a top-rated running back recruit despite missing his entire senior year with a blown-out knee.

Lastly -- and most importantly -- iPhone 5 is fast, and holy shit so is Brendan Bigelow. Anyone watching last Saturday's nationally televised game against Ohio State got crazy proof of that.

(Quick tangent: Anyone who took my not-so-amazing gambling advice last week definitely knows about Bigelow's speed. His two TD runs helped Cal cover the 16.5 point spread I insisted was uncover-able. For those who may have wagered every penny of their net worth on that game after my impassioned plea to do so, um ... my bad?)

My esteemed colleague here at SCF, Chris (a published author you should really consider adding to your Kindle library), wrote that we shouldn't get too carried away with Bigelow after one game. He's definitely right. I've been watching Cal games with Chris since 2004, and the man knows his football. But like Apple fans who lined up a week in some cases to get their hands on an iPhone 5 today when they could have just preordered online like sensible obsessives, I am taking the crazy approach:

Bigelow is the key to this season.

He only had four carries against the Buckeyes, and they added up to 160 yards and two touchdowns. Take three minutes out of your busy internet schedule and relive the glory of each carry:

I think my favorite of those carries might have actually been the last one, in which he only gained four yards but got us a crucial first down in our final ill-fated drive. Why? Because I said to my fiancé before the 3rd-and-2 play, "We should give it to Bigelow here, he'll pick it up," and then we did, and he did.

I haven't felt that confident about a Cal player since Jahvid Best. When Cal played at Washington in 2008, I was at a bar in San Francisco with a Cal fan friend of mine. The Huskies booted the opening kickoff into the end zone for a touchback, and as the Bears were trotting out to the 20-yard-line, I said to my friend, "Jahvid Best 80-yard touchdown. Boom." AND THEN IT HAPPENED! I cannot stress enough the degree to which this was one of the single greatest moments in my sports fan life. I called my shot like the freaking Babe!

That same friend texted me the following message during the Ohio State game:

Remember when we were hiding the fact we had Marshawn when when arrington was the main back? Bigelow, a huge recruit, is our next secret weapon.

He's right. And you know who else is starting to seem like he might have been right as well? Jeff Tedford, when he said before the season started that this year's running back stable is the deepest it's ever been in his tenure. Going in to the year, I liked CJ Anderson a lot more than Isi Sofele, a returning 1,000-yard rusher (I still do). And now we have Bigelow embarrassing Ohio State in the Horseshoe! He absolutely has to be the best third-stringer in the nation.

On my new iPhone 5, the improved Siri can now tell me lines for sporting events, and she monotonously just told me that USC is favored b 15.5 points tomorrow. You know Barkely and Co., coming off a loss to Stanford, will be looking to carve up our Swiss cheese secondary. How can we keep up? Simple: Give Bigelow more carries.

When you get an iPhone 5, you don't keep it in the box. You bust it out and play with it until your fingers fall off. We should be playing Bigelow more! He's iPhone 5!

Or, at the very least, can we please start calling him Deuce?