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I woke up saturday morning with the phone ringing in my head. It was Doug. He was down one for the big game and wondered if I could come. I got up, got dressed and decent and left for a day of fun and football.

The ride to the game was eventful and uneventful. Doug thinks he can drive a manual. Consensus opinion has it that he can’t.

We got to the game late because we left late. We were lucky though and didn’t have to park too far. It was half way through the first quarter when we made it into the stadium. The score was already 10-0 in favor of evil. I knew that thanks to a fat Cal fan in the stadium concourse yelling about how, “we were spotting them 10″. I hate it when fat, boorish people are right.

At first we couldn’t even find a place to stand. Our tickets were for reserve seats. I imagine many other’s were as well. The student area was overfull. Eventually we made our way to an opening.

It was a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Nonetheless, the student section had no sun and a the worst view of the field. It was glorious.

Before us was what could be described as an inaccurate version of the Cal football team. They were sloppy, they dropped passes, they fumbled and they played solid defense. These were not the fighting Son’s of California I am know and love.

The only point at which consistency triumphed over inconsistency was in the kicking game. It remained consistently bad.

The second half was, as the slogan would have it, our half. Geoff McArthur attempted to catch more passes than were thrown. Fumbles continued to recur, but none were lost.

To no one’s surprise, the University of California Golden Bears were victorious 28-16. To everyone in the Cal student’s section’s surprise the official “Play of the Game” was Stanford’s only touchdown.

As the clock ran out, so did the Stanford fans. By the time we left there were more police than redshirts in the stadium. The only Cal students on the field were players and Rally Comm.. One player ran up to us and began conducting the band (poorly I imagine).

A chainlink fenced ringed the field. The police built their own wall out of bodies and riot gear. Each side stared uneasily at each other for a some time. Finally we shuffled uneasily out of the stadium. While leaving there was calm punctuated by water bottles thrown toward the police. One exploded on the track. Some landed short, right on the band.

Walking back to the car I couldn’t help but notice Stanford has more practice fields than we have squirrels. They lost, badly.

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