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2012 Big Game Reportedly Moving To October

By Avinash Kunnath
When the California Golden Bears have endured disappointing seasons, there was always the Big Game to rouse the spirits at the end of the year. There were the rallies in San Francisco, the volleyball and water polo events, the alumni reunions, the bonfire. There was the chance to beat the Furd and keep the Axe to give the season a satisfying ending on whatever pain had been endured in the weeks before.

That's likely not to be the case next year at Memorial Stadium. Jon Wilner tweets:

This might be a tough pill to swallow, but I broached the topic before in an earlier post that the new Pac-12 TV arrangement would mean probably at least one or two rivalry games might be moved to give the conference plum games to put on their network. The Notre Dame-USC game means the UCLA-USC game moves up a week. The Big Game (which has always been the week before Thanksgiving, but is now kind of displaced in the regular schedule) was the logical choice.

Cal hadn't been playing the Furd to end the season regularly anyway because there has been a pronounced desire by both Cal and Stanford to NOT play their rivalry game Thanksgiving weekend. Cal doesn't want to play their rivalry game during a Holiday week since it ruins all the usual Big Game traditions, and Stanford doesn't want to play the Big Game Thanksgiving weekend because their home games will become pretty much road games.

Cal and the Furd suffer from being perhaps the only two rivals that have the majority of their students and alumni live more than a few hours far away from campus, and it figures the Big Game would get moved first.

I'm not sure what this'll mean for our Thanksgiving contest next year. Wilner says that no other rivalry games are moving to October, so either

a) Cal finishes next season with a non-conference contest.
b) Cal finishes next year with UCLA, since USC plays Notre Dame on Thanksgiving weekend. Furd would probably go non-conference in that event. I would prefer this scenario the most.
c) One more rivalry game is moving a week up, and Cal/Furd finish their season against those rivals and/or UCLA.
d) Bye week. Unlikely.

Thankfully, Cal is back at Memorial next season and interest in the new stadium should be high throughout the season. But Cal better have a good to great season next year, or risk interest in this team dropping off drastically right after we take the Axe again.

So. Who's ready for the Big Game in October?

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