My first year was 2004, which was seriously the worst time to become a Cal fan. Not because they were so good, but you kind of expected that goodness to happen every week. Every game was a pampering, a beating. Venni viddi vicci.

So when Cal went 10-1 in ‘04, it didn’t move me as much as it should have. I hadn’t known the bottom. I just got the top. I was fortunate.

I knew they couldn’t replicate that effort in 2005, so like a wuss, I stayed away. Thus I missed plenty of great games in order to be a good student. That worked out alright. But even I missed being in the stadium.

2006 was when I really became anointed as a Cal fan. Every win was big, every loss left me manic-depressed. Minnesota, Arizona State, Oregon, UW, UCLA. Those games were life experiences. I thought I was part of something bigger than me, and isn’t that what fandom is all about?

Writing in 2007 was a strange experience—I was totally out of my depth (still am to an extent now, but less so), and kept a distant eye with the Bears. I did go to all of the home games (save the Riley game, which would have made me commit homicide), but it was kind of with a detached journalist’s eye, not really engaging the fans and instead just surveying the game and gorging on college football. I had decent fun doing it, but in the long-run it was not terribly fulfilling.

However, given that I’m as New Blue as they come, I try to be lighter in my coverage of Cal now. Although last year sucked (and I took it harder than I probably should have), feeling this badly about what happened is probably nothing compared to the people who have suffered for decades before. Cal’s 14-1 in the games I’ve attended, what the hell do I have to complain about?

It’s why I’m satisfied with solid 8-4 seasons and occasional BCS shots. If we get more, tight, but I know Cal is like Tatooine in the college football universe, and we should be grateful that we’re even here to begin with.

And my addiction rebounding and Celtics Championship ring, my Cal fanhood started in my senior of high school, in 1991.

I was choosing between Cal and another school located somewhere on the Peninsula, when as a high school senior I got tickets to watch “Big Bad Cal Mauls Poor USC” in the fall of 1991. From the thrashing Russell and Pawlawski handed out to Jason Kidd committing to Cal, I chose Cal (well, er, Stanfurd helped the process) I knew that I would be attending a school with a Heisman Winner and multiple Final Four appearances.

Well somehow that didn’t work out, and having been through the full Gilby experience (from the Miracle at Memorial to losing to UW despite having a 21-7 lead with 5 minutes left in the game). So I find all this anti-Tedford stuff perplexing. Hello! Becoming bowl eligible every year is STILL a celebration for me.

In all honesty…
I was planning on attending Berkeley due to a specific Computer Science program they had. Found out I hated computers about a week before I signed up. Between that, and pressure from my ultraconservative parents, I stayed up Oregon.

I, like Avinash, came in 2004, went through the rollercoaster of emotions. I missed a couple games here and there in 2005, but those were due to being out of town, not due to studying (which I did very little of at Berkeley).

2007 reached the high point of my attachment to the team, given that it was my senior year. Every win (Tennessee and Oregon especially) made me want to go out and party on the street. Every loss (Oregon State and UCLA especially) made me grab a 12-pack of cheap beer and shotgun as many as possible until I forgot about the game.

I love my life.

My mom’s a Cal alum (’78)…and we always made trips to Bears football games and to the campus in general. I got into Cal, but opted for UC Davis since my gf got in there…lame as that may seem, she later became my wife and it was the best decision I ever made.

Of course, it’s hard to be a die hard UCD fan when your best game is against Cal Poly SLO and you kick the crap out of Suck St. every year. That, combined with my Cal upbringing, has kept me interested and in tune to Cal football (even through the Justin Vedder/Holmoe years). I’m currently at UCSF which has no athletic teams whatsoever.

I am currently applying for faculty jobs…Cal is on the top of my list!

In November 2000, I remember standing out there at Memorial Stadium. Cal was mediocre that year and the year before Stanford had gone to the Rose Bowl. So, the fact that we were currently battling them in OT was insane. We might beat Stanford. We could do this. This was unbelievable, they were supposed to crush us. We were terrible. We…………had hope.

Then, in the blink of an eye, there was a breakdown in coverage, a Stanford player caught the game winning TD and everything stopped. Nobody moved. We had clawed our way back into the game in the 4th quarter only to see another crushing defeat. The student section stood still for minutes at a time. And I remember looking down one row and seeing this 5th year student crying. Crying? Over a football game?

This was only my second year at Cal. Only my second Big Game. Both years at Cal had been, how you say, bad. The year before Kyle Boller (the original Jesus In Cleats) was thrown into the fire, we sucked, and Deltha was our only offense (and he played on defense). And 2000, we were slightly better. But still, nowhere near good. So, ya, it kinda sucked that we had lost Big Game 2000. And it kinda sucked that we had lost it in such a brutal fashion.

But to me, that’s just what we did, lose football games (and in specific Big Games). There was no frame of reference for success. Success at a football game related to how much fun I had with my friends while the game went on, not how well the team did. There generally was an inverse relationship between team success and my fun back then. The worse the team did, the less focused on the game me and my friends were. The more fun we had just relaxing.

So, to see somebody crying over a football game. To see somebody genuinely passionate, that confused me. I couldn’t see it from her angle. 5 years. 5 years! Not a single Big Game victory. 5 years of terrible, terrible football. And that’s how it ended for her.

2 years later, in my final Big Game, we won 30-7, we rushed the field and there were tears. But tears of joy. Not from me, of course. I don’t cry. I’m a boy.

For the first 3 years of my Cal career, I really didn’t care. I went to every single home game from 99-2001 (save for 1 which conflicted with my cousin’s bat mitzvah), not because I wanted to see the team, but because I had to. And it was fun. It was a mildly cool experience. But we didn’t care. Sorry to say it. We just plain didn’t care.

That all changed in September 2002. With merely one halfback option, thrown for a 60 yard touchdown bomb. It truly shocked the Cal world. For a single TD against a sorry Baylor team, we celebrated like it was VJ and VE Day all rolled up into one. This was a new era, this was a new team. This was a new time. The night after the Big Game, we bitterly cursed the freshmen in the band (now well graduated), mocking them for not knowing what it meant, what we had truly done that day. To them, they might have a mental appreciation, but not a gutteral or emotional appreciation. To them it was just a Big Game win, one of many to come.

But for us, it was for all of our friends, who spent years following Cal, going to Cal games, marching at halftime, just to watch us fall to those damnable red fools down South. It wasn’t just for us. It was for the classes that came before us, who never got to experience that.

I’m not exactly an Old Blue, but that’s what these Newer Blues don’t get. They don’t have that frame of reference of failure. I wish desperately sometimes that I had started in 2002 or later. That I never had to suffer 3 years of the Holmoecaust. But I think it makes me a better fan for it.

Instead of saying “4-1, I can’t believe we lost that 1” I can say “4-1, I can’t believe we made it past 2!” That is my story. What’s yours?

I applied to Cal mainly because it wasn’t in LA. I wanted a school that was close enough to home so I could get back if needed, but far enough away so I could feel independent. I had a cousin attending UCI, two in Furd, and some friends at Ucla, UCSB, and UCSD.

It was actualy one of my Furd cousins who pimped Cal to me. It was the only UC to which I applied (back then, you could only apply to one). I got in and my first quarter was Fall ’82 (we were in quarters back then).

That first week was a real culture shock. The place, the people (Polka Dot man, Rrrawwr, the smartest guy in the world), the sights, the smells, the coffee — it was all too cool for school.

The football team had promise. Joe Kapp was the returning prodigal son, ready to lead the Bears in his first season as head coach. We had those new unis with the cool bear-paw logo on the helmets (still the coolest football logo there is). It was a surprising season, filled with ups and downs, and The Play.

Togo’s, Manny’s, Kip’s, Henry’s, Top Dog, Fat Slice, Rasputin’s, Moe’s, The Roma, Shakespeare’s, Aardvark’s, Fred’s Market, the roach coaches along Bancroft, seeing the Axe in the ASUC, Ludwig’s Fountain, Sather Gate, The Glade, getting stoned near the Faculty Center, having sex in the bowels of Dwinelle, Freshmen More Wood!

It lasted 5 years. Kapp’s teams got progressively worse, despite trying to “win one for the zipper” (perhaps one of the more classic Kapp legacies), and his tenure ended with the imporbably win in the Big Game of 86. We got Bruce Snyder in 87. The team started to prosper, despite not being able to beat Furd.

I graduated with my potent degree in Zoology (yes, really), and went on to grad school in SoCal. Snyder’s teams improved, eventually coming to a top-10 finish in ‘91 before he was poached by ASU. We got Gilby and began a decade of crap. The only good part is Snyder wasn’t really able to rally ASU to any consistent lofty heights.

The Gilby era started the Dark Ages, continued in the Holmoecost.

And here we are.

As you can see, I’ve suffered the tortures of the damned in being a Cal fan. The Tedford era is very sweet, very rewarding, and very nice. But now you young whipper-snappers might understand why I temper the enjoyment with healthy cynicism. Now, get the hell off my lawn, you god damned kids.

I started as many drunks do in the Autumn of 2001 at Bowles Hall. So many men. It was a blast the traditions, the building and the dudes. Football was a reason to drink, drink before the game, during the game and after the game. I really only remember being disappointed a lot, the only win was after the season was over at Rutgers. After a year in the first dormitory west of the Mississippi I had to escape the homo-eroticism so I promptly moved into a fraternity where it proceeded to get 1000 times worse.

That is where Tedford’s arrival and my true Cal football education began. I vividly remember the Baylor game despite my intoxicated state. It was like a light went on and I knew that I would be spending a significant amount of my Falls in Berkeley for years to come. I still have a crazy battle scar from that game, we had a dog pile tradition for touchdowns. I was the “rabbit” or dog-pile-ee and the bench went right into my shin, it caused it to cave in with a 90 degree dent. No broken bones, at least I didn’t think so, and no way was I stumbling to the tang center. It swole up and stayed that way so here I am six years later with my Cal football badge of honor.

I met my fiance at the 2003 victory over SC. I clearly remember those lurching masses moving over a full section at each overtime, it was completely surreal. Since then it has been a mix of complete elation and utter agony. I don’t know if we will ever go to a Rose Bowl, but I will be there waiting patiently with all the Old Blues.

In conclusion really gotta go on Bears.

I never even watched football, or sports for that matter, until I came to Cal. It’s only reasonable, coming from a high school who’s combined football record for the 4 years I was there is a mediocre 8-32. So when I chose to go to Cal in 2004, it definitely wasn’t about the atheletic department.

The band definitely helped me become what I am today. The football games got my attention. The traditions of gameday held and cemented it. Saturday morning, Sproul Steps, Marchup, being in the North tunnel while the football players leave the field and trying to get Tedford to give you a rare high-five, the Bomb, Cone-kicking, Big C, Script Cal, struts! And that’s only pre-game.

It was during my first year that I was properly educated in football strategy, i.e. Yell as loud as you can until you are hoarse, drink a cup of water, and yell some more. If you can speak Sunday, you did not try hard enough. Oh and I guess reading Hydrotech’s posts helped a bit…

2004 had a lot of things to root and yell for. But at all times, I am reminded by that fifth year who’s newman year was before Tedford’s time. His best prop? A button that said “What’s Palms?” And though this might not compare to the endless losses Old Blues endured, having the Rose Bowl snatched out from underneath Cal by Mack “I’m a waste of life” Brown was the first WTF moments for the years to come.

I’ve seen a lot of the great games in the last four years. Cal vs. Oregon 2006. Cal vs. Oregon 2007. Cal vs. Tenn 2007. were some of my favorites. But my favorite moment of all, and Oregon 2007 is pretty high up there, was not even a football game. It was during the Men’s BBall Pac-10 tourney in L.A. 2007. Having gone to the previous tourney in which Leon Powe single handedly dominated the Oregon team in triple overtime on my birthday, extending our trip an extra day for the championship game, I wasn’t expecting too much. Having to face off with fucla in the quarterfinals, I already had my luggage packed.

fucla started strong. The Staples center was pretty much a much expanded Pauley Pav that night. U-C-L-A chants were swimming around the four corners of the building as if on cue to every big play. fucla alums sitting behind us heckled us with bile-raising shouts of, “What are you ****s doing out here?” “Enjoy your beat-down one last time!” and my favorite, “Did you change sides? Why are you playing OUR song???”

All that changed in the last 5 mins of the game. Cal was showing surprising determination. Ubaka, especially, was possessed that night. The U-C-L-A chants started dying, and were replaced with uncoordinated yells of frustration. In return, the noise from our fans doubled, tripled, and exploded. I tend to believe that other pac-10 fans were in the arena that night and were Bears fans for those last 5 mins.

I don’t remember much of those last moments. You can always look up replays of the game. I was soaking in the frustration and disappointment of those poor jackass bruin fans. It was sweet. And it served to remind me that no matter how good our team gets, the greater the hubris, the greater the fall.

I graduated in 2008 and its time for me to get back to work.

Go Bears!

It was all downhill after beating down Clemson at the Citrus Bowl in January 1992. What still chaffs in particular from that era is the loss to Stanford in 91. Our only other loss was to Washington, which won the National Championship at the Rose Bowl that year.

For a while I was convinced that a top-10 ranking was a curse for Cal. I started in ‘05 when we made it all the way to 10th and then threw away that game at UCLA (I remember lots yelling at my suitemate’s tv in Foothill). Then in ‘06 we started off as #9 and promptly got destroyed in Neyland. My roommate that year (who I still go to all the games with) was a huge Cal fan, so he really got me into Cal football. I was a decent fan before ’06, but that was the year that I really became a diehard Cal fan. We won eight in a row and made it all the way back to 9th before Lavelle Hawkins’ invisible shoelaces and DeSean Jackson’s millimeters over the sideline led to a devastating loss (I’m still uneasy about the Arizona game next week).

Then came ‘07 (that’s when I started reading this blog back in the blogsome days and other blogs). I wanted to understand how everything worked out there on the field. I read breakdowns of plays and learned about different formations and what comes from them (this blog and Avinash’s really helped). After two years of the top-ten curse, we finally made it to the top-ten without losing. Then came the big test at Autzen. I will probably remember that as the best game of college football I have ever watched Cal play. I remember when Ezeff forced the touchback and thinking that these same Pac-10 refs who completely botched the Oklahoma-Oregon game in 2005 were somehow going to find a way to give Oregon the ball back, no matter how clear the evidence was that it was a touchback. They didn’t. Cal won and made it to number two following USC’s infamous loss. Then Kevin Riley tried to run for a touchdown.

This season is my last at Cal (unless I get in here for grad school). I hope it’s a good one.

Both my parents went to cal (dad ‘79, mom ’81) as well as my grandparents (grandpa was one of Pappy’s Boys), so I grew up wanting to be a combination of Pat Barnes, Russel White, Dameane Douglas, Nick Harris, Deltha O’Neal, and Ryan Longwell, while at the same time marching point in the initial wedge, even though I play trumpet. Went to my first Big Game on the farm in ‘93, and watched in awe as Oski chugged a beer through his eye. For probably until I was in middle school at least, I thought “campus” was the name of Cal’s campus, instead of a general term for school property.
High school was spent partially helping at a concession booth below Tightwad Hill for my HS band, and screwing my duties to watch the Bears beat USC in triple OT. My last two games up until now were against Oregon in 2005, when my choices for schools were down to Cal or Oregon (I decided not to make the outcome of the game my deciding factor and spurned Berkeley for Eugene), and Sac State in fall 2005 when Longshore broke his leg and ushered in the Joe Ayoob era of Cal football. That was also the first season I rooted for and against the Bears. Happy to say, I will be attending my first game at Memorial since then, as the Ducks have a bye week Big Game week, so I’m coming home!

Two of my Great grandparents lived in North Berkeley and went to Cal, three of four grandparents attended Cal, with my mom’s mom coming from UCLA. Second generation Cal bandsman, favorite home game SC 03, for obvious reasons, but I have to agree with California Bone that the UCLA game in Staples was my favorite Cal moment ever, so far.
My parents met at the Teen Dance at the Lair of the Bear, if any of you guys are Lair campers. Lair and band hold very special places in my heart.
Former Lair staffer, current trombone player, set to graduate…well, never, probably.

I’m famous!

Also my HS had a worse record than anyone else’s here. In four years that I went there our varsity football team won one game – the other team had to forfeit for playing an overage kid.

I transfered to Cal in ‘97, graduated in ’99. Months after graduation, my buddies and I drove to Palo Alto to see the Big Game. We thought this could be the year, Deltha O’Neal had 2 special teams touchdowns. But we still lost the axe.

We had dinner that night at Buca Di Beppo in Palo Alto. We sat upstairs drinking our memories away, when all of a sudden the Stanford rally squad came parading thru the restaurant carrying none other than the axe!

Now, since I started at Cal in ‘97, I had never seen the axe in the possession of a Golden Bear. But by this point in the evening, we were so heavily plastered on cheap wine by the glass, that we could barely muster the words "that’s the axe" let alone concoct a plan to kick their asses, grab the axe, and sprint out of the restaurant. By the time I convinced my friends to take their wine and throw it at the rally squad while I grabbed the axe and demonstrated my own personal Deltha O’Neal moves……the rally squad had retreated downstairs and the axe was gone….

Maybe it was the emptyness in my stomach in ‘97 and ’98, the hunger for a better team, the metaphorical ulcer of defeat that built up at ate away at me…..but in ’99, in Palo Alto, the night that I let the chance slip away to steal the axe and secure my place in Cal history….that night I forged a bond with my school so tight, that I will never be able to let go. My new friends, my wife, my family…..they don’t understand my bond…..but they also weren’t there that night in Palo Alto.

I raise my glass to you, my Cal brethren, cheers to victory, cheers to the bond that we share, and GO BEARS!

I am a cal fan of the Tedford era through and through. I came to Cal in 2002 and joined the band, so I had those front-row seats for four years and watched a lot of great football. I saw the winning 2002 season which blew everyone’s socks off (all the older band members were telling me how lucky I was, since they had just come off the 1-11 season…), especially reclaiming the axe at big game and the storming of the field. Then in 2003, I was there for the greatest game of recent memory, the triple-overtime beating of U$C. 34-31 was engraved in my memory for all time. Then things seemed to be getting better and better, bowl games left and right, lots of wins, some losses, but mostly… Go Bears!

SO… I am the first/only in my family to go to college (w00t) and I was really more of a passive football fan. My dad is the type of guy to go to museums on Superbowl Sunday ‘Because no one is there!’ and football was ignored like crazy. But they loved me and when they came to games, they came wearing EVERY SINGLE CAL BRANDED ARTICLE OF CLOTHING they owned. Even if it made hideous color clashes (possible, as we’ve seen from the jerseys).

I started Cal in 2001 (1-10, but you all knew that) and was coming from the great fair-weather town of San Diego, so I was perfectly happy to acknowledge that football ’wasn’t our thing’. We were at the number 1 public university and it was okay to be bad at something. I had no hope, and that was okay! But then Tedford came, the religion started, and I started to believe. And now, once a year something terrible happens that makes me say "Why the HELL is my whole life wrapped up in college football?!?" and I start to emotionally back off. So it’s rather emotionally crushing and probably not healthy, since I have no control over the events on the field.

None the less, I buy season tickets, and at least 1 new Cal shirt every year, and go down to the LA game, and spend a lot of money on away game trips…. etc, etc. Also, I seem to be married to some big-shot MARSHAWNTHUSIAST (not TnH), so it’s sort of a big deal in my life. I’ve even got my dad to watch college football, and my mom kind-of knows how bowl games work (she loves it when we get the Holiday Bowl, so we can visit San Diego).

Current 3rd year, but I watched through the Holmoecaust. Mainly cuz I couldn’t get enough football as a kid. Love Berkeley, not gonna graduate early because I don’t want to leave. Love Cal basketball too, and I run into Monty just about every day at work. In fact I’d go to more basketball games if I didn’t have my job that, coincidentally, heavily involves basketball. I grew up a huge supporter of Bay Area sports (sans the Raiders, who are the L.A. Raiders to me) so I also grew up on the Willingham/Montgomery teams on the Farm, which I still cant bring myself to hate at anywhere near the level of USC

I’ve lived in Berkeley all my life. The first game I ever went to was the Cal-Arizona game in 2001. I’m actually still in high school but trying as hard as I can to keep up that 4.0 to get into Berkeley. I was at the Big Game in 2002 when we rushed the field and at the Cal-USC triple overtime game in ’03.

I went to one of the ridiculously competitive south bay schools, but I never went nuts with the college admissions nonsense so many people seem to do these days. My parents had to drag me on tours. I pretty much just mimicked my friends, applying to most of the UCs and a couple privates. When I got into Cal in 2003 it was a pleasant surprise, but I had never even thought about the football team prior to admissions. When I heard “Cal” on the sport reports back when I was a kid in the 90s, I always thought they said “Cow.” Stanford defeated Cow in the big game at the farm? What the hell?

I really started following the team in 2004; none of my dormmates went to the games in ‘03. I found a group of football-loving friends in ’04 I haven’t missed a home game since. What got me hooked, undoubtedly, was the student section. I thought all the claps, yelling, card stunts, yelling, crowdsurfing, yelling, noise, yelling was basically the most fun thing to do in the world. Not to mention each gameday was a great excuse to hang out before/after games and go out to dinner, or watch more college football.

I have so many great memories from Memorial Stadium and elsewhere; the UT win, Oregon ‘06 (still, I contend, the best game and crowd I have witnessed), Oregon ’07, Ayoob’s ridiculous comeback against Wazzu in ’05 (which most people have forgotten), the injury cart, road trips to LA, to Autzen, and the farm. Remember the big games in ’03 and ’05, when Cal fans:Stanford fans ratio was 3:2…at their own stadium!?

And I guess this is kind of weird, considering most others’ responses, but while the student section got me hooked, I think what made me a fan for life was actually….the blogs. Tightwad Hill, EDSBS, SMQ, TBIOOTF (back when they posted on a regular basis), and yes, dare I even say CGB definitely provide writing, insight, humor, and most importantly community, and all things else CFB-related college football with a readability and depth traditional media can’t even sniff. Reading Tightwad’s rankings of the greatest and worst games ever, in addition to his top 50 Bears ever brought me more in tune with Cal history than anything available in print.

And I guess that’s why I’m a fan…