Football freshmen learn to appreciate Big Game rivalry as Stanford-Cal matchup approaches

Over the last few years, Big Game has been anything but… well, big.

Even though Bryce Love (above) grew up in the vicinity of three rival schools in North Carolina, the Big Game represents the first major college rivalry that he has been truly drawn to. (TRI NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

It just so happens that Stanford’s longest streak of dominance in program history has coincided with one of the most futile periods in California Golden Bears history, and Stanford’s average margin of victory of 25 points in the last five Big Games certainly reflects that.

Meanwhile, with the fountains around campus off, students don’t necessarily have the ever-present reminder of the California sunlight glinting off of cardinal red water as they bike to class. And the teddy bear brutally impaled on top of The Claw looks a lot less intimidating and a lot more silly when it doesn’t have blood-red flecks of water pelting it as it hangs helplessly in view.

So forgive the freshmen if they don’t necessarily “get” the Big Game rivalry yet.

“I’ve learned that you don’t try [to teach the rivalry],” said head coach David Shaw. “You just let them kind of feel it.”

It doesn’t help that the only freshmen on the football team from the Bay Area are wide receiver Sid Krishnamurthi and offensive lineman Jack Dreyer — most of the others are coming in without much knowledge of the bitter history of the Stanford-Cal rivalry.

Some, like running back Bryce Love, haven’t ever really been involved in a significant college rivalry at all and will be experiencing the magic of a historic rivalry firsthand for the first time on Saturday.

Love grew up in North Carolina, and had uncles that played for UNC and Colgate and a father that played for South Carolina. That said, he was never really pressured to take a side in any of the rivalries and didn’t ever have the opportunity to get deeply immersed in hatred for another team.

Wide receiver Trenton Irwin, on the other hand, already comes into the Big Game with a healthy hatred for Cal despite never having been affiliated with either Stanford or Cal growing up. But make no mistake — Irwin knows how to hate a rival with the best of them, having grown up deeply invested in one of the most bitter rivalries in college football: Michigan – Ohio State.

Wide receiver Trenton Irwin (above) was first exposed to the Stanford-Cal rivalry through a research project he did in high school. (TRI NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

“My dad is from Detroit so we were always Michigan fans,” Irwin said. “That rivalry was big. We’d watch it every time. At that time Michigan wasn’t winning those so it was always upsetting. My dad was pissed, I was pissed, so it was a rough day most of the time.”

For most people, hate for rivals is built on tough losses and the shared animosity between the fans on both sides, but for Irwin, the dislike of Cal actually stemmed in part from research he did for a project in high school.

“It was just an online Pac-12 project so I was just reviewing all the rivalry games and there was Cal,” Irwin said. “It’s got great history behind it.”

Regardless of how they felt about Cal and their experience with rivalries coming in, the freshmen definitely feel a different vibe around campus this week, with a campus that generally feels more ambivalent about football than most awakening from its slumber to acknowledge the upcoming game and the players’ roles in it.

“It definitely is different,” Love said. “A lot of the students this week are all, ‘You’ve got to beat Cal this week — it’s the Big Game,’ things like that. You see all the posters and things like that, people are really excited about it. You definitely can tell that from the student body.”

And come Big Game week, the older guys on the team — those who have had a chance to swallow the emotions of the rivalry and have been properly indoctrinated — definitely don’t let the freshmen forget about the importance of the Axe.

“They stress the importance of the Axe and how seniors have never lost it,” Love said. “You just want to work to prepare to keep it as well. Coach Shaw definitely stresses that, the coaches stress that, the upperclassmen stress it as well.”

“I think some of them kind of felt it today where it didn’t feel like a regular Tuesday,” Shaw said after Tuesday’s practice. “The seniors were on them. They were pushing them to finish every play. Midway through practice, a lot of the young guys start to really crank it up because this is Big Game week.”

For the younger guys, the presence of a trophy is an added incentive, and they know that they’re supposed to hate Cal because everybody tells them that they need to, but it still might not necessarily sink in all the way until Saturday when they step on the field.

What exactly does it mean for the rivalry to “sink in,” though?

For Blake Martinez, it’s about seeing himself in the greater context of the rivalry’s tremendous history and respecting how much it has meant to so many different people over the last 118 years.

“You have to step in there and know that if you get an opportunity to step out onto that field, it’s all of our faces on the game and there’s all of the alumni in the past that have played in those games and have done those special things to keep that Axe,” Martinez said.

“It’s the biggest rivalry in college football, I’d say.”

For junior tight end Greg Taboada, meanwhile, it didn’t really sink in until last year, when he learned more about the history of the rivalry and began to better appreciate why so many people he’d see felt so strongly about the game.

“Coming from the South I didn’t really know much about the history until about last year,” Taboada said. “It’s all about the history, and it means a lot to the people who are out here that have been a part of it…There’s an outcome that has a lot of impact.”

But the immediate interest for all of them on Saturday is winning the Axe back for the reason that nobody on the team (except Cal transfer Brennan Scarlett) has ever known what it’s like not to have the Axe. One cycle of seniors has already held the Axe for all five years; this year’s team wants to make sure that they’re not going to be the ones to ruin it for this year’s seniors.

“We’re going in there kind of explaining to [the freshmen] that this is as important to us as it is to them just in the standpoint that we’re undefeated and we want to keep that Axe at Stanford,” Martinez said.

Regardless of how they feel about the rivalry right now, on Saturday the freshmen will become part of a 118-year history fraught with tradition, heartbreak, daring heists, last-ditch laterals, failed field stormings and two tides of roaring fans — one clad in blue and gold, the other in cardinal and white — clashing on the gridiron, year after year after year.

And Shaw is confident that yes, things will finally sink in.

“You don’t know until you play in your first Big Game. You come from Louisiana, Georgia, Washington, D.C.,” Shaw said. “Once our guys step out on the field, it will feel like a bowl game atmosphere. That’s the way you should feel.”

Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.