The new CMS: A long time in the making
(Written by kencraw)
(This is the first in a four part series taking stock of just how momentous Saturday’s opening game against Nevada will be, coming home to the newly renovated Memorial Stadium.)
When people think about the newly renovated Memorial Stadium and how long it has been in the making, most will think back to when Tedford was hired, and with good reason. However the story of facility issues at Memorial Stadium have a much longer history.
If I had to put a date on when this process officially began it would be October 17th, 1989 at 5:04 PM. If you’re a Bay Area resident, or were at that time, I’m sure you remember exactly where you were. I was a 14 year-old freshman trying to get my homework done on my computer before the world series started in the room above the garage when the books started shaking off the shelves, when the Loma Prieta earthquake kicked into high gear.
That was 22 years ago. I wasn’t even particularly fond of Cal football at the time, although Cal was were I was headed for college when I graduated from high school.
For far too long the Bay Area had escaped the terror of a life-claiming earthquake, but that streak ended with the collapse of multiple freeways, most notably the Cypress structure freeway in West Oakland that sandwiched its lower deck, killing 42 (a remarkably low number in my opinion considering the length of freeway collapsed).
After the earthquake, dozens if not hundreds of public works projects were started to seismically strengthen everything from dormitories, including on the Cal campus, to freeways to bridges. Memorial stadium, sitting on the Hayward fault was included in the discussions of what needed to be retrofitted, but somehow it never bubbled to the top. The fact that in 1989 the Bears had been riding the cellar of the Pac-10 for over a decade had something to do with it.
But in 1990 something remarkable happened… The Bears started winning. The Cal Bears sparked my interest for the first time, and it seemed that between the multitude of earthquake renovations being done on the Cal campus and what head coach Bruce Snyder was accomplishing on the field (and demanding off the field) that something was likely to happen sooner rather than later.
But then Snyder left for Arizona State, disgusted with an University that had turned its back on athletics and refused to give him the tools he needed to recruit well nor the salary he deserved for succeeding under such difficult circumstances. All of a sudden that “inevitable” retrofit vanished, not to be spoken of again for a decade.
When I became a season ticket holder in 1999, just after graduating from college, the Bears were mired in the Holmoe era, an internal hire who had been defensive coordinator under Steve Mariucci and was supposed to extend Mariucci’s short lived success but instead returned Cal to the basement it was used to from the Keith Gilbertson era. There was no discussion of upgrading Memorial Statdium. Frankly, there weren’t enough people there. The bathrooms were not an issue, despite being archaic, there weren’t enough people there to matter. The same was true of concessions.
Finally, the Cal Bear football team emerged from it’s grave when it hired Jeff Tedford in 2002. Perhaps because so many before him had failed, perhaps because he came from a University that had been putting facilities high on its priority list, perhaps because he wanted to win and knew what it took, Tedford had it written in to his contract that a new training facility would be built and with it, Memorial Stadium would be significantly upgraded.
It’s worth pausing to reflect on just how long it had been. I was no longer a pimple-faced freshman, but a married man and a successful engineer with a 4 bedroom home of my own. Two Republican (!?!) Governors, Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, had completed their terms during that time and Gray Davis was shortly on his way to being recalled. Willie Brown started that era as speaker of the Assembly and ended it in his 2nd term as Mayor of SF. Two different George Bushes had been in the white house. A big eared Texan named Ross Perot had stormed onto the scene to fix the country and had completely vanished back into obscurity. The Dow Jones industrial average had steadily climbed from around 3000 up to near 12,000 before dropping down to as low as 7500 in the 2nd recession of this period. Keith Jackson had retired and then unretired from calling college football games for ABC. Suffice it to say, a lot happened in those 13 years.
Sadly, in 2002, our long facilities nightmare was just beginning…
By the end of the 2002 season it was quite clear that Tedford’s Bears were going to be something very different than their predecessors. The stadium was getting visibly more full with each passing game. Bathrooms were a problem. Concessions were becoming unbearable. The hallways, once easily navigable where now something to be dreaded.
Finally the promise of a new stadium finally had real promise. The campus cared what happened on Saturdays in Strawberry Canyon. The community was spending money on Cal football like it hadn’t in decades. Donations to the athletic department were rapidly on the rise.
I’ll leave the history of the next decade to the next post in the series, but I want to give a few factoids from 2002, when Tedford was hired, the end of 2006, when construction was supposed to start and now.
2002:
- CA Governor: Gray Davis
- # of kids in my home: 0
- # of boats I owned: 1
- Value of my house: ~$350k
- Dow: ~8000
- Key players on the team: Kyle Boller, Joe Igber, Jonathan Makonnen, Nnamdi Asomugha, Donnie McCluskey, Chris Maderino.
- Issues of the day: Enron, the CA power crisis, starting the Iraq war, Apple has a hit with the brand new iPod.
Things that happened in between:
- Keith Jackson retired for real.
- Aaron Rodgers came and went from Cal football and was drafted by Green Bay, starting the speculation on when Brett Favre would retire.
- Pope John Paul II died and was replaced with Pope Benedict XVI.
- 14 Cal Bears are drafted by the NFL, including the above mentioned Aaron Rodgers, JJ Arrington, Marvin Philip, Exchemandu, Chase Lyman and Kyle Boller.
- Lance Armstrong wins his 5th-7th Tour de France titles.
- The following Cal blogs are started: My personal blog, SturdyGoldenBlogs, TedfordIsGod, TheBandIsOutOnTheField, TightwadHill, RoseBowlBeforeIDie, OurSturdyGoldenBear (and others).
- America’s Cup is raced in New Zealand and won by Switzerland
- I start reporting for Rivals
2006:
- CA Governor: Arnold Schwarzenegger
- # of kids in my home: 2
- # of boats I owned: 2
- Value of my house: ~$530k (down from $580k earlier in the year)
- Dow: ~12000
- Key players on the team: Nate Longshore, Desean Jackson, Marshawn Lynch, Dante Hughes, Desmond Bishop.
- Issues of the day: ending the Iraq war, Democrats win back Congress, when will Brett Favre retire?, Windows Vista stinks.
Things that happened in between:
- Brett Favre retires… 3 separate times
- Apple releases the iPhone, then 4 follow ons, then the iPad, and two follow ons.
- The following Cal blogs are retired: SturdyGoldenBlogs, TedfordIsGod, TheBandIsOutOnTheField, TightwadHill, RoseBowlBeforeIDie, OurSturdyGoldenBear.
- The Cosco Buscan runs into the Bay Bridge and the Deepwater Horizon explodes in the gulf
- 26 Cal Bears are drafted by the NFL, including Brandon Mebane, Justin Forsett, Craig Stevens, Zack Follett, Alex Mack, Syd’Quan Thompson, Jahvid Best, Tyson Alualu, and Chris Conte.
- I retire from my hobby of sports reporting
- The following Cal blogs are both started and retired: TheBearWillNotQuit, OskiTalk, BearNecessity (and others)
- Lance Armstrong retires… 2 times.
- The following Cal Blogs are started: ExcuseMeForMyVoice, CaliforniaGoldenBlogs, BearsWithFangs (and others).
- Obama is elected president and the Republicans win back the House
- America’s Cup is raced twice in Spain (by the Swiss) and is brought back to the US
2012:
- CA Governor: Jerry Brown
- # of kids in my home: 4
- # of boats I owned: 5
- Value of my house: ~$300k
- Dow: ~13000 (after bungee jumping from 14k to 7k and back to 10k all in just over a year)
- Key players on the team: Zack Maynard, Keenan Allen, Isi Sofele, Kendrick Payne, Steve Williams
- Issues of the day: I’ll let you decide that for yourself…
In short (too late!) this has been a LOONNNGG time coming. Thinking back over all the things that have transpired in that time: The friends who have come and gone; The issues that were critical at the time and are no longer; The changes in the world that have come full circle; the myriad of ways the world has changed since 1989, or even 2002 or 2006… it all points to just how momentous of a moment this is.
While I can take no personal credit for this finally coming to completion, we are the heirs of the Bears fans who have come before us. They have struggled and fought. They have put their hearts and minds into this program. On Saturday it comes to fruition. All the pain and failures were not for naught. We have finally seen our dreams come true and it is a great day for Cal football.
Blessed is he who patiently endures trials; for when he has stood the test, he will gain the victor’s crown
James 1:12
August 29th, 2012 at 6:20 am
The only thing longer than the time it took to upgrade Memorial Stadium was probably the time to read this post.
August 29th, 2012 at 7:54 am
Ha… Ha… Ha… bro.
Actually, it occurred to me as I was writing the post (but I didn’t see a good way to fit it in) that the only thing that took longer than the CMS was the Bay Bridge renovation, which looks to be about a year from completion.
August 29th, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Huh, Ken, I thought you were older than you were. Now I think we were on campus at the same time.
I was a month shy of my eleventh birthday when Loma Prieta happened. And I started at Cal directly out of high school (fall 1996) and am very proud to be part of the class of 2000. 🙂
(Wish I was going to be there to see New Memorial with y’all, but I’ll have to make do with watching it on the television.)
August 30th, 2012 at 7:33 am
I don’t want to toss out Ken’s age, but I’ll let him tell you when he went to Cal.
August 30th, 2012 at 7:40 am
It’s no secret that I didn’t go to Cal bro… It’s right there in the “About Us” link on the sidebar. Perhaps Kat just forgot that I went to Chico State. For those who care to know, I was there from 1993 to 1998.
And yeah, I’m about to turn 37. The years go faster after you hit the 1/3rd of a century mark.
August 30th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Bah, I did forget. But hey, my mom and uncle went to Chico. (I used to trail along behind Mom when we had school holidays because I loved soaking in the university atmosphere.) It’s a fine school. It’s seriously where I thought I’d end up until I aced the PSAT. And then doors opened.
But I grew up a Redding kid. Chico’s the closest state school (and for a very long time the closest four year school) to home, so it’s natural I thought I’d be there.
And yeah, you’re just a bit over three years older than me. Wow, I just kinda assumed you were older. Don’t ask me why. (I’ll be 34 on my next birthday, in November, which should have been just after Big Game.)
September 1st, 2012 at 7:10 am
[…] Nevada will be, coming home to the newly renovated Memorial Stadium. Read the previous ones here: Part I, Part II, Part […]