Programs from Karl Zobell
Editor’s Note: This story appeared in the November/December 1997 issue as part of a collection of stories celebrating Big Game’s 100th anniversary.
THE GAME: Both teams have reveled in glory days and suffered through lackluster years.
It wasn’t always known as Big Game, but from the beginning the Cal-Stanford football rivalry was a Big Deal. The second match, in December 1892, drew 20,000 fans to the Haight Street grounds in San Francisco and was labeled The Great Football Game by the Oakland Tribune. In the early 1900s, the phrase Big Game began showing up in the histories—a conscious echo, perhaps, of the Harvard-Yale rivalry haughtily dubbed The Game.
By then, football was under fire. After 71 high school and college players died from on-field injuries between 1900 and 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt demanded radical revisions to the rules. Stanford and Cal replaced football with rugby, which became the sport of choice for the 1906-1914 Big Games.
Athletic relations between Cal and Stanford hit a rough patch in 1915. Cal insisted on making freshmen ineligible for varsity play, while Stanford felt its admission prerequisite of 15 college-level units served the same purpose. The impasse led to the cancellation of four Big Games. The rivalry resumed in 1919, but was interrupted again during World War II.
Over the years, both sides have enjoyed glory days and endured dry seasons. Cal’s Wonder Teams of the 1920s gave way to Stanford’s Vow and Wow Boys. The Golden Bears had a Thunder Team, the Indians their Thunder Chickens. Through it all, Big Game has been known for high drama. Four matches were decided on the final play of the game.
Three of those four are among the most exciting Big Games ever. In 1974, Stanford snatched victory in a last-minute drive that culminated in a 50-yard field goal. In 1982, Cal won on what was probably the most bizarre play in football history. And in 1990, the lead changed hands six times before Stanford kicked the winning field goal with five seconds remaining.
With such a storied past, the next 100 years look all right now.
SIDELINE SHUFFLE: Kids cheered, the Indian danced. Now it’s the Tree. (Photos from left: Courtesy Stanford Archives (2); Rod Searcey)
MASCOTS: From toddler to Tree, the team has been searching for the perfect symbol.
Berkeley has always had its Bear, ever since students managed to bring a live one to the 1895 Big Game.
Stanford’s story is more complicated. In the early years, the Cardinal had no official mascot. The Axe might have been the school’s good luck charm—but some saw it as more of a jinx after the team lost the first time it was used. At the turn of the century, a series of photogenic toddlers were enlisted to roam the sidelines in Cardinal garb, but that didn’t last long.
A more permanent figure was introduced in the 1920s. Newspaper cartoonists settled on an axe-wielding Indian as the perfect character to hunt, skin or trap the Cal Bear. It was only natural, then, in 1933, for the University to make the Indian the official mascot—and team name.
In 1951, the symbol came alive through the voluntary services of Timm Williams, a local Yurok Indian known to Stanford fans as Prince Lightfoot. Williams, active in civil rights efforts, appeared in full plains-type regalia at almost every football and basketball game for two decades. But by the early 1970s, Stanford faced objections to the mascot on grounds of racial insensitivity. After a complaint filed by Stanford American Indian students, President Richard Lyman recommended abandoning the Indian in 1972, and the student senate concurred, by a vote of 18-4. Some alumni were so incensed by the decision that they withheld financial contributions in protest.
By default, the Cardinal was back. A new generation of fans had to learn the odd truth: It’s the color, not the bird. That led students to look for something more lively. In 1982, a junior showed up at Big Game dressed ecclesiastically as, yes, a cardinal, but that proved a nonstarter. By then, the dancing Tree—a mascot taken right from the official University seal depicting El Palo Alto—had caught on.
TICKETS: Prices ran high in the early years.
The price of a Big Game ticket has doubled since 1991, jumping from $25 to $50. Still, the most expensive years, adjusted for inflation, date back to the Depression.
In 1932, tickets ran $5.50—which comes to $63.72 today. Despite the cost, the game didn’t deliver much action. Several players on both teams were hospitalized with the flu, and the teams played to a 0-0 tie.
For critical games, black-market prices can skyrocket. At the 1924 contest, which determined who would go to the Rose Bowl, scalpers made as much as $100 per ticket. That’s $895 today.
In 99 Big Games, Stanford holds the edge over Cal with 49 wins, 39 losses, 11 ties.
“Eleven men meet eleven men on an acre of grass on a farm in Santa Clara County; 75,000 people move the earth to see them meet; a momentous question is settled for one more year; a million dollars changes hands; a great time is had by all, and that’s a Big Game.”
—Barbara Dewlaney in the Stanford Illustrated Review, November 1926
“I once saw a young man seize a doughnut-shaped wooden seat and drape it around the neck of a Cal rooter in the lobby of a famous Nob Hill hotel. Now he’s a responsible banker with three children and an ulcer to support.”
—Don Endsley in the Stanford Review, December 1960
“If you can responsibly say that you would have stayed off the field if you had a trombone in your hand and thought the game was over, then you need to have your pulse checked.”
—Stanford Daily editorial, November 22, 1982
