After inauspicious starts to their seasons for a variety of reasons, the Cal and Stanford football players are desperate for a first victory.
If that wasn’t motivation enough, here comes the Big Game — a regional rivalry drenched in tradition and last-minute highlights.
Fifty-five of the teams’ 122 meetings have been decided by seven points or less, including last year, when Chase Garbers’ 16-yard run with 79 seconds remaining gave Cal a 24-20 victory. The Bears’ players and fans paraded around Stanford Stadium with The Axe, having claimed the rivalry’s trophy for the first time since 2009.
“The hardest loss I have ever personally taken was last year, losing to Cal,” Stanford offensive tackle Foster Sarell said. “The standard that we’ve set here is: We just beat Cal. That’s what we do. Losing to them, it hurt me pretty good. I felt bad for the legacy of that year. I think this year holds a lot of weight, because we’ve kind of got to reverse this deal. We can’t let them get away with two in a row, so we’ve got to do everything we can. That means scratching and clawing to get this win and get that Axe back. I think it’s a really big deal, and it’s really important to this program.”
The Cardinal hold a 64-47-11 all-time edge in the sixth-most-played rivalry in college football, but Stanford hasn’t found that type of success this year in a season rife with valid excuses for the 0-2 start.
Stanford didn’t have quarterback Davis Mills or receiver/returner Connor Wedington in its season-opening loss at Oregon because of a third-party coronavirus testing protocol error. The gaffe wasn’t fixed for nearly a week, giving Mills and Wedington just one practice to prepare for a 35-32 loss to Colorado.
Last week’s scheduled home game against Washington State was canceled after a COVID-19 outbreak left the Cougars with fewer than the required 53 scholarship players.
Cal (0-2) has had an unfortunate start to its season as well, having its season opener against Washington canceled after a positive test and the ensuing contact tracing and quarantining left the Bears with only one defensive lineman.
The position group missed the entirety of the next week’s practices, too. So the Bears had to do shorthanded prep and travel to Pasadena to play UCLA with about 40 hours of advanced notice about the matchup that replaced a scheduled game against Arizona State.
UCLA trounced Cal 34-10, but the Bears looked much better last weekend in a 31-27 loss at Oregon State. Cal had a first-and-goal situation with a chance to take the lead in the final two minutes, but Garbers’ pass was batted into the air and intercepted.
123rd Big Game
Who: Stanford (0-2, 0-2 Pac-12) at Cal (0-2, 0-2)
When: 1:30 pm. Friday
Where: Memorial Stadium
TV/Radio:Channel: 2Channel: 40/1050, 810
What to watch
Big Game oddities:For the first time in the history of college football’s sixth-most-played rivalry, Cal and Stanford enter the Big Game winless and will play on a Friday. Oh yeah, and there won’t be fans in Memorial Stadium or on Tightwad Hill because of coronavirus protocol. Joining Massachusetts and Arizona State as the only FBS teams yet to host a game this year, the Bears have been working on piping in fan noise to create some sense of a home-field advantage. “There are some parameters they put on the ambient noise and when they crank up or turn down the crowd noise,” Cal head coach Justin Wilcox said. “It’s not a free-for-all in how high you turn it up or when you turn it up. It has to be certain plays, certain parts of the game, and then, there’s a decibel level after a big play. Hopefully, we can get some big plays going, so we can crank it up a little bit.”
The replacements:With tackles Will Craig and Jake Curhan and guard Valentino Daltoso expected to stay in coronavirus quarantine, the Bears will likely start Matthew Cindric, Brandon Mello and Brayden Rohme for the second straight week. In a game during which Cal also lost center Michael Saffell to an apparent right leg injury, the Bears rushed for 124 yards on 3.3 yards per carry and allowed only two sacks against Oregon State. Cal says Saffell has made progress toward returning and is considered a game-time decision.
Key matchup: One of the most intriguing matchups will be Cal’s loaded secondary against Stanford’s impressive receiving corps. The Bears have allowed 175.5 passing yards per game, which is ranked eighth in the NCAA, and has one interception apiece from Camryn Bynum, Josh Drayden and Elijah Hicks. Stanford has three game-breaking receivers in Simi Fehoko, Connor Wedington and Michael Wilson, and Osiris St. Brown is expected to be available after missing the first two games for virus-related reasons. Wilson had a team-high six receptions for 63 yards against Cal last year.
— Rusty Simmons
Of course, a victory in the Big Game would go a long way toward erasing the nightmarish start to the season.
“I’d say the Axe is not only a culmination of all of our hard work, because it’s not every game that you get to go and win something and bring back to school and hold above your head and be proud about, but it’s also a win for the community,” kicker Dario Longhetto said. “You know how much it means to everybody else..”
Rusty Simmons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rsimmons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Rusty_SFChron
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Cal and Stanford enter Big Game looking for first win: Here’s what to watch - San Francisco Chronicle
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