What a time to be a sports fan in the Bay Area—especially at Stanford. In recent years, there has been no more depressed sports area in the country than the Bay Area (except, of course, Cleveland, which is perennially depressed), but all of a sudden, things are turning around. Heck, the Raiders even scored 59 points yesterday.
Of course, this rebirth (birth?) of sports success in the Bay begins with the San Francisco Giants. The Giants are headed to the World Series—who would have thunk it back in April? Not me, for one. As I recall, I predicted that both the Giants and the Rangers would miss the playoffs. Oh well. Can’t win ‘em all.
Seriously, though, even if it was with smoke and mirrors (also known as Aubrey Huff and Pat Burrell), the Giants have scratched and clawed their way within four wins of eternal glory.
How rare is this moment for the Giants? Well, they haven’t won a World Series since 1954, when they played at the Polo Grounds…in New York. To be living here, just outside San Francisco, while the team has a chance to bring the city its first title since Jerry Rice was catching touchdowns is pretty special. Even if half of today’s self-proclaimed Giants fans couldn’t have cared less about the team six months ago, living in a newly electric environment is great. People high fiving strangers, class times changing to accommodate the Giants games—hey, all of a sudden it’s a sports town.
And then there is Stanford football. Saturday’s win, albeit somewhat lackluster, guaranteed that the Cardinal will be going to a bowl game for the second consecutive year—and it was so expected that I didn’t feel compelled to write an entire column about it like last year!
Not only is Stanford going bowling again, but that bowl could easily be the Rose Bowl or another BCS bowl. Who would have thought that was possible five years ago? Again, not me.
Unlike the Giants fans, however, it’s not clear who is noticing Stanford’s success. This weekend was homecoming, but apparently everyone at this school and all of its alumni, outside of me and about 14 other people, are related to the Wicked Witch of the West and melt in the rain.
How can this team be 6-1 and have so few people at any game, let alone homecoming? And these are the fans who are supposedly so into the game and the team that they rushed the field after a win just two weeks ago (but I won’t get into that in any more detail than I already have).
When Jim Harbaugh leaves Stanford for the University of Michigan or some NFL team in a few years, Stanford fans are going to be sad and call him a traitor—but really, who could blame him? Harbuagh has done everything in his power to turn Stanford from a nothing program to a BCS factor—and fans can’t fill up the stadium on homecoming. Hell, they can’t even fill up half of the stadium on homecoming.
Michigan’s stadium holds more than 110,000 people—more than twice the capacity of Stanford Stadium—and is full week in and week out, excluding probably 110,000 other people who didn’t get tickets but wish they did. Sure, Michigan is a larger school so it has a larger student population and alumni base, but I don’t buy the excuse that Stanford’s small size is a reason it can’t fill a stadium.
I also don’t buy the excuse that Stanford was supposed to blow out Washington State, so why waste your time attending the game. Guess what. USC was supposed to blow out Stanford in 2007, but look what happened then. And the Cardinal didn’t rout the Cougars on Saturday. It was a marginally close game, thanks to some Swiss cheese secondary play by Stanford.
Yes, that was tangential from my original point—that it is a good time to be a sports fan around here and it sure would be nice if a few more fans around here showed their support.
Daniel Bohm doesn’t melt in the rain. He bleeds Cardinal red. High-five him at [email protected].