By Jay Heater
It was an awful football moment for Walt Harris, a collage of sorrow, pain and shock for anyone wearing Blue and Gold, and one that he wouldn't mind seeing re-created on Saturday. "I remember seeing a sea of white," Harris said of Stanford's celebration after its dramatic 22-20 victory over Cal in the 1974 Big Game, a contest decided on Mike Langford's 50-yard field goal on the final play. Harris, who was a first-year Cal defensive assistant at the time, will have a different point of view on Saturday as he goes into the Big Game as Stanford's head coach. He becomes a member of a select group of coaches and players who have experienced the game from both sidelines. "I will see this game from a different perspective," he said. He didn't like his perspective in 1976. "Usually you see coaches carried off the field after a win," Harris said. "Before we played Stanford, they carried (coach) Jack Christiansen on the field. I turned to one of our assistants and said, 'Oh my gosh. We're in trouble.'" Cal, indeed, was in trouble that day in Christiansen's final game, losing 27-24. The next Big Game featured a new Stanford head coach. "We ran into a guy named Bill Walsh," Harris said. Stanford won the 1977 game 21-3, leaving Cal with a 1-3 record against Stanford during Harris' tenure. Harris joins Walsh, John Ralston, Mike White, Roger Theder and Tom Holmoe as head coaches at one of the schools who served as an assistant at the other. Holmoe, now the BYU athletic director, said the view from either side isn't much different. "At Stanford, the kids would come from all over the country, so they do have to buy into the game a little more," he said. "But they do buy into it fast." Bob Rose is a former sports information director at both Cal and Stanford, and he noticed the same thing as Holmoe. "But a good example is what (Cal coach) Jeff Tedford went through," Rose said. "He didn't have any connection to Cal when he took over, but after what he experienced his first Big Game week, he was up to speed."
Stanford running backs coach Wayne Moses, a former Washington cornerback, didn't have any connection with the Big Game when he became a Cal assistant in 1996. He represented Cal that season but later experienced the rivalry along the Stanford sideline as an assistant in 2002-03. He spent the 2004 season as a Pittsburgh assistant before returning with Harris this year. "Everyone knows this game is for bragging rights and you have to live with it for a year if you lose," Moses said. "I really haven't seen a different approach from either team. The guys know the magnitude and the ramifications. I know one thing -- everyone wants to win it. I haven't won one. I've only experienced the lowlights. I'm just happy to get another chance on Saturday." Ralston, who was a Cal assistant under Pappy Waldorf from 1956-58 and Stanford's head coach from 1963-71, said the game is huge no matter on which side you line up. "Pappy used to say that it's not like the Oklahoma-Texas rivalry. This is a friendly rivalry. You love the people from both sides all the way up to kickoff, and after the game you will go away arm-in-arm with the same people. These are two schools that respect each other tremendously. But for those three hours, all of a sudden everyone wants to win that game. They don't have to be at one school or the other to realize how important the game is." Harris, who grew up in South San Francisco, always had a feel for the importance of the game. "Unless you are brain dead, it would be hard not to pay attention to the Big Game," he said. "You can't help but be focused and excited." San Jose State offensive coordinator Ken Margerum has experienced the game as a player for Stanford and as an assistant at both Cal and Stanford. "Oh gosh, there really isn't much difference at how either team looks at the game," Margerum said. "There is emotion and spirit on both sides. I do think there are more people affiliated with Cal with all the people they graduate, and that makes for more voices to be heard. But when you get a full stadium with the theater of it all, I don't think there is much difference."
Margerum said that, no matter what his affiliation with Cal, it would be impossible to ignore the loyalty he developed as a Stanford player. "I obviously bleed red at all times," he said. Ralston admits that he feels the same way. "I went to Berkeley 100 years ago and I was a lousy player," said Ralston, who lettered in 1950. "I remember when I got the job at Stanford, one of the professors over at Berkeley said, 'You tell that darned Ralston he will be a Cal alum a lot longer than he will be a Stanford coach.' As dedicated as I was for nine years at Stanford, I tend to go back to my roots. I would wear blue and gold if I went to the game." Harris, a Pacific grad, doesn't have to deal with playing-days loyalties. "Neither school recruited me," he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment