DISQUS

Ragnarok · 2 years ago

Avinash, your honesty is appreciated. We've all been beaten down by this season's epic slide, and I'm sure you're not alone among the student body in your apathy regarding our rivals across the bay.

Still, I'm disappointed in you. How can you claim to be a Bear fan and never have attended a Big Game? Know you not the pain of watching the ugliest mascot in existence dancing to "All Right Now" after a Stanford touchdown? Have you never tried to decipher the meaning behind an incomprehensible and poorly performed LSJUMB show? Do you know the joy of watching pampered rich white boys get beaten down into the turf?

Besides, the 1982 Big Game wasn't particularly meaningful. At least until the last 4 seconds, that is.

Avinash · 2 years ago

While it's been a great four years to be a Bears fan, it's been a terrible four years for the Big Game. When we won by nine points last year, I was more disgusted than happy. If there are meaningful things on the line (like in 2004, the only game I regret missing), then I'm all for it. But after all we had this year, my reaction is a little tepid. I have to learn what a competitive Stanford is like before I can soak in the atmosphere of what the Big Game means. I'm no Holmoephobe. I've only know Tedford-mania. And I'm ok with that.

Plus I'm literally coughing up germbuckets right now. If I can place a disproportionate amount of my pride and joy in 20-21 year old athletes, I damn well can place my disgust, sickness and anger on them too! It's my American right!

Ragnarok · 2 years ago

Ugh. Being ill at a crappy football game is no way to be. And make no mistake, I do expect a fair amount of crappy football on Saturday.

All it'll take is one loss to Stanford, and your heart will fill with the same hatred as the generations of Cal fans who've come before you. In the meantime, their basketball team is pretty insufferable.

Avinash · 2 years ago

Not just one crappy football game. Ever since the slide started I've been going in and out of sickness. Correlation does not imply causation right? I really hope my health doesn't depend on the health of the football program. Or the other way around.

As for basketball, our tradition there is even more pathetic than football. Our greatest player turned out to be a wife-beater. Good times.

yo yo ma · 2 years ago

I used to be a fan of this blog but following the collapse of this Cal blog, leaving me a sick man, I've decided not to read it any more. I mean, all the time I've spent reading and following the bears is coming into question. You couldn't pay me to read a post about the Big Game.

Avinash · 2 years ago

Touche.

aasdf · 2 years ago

I'm into the Big Game because it could affect our bowl hopes.

A Bear · 2 years ago

I'm into the Big Game because being beaten by TWO teams that lost to Notre Dame this season would be downright embarrassing. Seriously.

Avinash · 2 years ago

Hmm, well, now that you put it that way...
You make a compelling case.

Betty · 2 years ago

My friend directed me to your post. I've never read it, have no idea who you are... but I can tell you this much- I know you must be a youngin'. I've been following Cal's letdowns for many many years and though you feel beaten and scarred every year, you get right back up and do it all over again. Why? Because you love it. Because you love the Bears. Because you love Oski. You think this season is bad?? Where you there for the 1-10 season??? Maybe we need to lose a few to Stanford so you can understand that no matter who the crappy team is (remember, it used to be us), who wins the Big Game is ALWAYS important and never a certainty.

Avinash · 2 years ago

Thanks for the slap of common sense Betty. I have been acting pretty spoiled huh?

This is what happens when your freshman year is 11-1. You expect the best. Kinda silly of me.

Richard C. Sipan · 2 years ago

Dear Avinash,
I think it is important to remember that the Big Game is a season unto itself. As an undergraduate student, I suffered through the Roger Theder era (1978-1981), graduating in June '82. Although I was studying for first semester law school finals down in San Diego, The Play, as executed by Kevin Moen, 11-20-82, was a most liberating conclusion to 4 years of frustration. I remember an '85 Big Game where Cal was down 22-0, scored 21 points in about 5 minutes, and lost as Leland Rix missed a chip shot Field Goal early in the 4th Quarter, and Stanford held on.
1986 was a definite highlight, as a 2-9 team in Kapp's last season beat Stanford 17-11 (it was not that close). It was 3-3 at Half Time, as I recall, 10-3 Cal at the end of the 3rd, and Cal put on a drive midway through the 4th quarter where to my vexation, they kept running left, toward the Cal student section, which was the narrow side of the field. About the fifth or sixth time they did this, Stanford's defense over-committed, the ball went on a reverse to a 160 pound wide receiver named Mike Ford, and at the 50, there was nothing but green grass between him and the South End Zone. I remember yelling so loud my fillings in my teeth rattled. Ford got a key block at about the 30, and ran in untouched. Cal 17, Stanford 3, and the game was essentially over at that point.
In 1988, tie game, Cal got an interception, had the ball inside the 10, four downs, 2 time-outs, and "Cement Head" Bruce Snyder elected to run the clock down for a Field Goal attempt, which Tran Van Le blocked. Stanford kept the axe.
In 1990, an over-enthusastic Cal student body charged the field early after a Stanford
extra point failed. Stanford recovered the onsides kick, John Belli committed a stupid roughing the passer personal foul, and Stanford
kicked a Field Goal to win.
Let's be realistic: Cal is never, and I mean never, going to finish #1 in Football or
Basketball. However, it's a big improvement over my years, where we couldn't beat UCLA in Basketball, or USC in football.
The Big Game exists in a peculiar Twilight Zone. The team's records coming in mean nothing.
Unlikely heroes come from seemingly out of nowhere. God knows bizarre plays and decisions are the norm. The thing has such an accretion of tradition now that it is practically a sin to miss it, if you can go. Geography and other commitments impair many alums from attending. In the future, go and enjoy it for the spectacle of it. There's nothing like it.

Avinash · 2 years ago

I know about the history of the Big Game, but it didn't really hit me that much until we lost. Now it means something more. I'm sure as time passes, the feeling and antipathy will grow.

I'll be there next year when we get the Axe back.