
I spent only thirty minutes or so rehashing Stanford's most recent loss on Saturday afternoon before making an intentional decision to move on. I gathered the wife and kids in the family room for some takeout and slid a movie into the disc player. The burger was deliciously decadent, the Coke was icy and refreshing, and the movie -- Ralph Macchio in the original Karate Kid -- was the perfect pairing. Nostalgia for my wife and me, backstory for our children who had recently discovered Cobra Kai on Netflix.
If you've been visiting this spot for a while, you probably won't be surprised that I'm a sucker for nostalgia. I was fourteen when I watched The Karate Kid in the theater for the first time, and it hit me in all the right spots back then -- the music, the action, Elisabeth Shue -- all of it. Watching it again on Saturday night, with the wounds still open from Saturday afternoon's game, I couldn't stop my mind from making connections from the film to the current state of the Stanford football program.
You likely know the story. Young Daniel LaRusso arrives in California from his native New Jersey and has trouble adjusting. Bullies beat him up at every turn, and he continuously sabotages his relationship with the cutest girl in the school, but with the guidance of a wise mentor, Mr. Miyagi, Daniel eventually figures everything out and triumphs in the end.
As I watched Daniel getting kicked in the head on the beach, being pushed off of his bike and tumbling down a hillside, and getting jumped by guys in skeleton costumes, I thought about how nice life is when you're the bully. That's not the message the filmmakers were trying to send back in 1984, but the nostalgia coursing through my veins was doing funny things to my synapses, and I thought back to a time when Stanford football was bully ball, when opponents routinely left the field beaten in ways not measured by the scoreboard. The good old days.