(Written by jsnell)

(The following was originally posted before the Cal-USC game on November 18, 2006. The situation is not entirely the same: this is not a play-in game, because Oregon State lurks the following week. And yet I feel the need to restate just what’s at stake, in the grand scheme of things. And so here you go: a rerun.)

This is it. The Rose Bowl is on the line. A game that Cal can win to potentially end 50 years of frustration. To help the faithful Cal fans reach one of their lifelong — and, at times, seemingly insurmountable — sports goals.

I have said for many years now that I have only two sports wishes in my life. One is for my beloved San Francisco Giants to win a World Series. (Hope Russ Ortiz still has that ball.) The other is for my beloved Cal Bears to play in (not win, just play in) the Rose Bowl.

And now a (perhaps temporary) sense of calm has settled over me. I can’t play in the game, have no control over the outcome. USC has been, over the last few years, one of the most dominant teams in college football.

And all Cal has to do is win. Win, and erase 50 years of misery. Win, and heal feelings about Bruce Snyder and Roger Theder and Joe Kapp. Win, and give Cal fans something greater to hang their hats on than the crushing of a random trombone player. Win.

Thousands of trees have been chopped down to supply paper for navel-gazing Bostonians to write about what the Boston Red Sox curse, and its exorcism, meant to them. Cubs fans are famous for suffering endlessly at the hands of bad teams interspersed with the occasional moment of hope that’s immediately dashed by painful failure.

I understand what they feel. But it doesn’t go the other way. Most people outside of our little circle do not know the magnitude of what this would mean to us. Cal fans have suffered in silence, suffered through Tom Holmoe and Keith Gilbertson and the Joe Kapp years and many years of poor-to-mediocre play that preceded the appearance of my young self on the benches of Memorial Stadium.

I can’t speak for the new faces that have filled Memorial Stadium the last few years. I’m sure they’re excited, and I’m glad they’re aboard for the ride. But I speak as someone who has seen the lean times, who chanted the mantra “Keep It Close, Lose With Dignity,” who stood outside the stadium and cheered Tom Holmoe because Cal merely lost to Nebraska rather than getting blown out. Who watched Stanford run around with the axe innumerable years and then cap it off with their own inconceivable trip to the Rose Bowl. Who has seen older people from the benches around us disappear from this world during the off-season, never to see the Bears reach that goal.

The other week I was riding the bus to work and began to think about what I would do if Cal played in the Rose Bowl. I really couldn’t even get my arms around it, emotionally. And very quickly I stuffed it all back down under a pillow in a corner of my mind, promising myself that there was no point in running that emotional simulation when the goal was so far off. There would be plenty of time to live the event after it occurred, if somehow a series of ridiculous events that began with Cal hiring a brilliant football coach and recruiting a series of star players culminated in the most ridiculous event of all: a conference championship and a berth in the Rose Bowl.

There would be tears, certainly. And madness, incoherent shouting and whooping. And perhaps the distinct buzzing feeling that we’ve all been transported to some parallel universe where black is white and night is day and man bites dog.

But that’s all hypothetical. And it will remain so unless Jeff Tedford’s team does one thing in the Coliseum. One simple thing.

Win.