Herb Benham: Winning isn't everything -- a good thing at Berkeley
| Monday, Oct 05 2009 04:54 PM
Last Updated Monday, Oct 05 2009 08:29 PM
Sometimes you can't lose.
Destiny is too strong, it's your turn, and this house is your house and not everybody is welcome.
Last weekend we went to Berkeley for homecoming weekend. The centerpiece was the game between Cal and USC. Everything else was window dressing.
The markers were lining up. It was our 30th wedding anniversary. What better way to celebrate than with a win over SC, those bullies from the south.
Homecoming. It's the one weekend a year where students actually clean their apartments. No one wants to fail the mom test. It's like having your sergeant come by your bunk for inspection and finding that your sheets are askew.
Most student apartments are horrible. We forget that as we get older, but theirs are messy and so were ours.
Maybe frightening is a better word than horrible. The rooms are topsy-turvy, and books, dishes and clothes are tottering at strange angles. The world looks drunk. The room is melting like something in a Salvador Dali painting.
"Mom, we spent yesterday cleaning the apartment," Thomas told his mother. "Even the bathroom."
A student bathroom is its own special nightmare. It's where the wild things live. It's hard to know how a boy gets a second date in college.
The first date may be a gimme. People are friendly, even girls. However, if I'm a girl and I walk into my prospective boyfriend's bathroom and there is a giant octopus living in there waving its arms, I may consider transferring my affections.
Before the 5 p.m. game, Thomas had us over for barbecued tri-tip, a French potato salad and spinach salad with a vinaigrette dressing.
Hard to imagine how food that good could come out of a kitchen that looked like that, but it did. Maybe it was the other ingredients -- affection, we're glad you're here and we're going to show you we've learned a thing or two.
Berkeley was drunk. Both in the usual way as well as drunk with crisp fall air and drunk with the optimism of thousands of alumni wearing blue and yellow "Go Cal" hats, shirts and sweatshirts. It was a love-in without the headbands.
Both teams came in 3-1. Cal began the year with three quick victories and the Cal faithful were talking about its first Rose Bowl appearance since 1959. It also had a Heisman candidate in running back Jahvid Best.
Sure, Cal had been flattened the week before by Oregon 42-3, but this game would be different. They were home and it was homecoming. Thousands of students had cleaned their apartments.
God -- USC was big. Can you not get in there unless you're over 6-4? Even their marching band looked intimidating.
Our seats were behind the southern end zone. The Trojans were warming up in front of us. They were large, loose and confident. My heart sank like the sun in the Pacific.
Size isn't everything. Nor is speed, strength, athletic ability, football pedigree, coaching, history, snappier uniforms and a more highly organized fan base.
This was Bear country. We had things the Trojans didn't. Start with a homey stadium where fans entered looking at the underside of a hill. Couple that with bathrooms that hadn't been redone since the grizzly went extinct.
Cal won the toss, elected to receive and within four plays had marched to SC's six-yard line. This game was over. Two minutes had gone by and Cal was ready to punch it home.
A couple plays later, Kevin Riley, the Bears quarterback, dropped back and threw it into the end zone. The pass was right on target. Unfortunately, it was caught by Taylor Mays, a member of the Trojan secondary.
After that, the game was a blur. It looked like a scrimmage. The Bears hardly wrinkled the Trojan uniforms, and USC didn't look like they had broken a sweat.
By the second quarter, I was reaching for the silver flask full of Scotch that my friend Al had brought. The Scotch, smoky and smooth, went well with the package of Mike and Ike's I'd bought at the snack bar.
Cal finally scored in the fourth quarter by kicking a field goal. No one shuts the Bears out on their home field on homecoming weekend. The fans rose to their feet, cheered and then half of them left. The final score was 30-3.
My sense was that Cal fans are used to moral victories. Three points, a beautiful fall day and a clean room.
What more could you ask for?
