There were two long streaks lost during Stanford football's lost season of 2019 -- nine straight wins over Cal and eleven straight wins in ten years over UCLA. The loss to Cal was probably more painful because there was part of me that thought that streak might go on forever, but the UCLA streak was fun because it was so improbable. It just didn't make sense for a program like UCLA to lose eleven straight games to anyone, and while there were certainly times when the game between the Cardinal and the Bruins highlighted the large gap between the teams, it was still... unnatural. It was never a streak meant to last.
In my previews of the last four games in the rivalry, I enjoyed writing about an imagined young boy named Kevin and his UCLA parents, Joe and Betty. In the world I created, Kevin had been born during the closing moments of UCLA's last win over the Cardinal back in 2008, and he passed one milestone after another, all without celebrating a win over Stanford.
Now that the streak is finally over, I'm sure 12-year-old Kevin has probably lost interest. While he'll likely spend his evening watching TikToks in between sessions of Among Us with his friends, his parents will be glued to the screen. Both Stanford and UCLA have already announced that they won't accept any postseason invitations. For each team, this is the end, and each team will look to use this final game to erase the might-have-beens that have plagued them through 2020.