November 20th, 2009
From Yahoo Sports Sophmore Kicker David Seawright from Cal:
I now take you to the inner sanctum of God’s University, where there is a single-minded focus on Axe-retention that must come to fruition Saturday. So allow me to turn things over to Cal sophomore kicker David Seawright – and be sure to check out Part I of my triumphant return to the nation’s greatest student newspaper, with Part II coming on game day.
It’s Big Game week, and in a town commonly called “Bezerkeley,” this week is particularly wild.
It all began with Saturday’s down-to-the-wire victory over Arizona, made possible by a bizarre play by Wildcats quarterback Nick Foles which turned third-and-3 within field-goal range into fourth-and-17, pushing them into four-down territory when down by two.
This week’s opponent, Stanford, announced on Monday that Tiger Woods would serve as the team’s honorary captain. I personally witnessed Tiger’s greatness walking the 2008 U.S. Open’s 19-hole playoff with Rocco Mediate.
I have no qualms about trotting out our own university-affiliated prestige in response. It turns out, however, that a team can’t have 65 honorary captains (one for each of our Nobel laureates, compared to the Farm’s 51, for those of you keeping score at home).
On Tuesday, Cal’s greatest and most vocal supporter (my esteemed host) returned to his humble beginnings at the world’s finest student newspaper and offered Stanford hate of epic proportions.
On Wednesday, the Cal student body, in typical Berkeley fashion, kicked off a three-day, school-wide strike in response to expansive budget cuts, although I have my suspicions about the true intent of the demonstration.
Cal’s Greek Theater, which hosted the Dalai Lama last spring, will be set ablaze with fiery emotion (and a bonfire) on Friday as the students rally to retain the Axe, as we have six of the last seven years.
As I join my teammates in pregame preparations in Palo Alto, my colleagues at the Daily Californian will face off with our inferior counterparts at the Stanford Daily in a flag football showdown called the Ink Bowl.
Since the writers from Leland Stanford Junior College are likely to uphold the tradition of things (like grades, for example) being handed to them, I not only expect the Daily Cal to trounce them in our traditional manner – last time we lost I was 13 years old – but also fully acknowledge that we could cover the event more thoroughly due to our superior journalistic talents.
And on Saturday evening, to top it all of, we will kick off the 112th Big Game at Stanford Stadium in a clash between two teams fresh off emotional victories.
After a particularly big week, the Big Game will surely exemplify hard fought football in such a way to live up to its name.
I just hope it doesn’t come down to something like this.
The Kicking System 