California Golden Bears Football

112th Big Game Photo Essay III: Post Game Commotion!

By Twist NHook Updated Dec 2, 2009, 12:04pm PST

I've always said to myself, "Twist, you don't declare enough places Bear Territory! I mean yeah, sure you've got Haas Pavilion, Memorial Stadium, and Doe Library. But you need to declare something new Bear Territory." I mulled it over for a while, considering my options. What should I declare Bear Territory? Albany Bowl? The entire town of Newark, California? Zoonews Jr?

Then, EUREKA! Stanford Stadium. But how? And when? And could I be surrounded by 2,000 of my closest blue and gold wearing friends? YES! I just needed to wait. Until what?

THIS:

Just a few of these to finish off the game:

IMG_0131 (via Monica's Dad)

Rinse. Lather. Repeat!

Notice how Tedford managed NOT to throw a 80 yard bomb there.

And then it was off to the races. I was in Section A Billion Row Beleventy Five. It took me like 40 minutes to get to the field, I swear. I even got stuck behind some Stanford fan EVER.SO.SLOWLY making her way down the stairs. Our harassment only caused her to walk even slower.

But I finally made it down, just in time to see Rope Coach from just a few feet away! I literally chased after him for like 10 seconds trying to snap a shot of him waving his rope. He was running around all crazzy, waving the rope (what else??) in excitement. But alas by the time he stopped, I could only snap this shot of him hugging Robert Calonico, Band Director and Respected Person:

It was an absolute madhouse in there:

IMG_0206 (via Monica's Dad)

The first player I ran into was Bryan Anger, who had a great game:

Dudes got a stache:

Anger was so DELIGHTFULLY happy! And who wouldn't be?

We feared that some people might have forgotten who, in specific, retained control of The Axe. As such, we made sure to inform all nearby of the current owner of said hardware:

I saw Syd'Quan off in the distance and started to force my way through the crowd towards him. Unfortunately, by the time I got there he was down. But Monica's Dad was apparently there before me.

IMG_0220 (via Monica's Dad)

IMG_0225 (via Monica's Dad)

IMG_0231 (via Monica's Dad)

I couldn't get a great shot of SydQuan, but I did find Chris "The OTHER #4" Little:

I remember clear as day standing out there in August waiting for the FanFest to start. I had snuck in early and the players were finishing up practice. Chris Little with his fauxhawk came over and was chatting to a female friend of his near me. Now, months later, he was back and, most assuredly, happier than ever!

He was signing autographs and taking photos. Really nice guy:

Will Kapp was there too. I really hope he plays a key role in a future Big Game victory, for history's sake.

Up to now, I had had success with some players, but felt as if I hadn't quite seen some of the bigger name stars on the team. Sure, it's great to see Bryan Anger and Chris Little, but I had missed Syd'Quan. Then, I bumped into The Prophet!

He was as nice as Chris Little, hamming it up with the fans! Soaking in the limelight!

Monica's Dad was right with me, finding defensive stars in the throng:

IMG_0254 (via Monica's Dad)

I don't know why we were running into the D guys, but I found myself near the Bishop family soon enough:

Based solely on the Green Bay hat (where older brother Desmond plays), I am going to assume that the gentleman there is Big Papa Bishop. Perhaps that is Devin's son? If so, that had to be a really sweet moment for Devin and the entire Bishop family.

That is a cute kid.

Oddly enough, Stanford had split its field in half. Kind of. They had a huge line of security people make a wall in the middle of the field.

But it didn't go all the way from sideline to sideline. You could easily walk around:

On the other side of this odd Maginot line, I raw into Jerome Meadows and Isi Sofele:

They were also making nice nice with the fans. I guess the players who still stayed on the field were the ones who wanted to show a great time to the fans instead of going back to the locker room to celebrate with the team. Nonetheless, all the players I ran across seemed so unbelievably nice. None of them seemed like the kind of guys who would call 60 yard long bombs with 55 seconds left up by 2 Touchdowns over your cross town rivals.

To my right, Alex Laggeman came off the field. Oddly enough, there was a child chasing behind him with a thumbs down booing him the entire time. WTF???