Tuesday, November 15, 2005

San Jose Mercury:Big Game: coach killer and coach saver

Ann Killion On the Big Game
Playing high school football on the San Francisco peninsula in the early 1960s, Walt Harris heard plenty about the Big Game. As a Cal assistant in the mid-1970s, he coached in the Big Game. And at Monday's kickoff news conference, the first-year Stanford coach said all the right things about the Big Game. But Harris won't really know the Big Game for a while yet, not until he realizes that ''Big'' actually is code for ''Coach Killer or Coach Saver.'' ''Oh that's not our perspective,'' said Stanford's outgoing athletic director, Ted Leland. ''There's no make-or-break game.''
Tell that to Buddy Teevens, as he prepares his 2-7 Dartmouth team for Princeton.
If Teevens had beaten Cal at least once in three tries, he might have stayed in his job at Stanford for a little longer. Certainly, if he had beaten Cal last year, he would probably still be the Cardinal coach. Just as Tom Holmoe might have received an extra year if he could have beaten Stanford just once. Winning is nice, but winning against the rival is even nicer. Harris doesn't have to worry about all that yet. He says beating Cal never came up in his job interview. And he hasn't heard too much from the frustrated Stanford fans. ''I'm on what is proverbially called the honeymoon,'' he said Monday. ''I've not had my hooks into the game yet. I have no record yet.'' But he does inherit a three-game losing streak -- a streak that is responsible for making Cal, beleaguered as the Bears may be, the favorite at Stanford Stadium on Saturday. Jeff Tedford is golden to Cal fans for many reasons, including the very important fact that he has never lost to Stanford.
''To have a rivalry you have to have good football teams,'' Harris said. ''Lately, Cal has been a good football team. Stanford has not been. We have a job to do to make it a rivalry.'' That situation was flip-flopped in 1995-2001, when Tyrone Willingham went 7-0 against the Bears, a streak that helped end the Cal career of Keith Gilbertson, as well as that of Holmoe. Big Games are burned into resumes and into collective memories. Harris already knows that. He said that when he closes his eyes he can see a sea of white jerseys pouring onto the field at Memorial Stadium, after Mike Langford kicked a 50-yard field goal on the final play of the 1974 game, to, as Harris said, ''beat us... and 'us' was Cal.'' What Harris thus far knows about being the head coach in the Big Game, he doesn't much like. On Monday morning, he arrived for round one of what he terms ''hoopla'' feeling a little queasy. He had attempted a ''mobile meeting'' on the car ride up from Stanford, complete with game video and whiteboard. ''I had to roll the window down,'' he said. ''I thought I was about to throw up.... This is such a big game from a coaching perspective. I wish I didn't have to participate in all the other stuff.'' He's got a week full of other stuff -- luncheons and rallies and, oh yeah, game plans. Harris has salvaged Stanford's erratic season in remarkable fashion, but the true make-or-break moment comes Saturday. ''When I was coach at Pitt, I knew how important it was to play against West Virginia,'' he said. ''I know about the perceived credibility of a coach in a rivalry game. But all that stuff really doesn't matter much to me.''
But then again, as he concedes, he has no record. As of Saturday evening, he'll have one. And then he'll begin to understand just how big this Big Game really is.

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