Go Mighty Card

Stanford 48, UCLA 47

Where do you even begin? There have been some improbable Stanford wins in the past, but if we agree to put the 2007 upset over USC in a category by itself, there isn't another game in the last fifteen years that brought a more unlikely result than Saturday night's game at the Rose Bowl.

Stanford 27, Oregon State 24

One day I'll visit Corvallis. It will be an autumn weekend, so the leaves will be changing as I enjoy a morning walk in the hills. If time allows I'll visit one of the local vineyards or wander into a bookstore. But with every step I take in that small college town, I'll be thinking of the game that will have brought me there. No matter how strong the Stanford team might be, no matter the quality of the Oregon State squad, I'll be worried. 

It's never easy when Stanford travels to play the Beavers in Corvallis, not even back during the glory days of last decade. Even though the Cardinal hasn't lost to Oregon State since Andrew Luck's first season at quarterback, several of the wins have been narrow, and at least one (a 15-14 Stanford win in 2017) undeserved. (By the way, I just read my recap of that game, and three years later it still gave me anxiety. Serious anxiety.)

Stanford 31, Washington 26

Imagine you're walking out of the Rose Bowl on the evening of January 1, 2016. You've just watched Christian McCaffrey and the Cardinal completely dismantle the Iowa Hawkeyes, and the future of Stanford football is bright. But as you walk away from the stadium and into the darkness, you stumble after stepping on an empty beer bottle, you hit your head on parked car, and you fall into a coma that lasts more than four years.

You wake up on the afternoon of December 5th, 2020, and the world seems to have turned upside down. A reality show personality is President of the United States, and a global pandemic has claimed more than a quarter million American lives. Nothing, it seems, is as it was before your coma. Seeking an escape from the swirling confusion, you turn on the Stanford-Washington game, and for a few hours you bask in the familiarity of intellectual brutality, of fullbacks and pulling guards, of jumbo sets and time of possession. For three hours on Saturday afternoon, it's as if you had never stepped on that bottle.

The 123rd Big Game: Stanford 24, California 23

It's impossible to know how last year's loss affected this 123rd and most unusual edition of Big Game. Probably not at all for the players on the field. Stanford players were likely a bit more motivated to win back the Axe, Cal players were likely a bit more confident having seen the Stanford Axe for the first time in their lives, but for those making the tackles and the blocks, this was still a football game.

For the rest of us? Last year most certainly mattered. The last time I looked forward to a Big Game the way I did this one was in 2010, not coincidentally also after a Stanford loss the previous year, and that 48-14 blowout was all the sweeter because the Axe was repossessed.

That's the way Big Game is -- it's just football between the sidelines, but for everyone on the other side of the chalk, it's so much more. The mistakes are massive, the breaks are poetic, and the ultimate victory? If it comes, it will likely mean more than any win all season.

Colorado 35, Stanford 32

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.

Oregon 35, Stanford 14

When my phone buzzed on Saturday afternoon exactly one hundred minutes before the scheduled kickoff of Stanford's season opener, I reached for it with anticipation. I had been getting news alerts and gleeful texts from friends and family all day long, so I assumed it was more of the same -- but then I read it.

"Oh my god."

My wife was immediately alarmed, until I told her that it was another one of those things in my life that were both incredibly important and insignificant at the same time. It was football. 

I was looking at a tweet from the Stanford football account, a photo with text small enough that I had to pinch and zoom to read it: "Due to COVID-19 testing results and contact tracing protocols, the following student-athletes are unavailable for tonight's game at Oregon: DE Trey LaBounty, QB Davis Mills, WR Connor Wedington." Never has bigger news been issued in a smaller font.