"The most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heartrending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football. California has won the Big Game” — Cal radio announcer Joe Starkey.
It was November 20, 1982 in Berkeley, California, the most famous finish ever to a college football game.
I was there.
Not, mind you, in the stadium, but perched above it on what has long been called Tightwad Hill where there is no admission charge.
I’d never seen anything like it nor have I ever since. No one else has either.
Cal was playing their arch rivals, Stanfurd, with possession of the Stanfurd Axe at stake. It was one of college football’s longest and bitterest rivalries (the 125th edition will be played this Saturday). It was a see-saw affair before a capacity crowd and -- has been pointed out ad nauseam over the years -- it was a helluva game even minus the incredible finish.
The Cardinal had taken the lead on a field goal with four seconds left after an improbable drive in which their star quarterback, John Elway, completed a fourth and seventeen pass.
It seemed a certainty that the field goal had provided the victory. Some Cal fans left.
As has always been my want I hung in there, disconsolate but hoping for a miracle. Little did I expect how bizarre a miracle it would be. I imagined a conventional kick off return for a touchdown or quickly getting out of bounds to leave time for one last heave into the end zone.
I’d gone to the game alone having only recently moved back to Berkeley and at the time not having any friends around who wished to join me sitting on a hill to watch a football game. Within the next year I’d have friendships with a cadre of Cal football fans as I’ve continued to to over the intervening forty years. My love of Cal football dated back to my earliest days having started going to games as a toddler and falling in love with everything associated with football Saturdays in beautiful Strawberry Canyon. The band, the colors, the mascot (Oski), the cheering section, the victory cannon were all magical to me. By 1982 I'd already seen Cal win three times on the last play of the game. Compared to what I was about to witness, it had all been pretty routine stuff. Along with love comes hate and I had plenty for the entitled rich kids from down the road.
It was my first Big Game since 1976, a heartbreaking loss (the one two years prior had been even worse) and I was excited for the noise and pageantry that was to ensue and desperate for the Golden Bears to win. I was sitting (more like hunching) next to a Naval officer who’d attended Cal. He was stationed in the Far East but was currently on leave. He was an amiable chap and we got on well as we watched the game.
He joined me in silence after the game had seemingly been lost. Our mutual misery forming a company as it tends to do.
When Stanfurd kicked off I was practically praying that a Cal player would either hop quickly out of bounds or run through the enemy lines into the end zone. The kick off bounced into the arms of Cal's Kevin Moen (whose identity was unknown to me at the time). I saw that he had nowhere to go -- so did he. Moen lateraled the ball and it was evident that it was all or nothing on one play and that play would require more laterals.
Richard Rogers received the first lateral, as pursuers closed in on him he lateraled the ball to Dwight Garner who was quickly enveloped by enemy tacklers. At this point my head dropped, I was sure it was it was over. Many others, including Stanfurd players, and —significantly as it turned out — their band — thought so too. But Garner shoveled the ball back to Rogers before the whistle blew. I pause here to note that many a Stanfurdite claim to this day that Garner’s knee touched the ground and the play should have been dead at that point. However there is no clear conclusive evidence that Garner’s knee hit the turf and much more importantly, no whistle was blown. One is taught in sports to play to the whistle. A lesson clearly lost on attendees of snobbish private universities.
In any case the play continued with Rogers running into enemy territory. I heard the crowd react and lifted my head having missed a lateral (something I am here admitting for the first time). What the hell was going on? We still had the ball, were still running forward and not only had additional Stanfurd players entered the field, but their band was scattered from the end zone out past the twenty yard line. What madness is this? The game continues?
I’d never seen intruders on a football game while the ball was in play. Who had?
I watched as Mariet Ford — who’d received the ball from Rogers — lateraled to the man who started it all, Kevin Moen. He had a full head of steam and was running through the band toward the end zone like a bull in a china shop.
Could this really be happening? I wondered. I was suddenly elated believing that the impossible was about to happen.
Moen scored.
Didn’t he?
I mean, he was in the end zone, a ref — I thought — had signaled touchdown. The cannon which goes off after every Cal score, boomed. This was a touchdown. Right? I was deliriously happy and deeply concerned at the same time. After all there was the not so small matter of penalty flags littering the field and the bizarre nature of the scoring play.
The refs huddled with players trying to surround them and plead their cases.
Surely this can’t be taken away from us. But then again, isn’t all too good to be true? My companion and I exchanged a look but said nothing. The wait seemed interminable. Hope faded.
But then….bedlam. The refs signaled touchdown. I leapt into the arms of my new found friend. “That’s what happens when you have members of the national championship rugby team playing,” he exclaimed happily.
I parted company with him, ran down the hill and into the stadium joining the throngs descending onto the field. I’d never known this feeling before. It was not mere last-second sports victory it was an actual, real life miracle. Something that defied easy description or explanation. It was surreal.
That it happened against our hated rivals made it all the sweeter. I cavorted about the field with others donned in blue gold. At one point I found myself in the vicinity of the Stanfurd band, already recognized as goats for their early entry onto the field and their interference with the game. A young man in red who was as angry a lad as I’ve ever encountered, growled at me to “stay away from our band.” I was in too good a mood to engage and so skipped merrily away.
I don’t know how long I stayed on the field, maybe half an hour, probably more like forty-five minutes. Then it was time to celebrate in the one way I knew at the time, by getting smashed. I repaired to a bar called Kip's and drank myself silly, then headed for another bar called Bishop G’ for more libations. Everyone was my friend, especially fellow revelers.
I remember someone helping me off the bus when I finally made my way home.
In something of a lesser miracle I awoke the next morning just before 9:00 AM when a local station broadcast highlights of Cal football. VCRs were in their infancy at the time and I didn’t have one, there was no internet or You Tube so I was reliant on watching programs like this live. How I savored it.
And how I still savor that day. After the game Cal head coach Joe Kapp said that the finish was an example of the fact that “the will not quit and the Bear will not die.” Amen.
But the game has meant more to me than an improbable finish and a thrilling win. It was how extraordinary an event it was. Utterly unprecedented and impossible to replicate. Since then other teams have tried to lateral their way to victory as a game ended. Some have even been successful. But there was not since been an instance when they did it through a maze of confused band members.
It’s something of a badge of honor to have been there, but I’ve made a point not to boast about my presence there that day. This was a special occasion that has taken on deep meaning for me in ways that I can’t begin to describe. How often does one ever see the surreal, the impossible the unimaginable? How often is it a transformative moment that carries such joy?
It was profound in a way that sports rarely are. It was spiritual. It was…here I am looking for words. They just won’t do.
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