The pandemic forces many San Franciscans, including Susan George, above, to move the Thanksgiving meal outdoors this year.
Bosetti Cuono. “There were some things we simply couldn’t do.”
Instead of camping on campus for the 123 hours before the kickoff and blowing a train whistle on every hour, the Stanford Axe Committee had students, past members and Stanford celebrities submit videos that were posted each hour.
The fountains around the Stanford campus were not dyed red, and Hoover Tower was not bathed in red lights. Cal did not have a bonfire.
Bands are not performing live. There are no pranks, oncampus tailgates or reunions that have become as institutional to the rivalry as the game itself.
There are even pandemicnecessitated changes to the Stanford Axe, the trophy awarded to the winner.
The Axe debuted on the eve of a baseball game between the universities in 1899, when Stanford students used it to decapitate a straw man adorned in Cal blue and gold. The Bears rallied to upset Stanford the next day, and fans wrestled the Axe away from the Stanford students and smuggled it across the bay via ferry. The Axe was placed in a safe at a Berkeley bank, to be removed once a year for the Axe Rally.
In 1933, the Axe became the Big Game trophy. It’s mounted on a plaque that lists the scores of each game.
Last year’s score — Cal 24, Stanford 20 — means Cal has had bragging rights most recently.
The Axe is typically displayed on the sidelines during the Big Game, leading to a staredown between the schools’ rally committees in the closing minutes. It was unclear until this week if one of the most indelible images of Big Game would be allowed during the pandemic, but Stanford head coach David Shaw never lost hope.
“If there’s a Big Game being played, the Axe will be in the stadium,” Shaw correctly predicted.
The Axe will be displayed behind the Cal bench for most of the game Friday, and it will be moved into the tunnel during the final two minutes. Instead of the usual staredown between 510 committee members, the schools will each have two masked and distanced representatives.
The players, who often parade the trophy around the stadium after the game, will not be able to touch it this year. But that doesn’t diminish its significance.
“It’s everything,” Stanford linebacker Jordan Fox said. “We’ve got to bring our Axe back. There’s still a bad taste in our mouth after they rushed the field on us last year and won in our home stadium. … Whenever that tangible evidence is on the line, whenever we’re playing for that Axe, whenever we’re playing against Cal, it’s big time. It means business.”
Dating to 1892, Cal and Stanford have played every year, except during the World Wars. The Big Game was played after being postponed because of the President John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963 and again after the deadly Camp Fire in 2018.
Stanford leads the alltime series 644711.
Even though some of the game’s luster has been lost to the region’s focus on dynastic professional runs by the 49ers, A’s, Giants and Warriors, the Big Game still holds rituals and totems that have become nearly mythical to adoring and committed fans.
“As different as this year may feel for the players and fans, I hope they still get some sense of how much the community is invested in it,” said Amanda Williams, who chaired the University of California Rally Committee in 200405. “As rough as the rivalry can get occasionally, it’s still a big and important event for the whole Bay Area. The rivalry is an important sense of community. It’s something that ties together the whole area in a relatively unique way.”
Williams has missed only two Cal home games in her life. There was a rainy night game in 1983, when her parents thought better of taking a newborn to Memorial Stadium, and a game shortly after graduation when surgery to repair a shattered arm from a bouldering accident made it impossible to fly in from Portland, Ore.
“I did wake up that morning begging my mom to get us on a plane and get us home,” Williams said.
It’s that kind of fan commitment that has defined the sixthlongest active rivalry in college football — a series swathed in some of the most memorable finishes in the history of college football. “The Play” in 1982 is widely regarded as the sport’s most iconic play.
Cal alum and booster Greg Overholtzer was sitting in the end zone section opposite that gamewinning play. He and his friends packed up and almost left after Stanford took the lead on a field goal with four seconds remaining, but he stayed to watch through binoculars as the fivelateral kick return sprung Kevin Moen for a touchdown through a scrambling band that had rushed the field.
Since the mid70s, Overholtzer has missed only one Big Game. He went to watch the men’s basketball team in Maui, instead of enduring the Bears’ 6313 loss in 2013.
He was even there when Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton announced the postponement of the 2018 game — the first time the rivalry had been postponed in 55 years.
“That seemed very weird and certainly unlike anything I had ever seen before, but of course, this year just blows all of that away,” said Overholtzer, who is organizing a watch party at the Kick N’ Mule in Danville. “There’s a huge amount of pent up passion. It took a while to accept that they were going to play the game without fans, but once you realize there’s only one way to do it, and that’s with just the players, then it becomes more acceptable.”
Both coaches are disappointed that they’re being forced to play in an empty stadium.
“We love our fans, and we wish that they could be out at the games and enjoy being at the stadium and being around their friends and family,” Cal head coach Justin Wilcox said. “We understand that people are making sacrifices, and we want to be maybe a part of their life that brings them some joy by how we play and give them something to cheer for.”
Said Shaw, “I feel awful for the fans, my family included. … This is a sport that was made to be seen by other people. There’s an energy that’s brought into the stadium: home or away. There’s the initial reaction from the crowd. Even when you’re locked in, and black it out, there are moments when you do hear it. It gives you energy.”
Missing that atmosphere for a Big Game at Memorial Stadium for the first time in her life, Williams plans to have a backyard party at her brother’s East Bay home that rivals their typical tailgate on the Cal campus.
“I’m heartbroken in a handful of ways. It’s so important to so many people,” she said. “It’s a sad year for the rivalry families that have spent so many years celebrating. It’s really hard for me to think about not being in the stadium, but that said, I do hope it goes off for the players. It is just such an important moment for all of those seniors who care so much and want that chance to battle for the Axe.
“It is these little things that bind us together, remind us of who we are, and ground us in community, one another and tradition. I think there’s tremendous value in that.”