I’ve never rushed the field after a Big Game.
These days that does not seem so surprising, I know. But back when I was in school, beating Stanford was the norm, not the anomaly. I—and the many that were members of my cohort—were spoiled.
These were the days of the “Ted Head” tie-dyed t-shirts. These were the days when Stanford was coached by someone called Buddy Teevens or—much worse—Walt Harris. These were the days when Aaron Rodgers was Cal’s quarterback while some guy named T.C. Ostrander quarterbacked the Cards.
I never respected the Cal-Stanford football rivalry while I was a student. There was no need to. I stepped foot on campus at the peak of the football program under Jeff Tedford, while at the same time the Cardinal was facing its worst five-year stretch probably in history. (I did, however, take beating Stanford seriously in all things other than football, in the sports where it truly mattered to Beat Stanfurd—women’s basketball, soccer, water polo, swimming, lacrosse, baseball, etc.) But football, in my time, was not one of them.
The rivalry was an afterthought. I was not even in attendance for the Big Game my freshman year. Failing to get tickets earlier in the semester, I had to watch the Rodgers-led Bears steamroll Stanford from my dorm room with other hapless freshmen. The students rushed the field, the roses came out and I can pretend my way of having been there because I know so many who actually were.
The next year, in 2005, I took BART and then CalTrain down to The Farm for my first in-person Big Game—and the last at the Old Stanford Stadium. There was a fence between the Cal student section and the field—and between the Cal students and everyone else—preventing us from storming the playing surface after fullback-turned-quarterback Steve Levy led the Bears to victory.
In 2006, I could not muster enough emotional support to race down the Memorial Stadium steps and onto the field. That was the year that Cal had two shots of getting to the Rose Bowl. They failed both times, our dreams of playing in the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1959 wilting in the desert sun and then finally being crushed in the full glow of the Los Angeles moonlight. I was in no mood to take the field after the Bears beat a team that would win one game all season. Stanford football was so pathetic in 2006 that to inspire their fans, the football team entered Memorial Stadium through the stands, while a huge “I Believe In Stanford Football” banner was unfurled by their students. This win did not call for celebration.
And so I never had the chance to rush the field, and as I entered my senior year at Cal, I wouldn’t. I took over the football beat for the Daily Cal. I was ensured that any victory down at The Farm would end with me in a tunnel somewhere, asking questions and conducting interviews as fans celebrated on the field.
And as that cold November night came to a close, that’s exactly what I did, except it had not turned out the way I imagined it.
***
The Big Game has always been a rivalry of streaks. California did not win a Big Game in the rivalry’s first seven games (Stanford won four of the first seven Big Games, the other three ended in ties). And ever since then, the rivalry has always been lopsided, tilted either towards the East Bay or the Peninsula.
Stanford has had the two longest winning streaks of the series, winning seven times between 1995 and 2001, and winning six times between 1961 to 1966 (though I think during this stretch, the Berkeley campus was more involved in other matters to care about football).
Cal’s longest winning streak, on the other hand, has been five, which has happened twice: the first time was when Andy Smith was head coach of the Bears, winning the first five Big Games after World War I (from 1919 to 1923). The second span of five years came more recently, when Tedford’s Bears won between 2002 and 2006.
Stanford, however, does have the longest stretch of not winning a Big Game, losing six times and drawing twice in an eight-year span from 1947-1954. Legendary Pappy Waldorf coached Cal back then.
The rivalry always has and seems destined to always be lopsided. Cal and Stanford are just both never good at the same time. It is not like the other big college football rivalries, which always seems to be a toss up, regardless of the quality of the teams. I’m sure there’s some way to fit Bayes’ theorem to all of this, but when you’re in the midst of a peak (or a valley), the sudden change to the status quo is more shocking.
***
The first time I ever wrote a story covering the Big Game was in 2005. I was given the opportunity to write about Walt Harris, the twang-accented new head coach of the Stanford football team, brought to Palo Alto after a stint at Pittsburgh.
Harris had his credentials. He was from California. He had jobs in the NFL and in college. He was a coach in a BCS conference. He led Pitt to the Big East title in 2004 (which gave them the gracious opportunity to lose to Utah in the Fiesta Bowl). When he was gently shoved out the door at Pittsburgh, Stanford desperately hired him to take over their floundering program. He didn’t last two seasons.
He lost to UC Davis in his second game as head coach of the Cardinal. The next year the team went 1-11, the worst season in Stanford history since the team went winless in 1960.
It was beating that Cardinal team at Memorial Stadium in 2006 and seeing the students rush the field that disgusted me. Apparently it disgusted Stanford as well. They ditched Walt Harris after that season. Harris never had a head coaching job again. He coached quarterbacks in 2009 for Akron. In 2010, he returned to Pennsylvania, being named the offensive coordinator of California University of Pennsylvania. And even though he went 10-2 with Cal U, they fired him. He hasn’t coached in college since.
But I didn’t care about the fate of this Stanford coach at the time. I cared about the joy that the fans and students around me had in beating a 1-11 football team.
I looked to my friend, as we stood atop the student section at the 50-yard line. The fans spilled onto the Memorial Stadium turf to congratulate the players and touch The Axe.
“This is pathetic,” is what she said. Too bad pathetic would come next year.
***
Despite its reputation (or lack thereof), Stanford University is a beautiful place to host a football game. Tailgating is done in the acres of redwoods that sit between the heart of Stanford’s campus and the part of The Farm where its athletic facilities are located. While it is true that there is more wine and cheese at a Stanford tailgate than beer and sausage, it doesn’t matter—the pregame at The Big Game in Palo Alto rivals any college football event in the Pac-12.
The best is when kickoff is sometime in the late afternoon, especially for Cal fans. This gives them ample time to get to Palo Alto and get their tailgate on. And, just like every Big Game at Stanford, the blue and gold invade like locusts—win or lose, ranked or unranked, filled with hope or saturated with angst.
Kickoff for the 110th Big Game was set for 4 p.m. I and a crew of Daily Cal writers got there a bit earlier to take part in the Ink Bowl (around 9 a.m.) and Palo Alto was already infested. Even though the Cal football team had thrown away a No. 1 ranking, a trip to the Rose Bowl and its overall integrity as a program in the six weeks before The Big Game, there was still an excitement emanating from Berkeley that only comes from tradition and community—at least that’s where I think this excitement comes from.
My excitement came from the Ink Bowl—the annual flag football game played between The Daily Californian and the Stanford Daily. And this particular year, it was more personal. Mostly because I was a senior, participating in my last Ink Bowl, and partly because of one jerk writer from the Stanford Daily, who took down one of our writers during the game. If there were referees, a personal foul penalty would have been assessed. Instead, tempers flared—as they always do at the Ink Bowl—but were calmed a few minutes later. (This jerk also had the moxie to hit on my editor, but that’s a different story for a different day.)
The Ink Bowl win came at no surprise. The Daily Cal hadn’t lost that game in four years, almost rivaling the streak the football team had over its Stanford nemesis.
***
The original Stanford Stadium and original California Memorial Stadium were built roughly at the same time. Some sources say that the construction of both stadiums was a race between the two esteemed institutions in the Bay Area. Which school could build its building the fastest?
The answer: Stanford. They completed their 60,000-seat facility in 1921, just in time to lose to the Bears in The BIg Game. Two years later, Cal completed Memorial Stadium.
Fast forward to 2005 and both stadiums were already past their primes. Both universities announced their plans to renovate their facilities. And, just like in the 1920s, Stanford would get their stadium facelift finished first. The New Stanford Stadium—which replicates the football arenas in Europe, with its rectangular concrete and steel frame and seats close to the pitch field—was finished in 42 weeks at a total cost of $85 million. The New Memorial Stadium would take seven years from its initial announcement in February of 2005 and cost the university $321 million.
It would be in this new, character-less, concrete structure where I finally walked onto the field after The Big Game.
***
Stanford Stadium plays a train whistle sound after every Cardinal score and victory. The final train whistle that was played over the stadium speakers was loud and abnormally lengthy. It must have went off three or four times. And it had to be loud enough to drown out the din that was emanating from the stands and slowly pouring onto the field.
I stood in shock, somewhere near the 20-yard line on the left side of the field. I thought I was shocked when Oregon State upset Cal a month and a half before, ending the Bears hopes of becoming No. 1 in the country. I thought I was shocked when Alterraun Verner’s interception ended Cal’s comeback at the Rose Bowl. I thought I was shocked when Terrell Thomas did the same thing for USC just two weeks before.
But this was shock. I don’t know if it was because of the cold, still air in Palo Alto that night, or if it was an emotional response to the ending of the game, but I could not feel my face for a few minutes, as that god-damned train whistle sounded and that god-forsaken band began to play that 1970s rock song.
The PA announcer brought me back to reality.
“The Axe is coming home!”
Technically, he was right. The Stanford Axe did belong to Stanford. It was brought to a Cal and Stanford baseball game in San Francisco at the turn of the century and Cal students stole it and brought it back to Berkeley. It became the perpetual trophy of the Big Game in 1933. So, yes, it belonged to Stanford. But it had called Berkeley home for the last five years and all three years of my college career.
And if I hadn’t snapped out of my disbelief because of those jarring words blaring through the PA system, some kids ran into me. I wasn’t knocked down, but it was enough to wake me up.
California had lost The Big Game, 20-13, to Stanford. And not just any Big Game, but my last Big Game as a Cal student.
I watched as the Stanford students and fans ran onto the field to claim their trophy. Stanford Stadium was not even at capacity for the game. The announced attendance was 49,209. I’m sure that was closer to 40,000 or 45,000, as there were large section on the Stanford side of the stadium that went unfilled.
And as I watched, still in disbelief, as “All Right Now” was looped by the Stanford Band and the fans wearing red jumped, hollered and celebrated, I became incredulous. At around the eight-minute mark of the game, with Cal still losing by 10 points, a security guard came to me and my editor and said “You better watch out. These guys are going to rush the field.” He pointed to the Stanford fans in the stands.
“There’s eight minutes left,” I told him, beginning to be upset at even the remote possibility of that happening.
But it did happen. The worst part is that I couldn’t even go home at that moment. I had a job to do. And I had to walk right through the stream of Stanfurdites still flowing onto the field to do it. I had to walk through the celebration to get to the Cal locker room to listen to Tedford’s post game press conference and to talk to players and get interviews.
I slowly trotted across the field as Stanford fans danced around me. I had lost my fellow Daily Cal writers somewhere in the chaos. I was sure to find them at the presser. A Stanford saxophonist almost ran into me. I actually saw The Axe, as it was in the clutches of some player clad in red, with his helmet off, raising it into the air. I must have been no more than 10 yards away from it.
This is, I said to myself as I walked past, the way it all ends. I finally get my field rush and its with the enemy as they take away our Axe.
***
I was at a women’s basketball game, of all things, at Maples Pavilion in Palo Alto just two months after the 110th Big Game when I first heard the chant.
It came from a tiny corner in the arena.
“We! Got! The Axe! We! Got! The Axe! We! Got! The Axe!”
It was chant that I had chanted in my first three years as a Cal student as Cal played Stanford in other sports other than football. But now, I was on the receiving end of it as some students wearing “Red Zone” t-shirts (probably the only students in the building) began chanting and making Axe symbols with their arms and hands.
This is what that feels like, I thought to myself. The hairs on my arm stood up. I shivered. And I felt a fire that began to slowly burn in the depths of my soul.
I had always been irreverent, even snarky, when it came to the Cal-Stanford rivalry. After all, it’s two amazingly nerdy and successful academic institutions that happen to have pretty good athletic programs. But it was our rivalry, and for that, it still commanded some attention and a slice of respect.
But this was different. With the five or six Stanford fans chanting “We! Got! The Axe!” during this timeout, the epiphany came.
This is a rivalry, I thought.
I looked down on my notes for the game, which was coming back from a timeout.
“Fuck Stanfurd.”
Apparently I had written that while looking for the group that started the “We Got the Axe” chant. And I left that little note on my yellow legal pad for the rest of the game.
That sentiment has stayed with me ever since.
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