After 100 Years, Big Game Still Biggest Bash Around

PALO ALTO — On a day designed to celebrate 100 years of triumphs and traditions, the football teams of Stanford and California came through beautifully here Saturday, fitting a good football game quite nicely into a great party.

It was the 100th chapter of the Big Game, a rivalry that began in 1892--in March no less--with future 31st President of the United States Herbert Hoover sending an associate off to purchase a football when both teams showed up and found none available.

And, as it turned out, it was a Big Game that very nearly lived up to the Big Pregame, not to mention the Big Midgame and Big Postgame.

Stanford, the better team in a matchup of two teams destined to spend the time around New Year’s Day at home on their living room couches, took a 21-10 lead at halftime and then hung on for dear life to escape with a 21-20 victory.

After Cal scratched and scrambled back to 21-18, behind a medium-talent, big-hearted junior quarterback from Laguna Hills High named Justin Vedder, Stanford correctly elected to take a two-point safety with 13 seconds left to preserve the win.

The star for the Cardinal was another Orange County prep product, senior linebacker Chris Draft of Placentia Valencia, who intercepted Vedder’s third-down, falling-on-his-face desperation pass with just over a minute to play. Draft, a muscular 6 feet and 220 pounds, snatched the pass off his shoe tops, a la Ozzie Smith.

“I don’t know, man,” he said afterward. “I just grabbed it.”

The day ended with Stanford’s Jeff Cronshagen, an offensive tackle, standing in the middle of the field, cradling a huge chunk of turf in his hand and watching as the Stanford student body emptied onto the field. They danced, hugged, cried tears of joy and encircled the plaque with the famous ax that is the traditional symbol of this series and stays with the winning team. The midfield melee left one wondering if student Chelsea Clinton and a couple of very concerned secret service guards were out there somewhere.

Eventually, after several half-hearted fistfights and dozens of announcements from the public address announcer asking for the field to be cleared, the goal posts were torn down. By Cal fans.

That may explain as much as anything about this wild and crazy, love-hate relationship between two great academic institutions who routinely field two less-than-great football teams.

Some quick facts:

* Stanford entered the game 4-6, including 2-5 in the Pacific 10. It had lost five in a row.

* Cal entered the game 3-7, including 1-6 in the Pac-10. It had lost seven of eight.

* Coming into the game, Cal and Stanford were 3-0 against the Oregon schools this season, and 0-11 against the rest of the Pac-10.

* The last time that either team could go to the Rose Bowl by winning the Big Game was 1935.

To their credit, fans of both schools have become adept at getting excited about the Big Game, even when it really is a little game. The tailgate parties were Yuppie heaven. Acres of polished shoes, standing in muddy fields and eating pregame meals from tables decorated with lilies and chrysanthemums. Soon, the sellout crowd of 85,500 marched into creaky old Stanford Stadium and, at a price of $50 each for a commemorative ticket, the payday, split between the two schools, was $4.275 million. And that didn’t include whatever Stanford made with its 1930s-style uniforms, donned for the sake of tradition, while allowing Nike to put its Swoosh on the left shoulder pad.

The first half featured eight punts, meaning that those in attendance began hoping that they had gone to a football game and a halftime show would break out.

So it did, and it was a fine 30-minute show. The Cal band played and was pretty much a normal band. The Stanford band followed and, as expected, was pretty much an abnormal band, sporting black tennis shows, no particular formations, girls in grass skirts and tubas with their insides painted in various gaudy and tasteless designs.

Halftime ended with two bangs--a series of fireworks for dramatics and a couple of Cal fans attempting to take down and/or rip apart the Stanford Tree. Security guards stopped them short, and while not beating them to a pulp, they did handcuff them and take them away. The Tree, a Cardinal mascot, who in civilian life is named Matt Merrill, had been ready for an attack.

“Underneath my costume,” Merrill said, “I wore a helmet and a cup.”

At the end, it had been a day that lived up to its press clippings, a sports rarity; a day that put the emphasis on two great universities of higher learning that happen to have football teams, rather than visa versa.