I Don't Understand This Levi Stadium Hubbub

Word on the street is that Cal and Stanford have agreed to move the 2014 Big Game from Memorial Stadium to the 49ers' soon-to-be new stadium in Santa Clara.

In return, Cal will host the Big Game in 2015 and therefore "even out" its home schedule from being so lopsided. From Stanford's perspective, the Cardinal will now get to host Notre Dame and Cal in separate years (but who really cares about Stanford?).

If this plan goes through:

Even Years
Oregon
UCLA
Washington
Colorado or Utah
Arizona or Arizona State

Odd Years
Stanford
USC
Oregon State
Washington State
Arizona or Arizona State
Colorado or Utah

With the logistics out of the way, some thoughts:

1. Make no mistake about it, the only reason all three parties have agreed to this is only about money. Cal benefits from this by making its season ticket package more attractive in odd number years and so does Stanford. The 49ers benefit because it'll be more pub for their new stadium.
2. I have no idea why so many Cal fans are upset by this news.

The reaction to news like this is when I think Cal fans suffer from an issue that plagues a lot of fanbases around the country. Reading all the posts and comments out there (and boy are there many), fans have stated everything from the long commute to the South Bay to Berkeley businesses losing money as reasons for why the Cal administration should have never agreed to this. 

One game in this place isn't the end of the world. (49ers media relations)

One guy even said he was going to boycott the entire season because he's so disheartened.

What Cal fans truly and desperately need to understand is that college football is not what it once was when they grew up. The concept of "purity of the game" does not exist anymore. The belief that the Cal administration should play towards the all-day college experience of walking up Bancroft and giving its alumni ample time to reminiscence about the past on gamedays has left the station a long, long, time ago.

College football is a business and Cal needs to do all it can to stay with the curve and if that means "selling out" a little bit to get some extra bucks in the budget then so be it. The moment Sandy Barbour and the administration decided to re-model Memorial Stadium (anyone who thinks the re-model was strictly for earthquake reasons is fooling themselves) and build the Simpson Center, they symbolically said they were in it to win it.

Cal fans can't have it both ways. They can't complain, complain, complain all day about how poorly the product is on the field and then get mad at the Cal administration for doing what a bevy of other teams around the country are now doing - taking the money.

Bit of a tangent but related: A great story I heard a couple years back when I was still covering the team was about Rick Neuheisel. As most people know, recruiting is the lifeline of every college football program and people haven't seen an arms-race until they've walked inside a recruiting battle. Programs need good players to win. Period. Neuheisel knew that better than anybody so one day he rented/stole/borrowed/was given a helicopter and word from SoCal was that he visited seven recruits at seven different schools in a four-hour span and surprise, surprise, UCLA ended up getting a lot of those recruits to eventually commit (including Shaq Evans).

Or maybe Cal fans really want to spend the rest of their days in an empty stadium but at least they'll get to eat at Top Dog. (San Jose Mercury)

I bring that story up because it shows the ridiculous lengths coaches have to go to win football games and it also entails how much money every program needs to stay above water. Now, I'm not saying Sonny Dykes needs to start landing helicopters in East Oakland but I am saying that programs need all the money they can get to truly compete against the Alabamas and LSUs of the world.

Is Sandy Barbour the greatest Athletic Director in the world? Probably not.

But is she a dummy? No. C'mon man.

Barbour very much understands the Cal football tradition and what it means for Cal alumni to have pride in their prestigious and beautiful university. However, Cal fans also can't have it both ways. If Cal fans really want Cal to win in this day and age, then once in a while the administration has to give in to the mighty dollar.

Additionally, I don't believe for one second that this puts Cal at a competitive disadvantage:

1. Cal fans will outnumber Stanford fans at Levi Stadium (those that disagree should remember why the Stanford admin had to call the riot police in 2003).
2. If Cal is truly going to win a Pac-12 title, playing 30 miles from home shouldn't make a lick of difference no matter what the circumstances are, especially against a fanbase as fickle and piss-poor as Stanford's.
3. Cal still gets to host the next Big Game after 2013. It'll just come a year later than planned.

In the end, I guess someone needs to complain about something but in this case I really don't understand what all the fuss is about.

GO BEARS!