Golden Bear eats the Bird, chopping down Tree in process

The Big Game denotes the annual college football game between rivals California Golden Bears and Stanford Cardinals. (And no, I don't believe in spelling "Stanford" wrong. I don't really get that. Now, while I was at Cal, I did come up with an alternate name for Stanford - U.C.P.A - annexing them as the University of California at Palo Alto. And as much as I dislike USC, I don't spell their name with a dollar sign either. But I digress...) No matter how each team is doing in a particular year, this is still an important game, pretty much for bragging rights. And each team's record so far has no real bearing on the expected outcome of the game - just because one team has a much better record doesn't mean they'll win. I remember one year, Cal had something like only one or two wins, and Stanford was doing well and on the verge of going to a bowl game - but when Cal ended up beating Stanford, Stanford lost their chance to play in a bowl game. Good times.

This year, it wasn't quite the same situation. Cal had more than one or two wins, but overall, they weren't doing very well. Stanford, however, was having a decent season, and there was even talk that they had a shot at going to the Rose Bowl. Well, after Cal beat Stanford tonight by a score of 34 to 28, things are not so much coming up roses for Stanford.

Go Cal! The Axe is ours!