Jack's Lament

Happy Halloween.



But who here would ever understand
That the Pumpkin King with the skeleton grin
Would tire of his crown, if they only understood
He'd give it all up if he only could

Oh, there's an empty place in my bones
That calls out for something unknown
The fame and praise come year after year
Does nothing for these empty tears

Yum. Roasted Duck.

I have never....

...NEVER.....

....seen Memorial Stadium like the way it was on Saturday night!

If you caught the game on TV, maybe you have an idea. The sold out crowd of 72,516 fans rocked that old stadium from a half hour *before* kick-off until the clock wound down to 0:00.

Of course, the team did their part to keep us all happy and pumped. But the crowd really stepped up. For those of you at the USC game where we went into triple over-time and won...well, it was kind of like that...but for the whole damn game.

The student section, when Oregon had the ball, just never stopped. The blue zone, the gold zone, and even the old farts on the shady side got up off their feet and yelled their hearts out on every third down.

It was amazing.

And then, to have Cal's newest nobel prize win, Professor Smoot, recieve standing ovations when he walked on the field, and lead the entire stadium in some cheers...well it just made me feel really proud to be a graduate of a university that really has it all. :-D

Go Bears!!!

--------------------Favorite Quotes from the Newpapers--------------------------

Cal Roasts Ducks
Associated Press

"Tedford has turned Cal into a football power - but it's still Cal. Cosmologist George F. Smoot, who won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday, was introduced before the game to the cheering student section, which chanted "Nobel Prize! Nobel Prize!"

Golden Touch
San Jose Mercury News

"This was all about nerve-tingling, trumpet-blaring bigness. Serious bigness. Undeniable bigness.

Everything about Cal's raucous 45-24 victory over Oregon was painted in fluorescent colors and shouted at jet-engine decibels. Every play arrived with the force of nearby thunder.

Nothing was small at a sold out Memorial Stadium on Saturday. Everything that happened was goliath, oversized, mega-meaningful.

``Well, it was huge,'' Coach Jeff Tedford said with a beautiful smile after the trouncing was complete. ``It was big.''

Cal's resounding win helped by a loud crowd
San Jose Mercury News

"The ground has yet to be broken for the planned renovation, yet this was the new Memorial Stadium on Saturday night.

Cal Coach Jeff Tedford had challenged the fans to make the house a hostile environment. A sold-out crowd of 72,516 answered the call.

``It was like a rock concert out there,'' Tedford said after the Bears' 45-24 victory over Oregon. ``I love it. It was kind of like payback out there, because everywhere we go, we run into that.''

Thirty minutes before the scheduled 5 p.m. kickoff, the crowd was rocking the stadium. The program had enlisted some to carry signs that cried out for ``NOISE.'' The replay in the stadium urged the fans to rock out, and Cal's defensive players waved their arms for a crescendo."

Oregon isn't ready for the big time yet
Oregon Register-Guard

Saturday evening, Tedford got what he wanted from just the fourth Cal sellout for an opponent other than Stanford in the past 50 years - an unrelenting noise. "When you get a crowd excited, it can be a tremendous help," Bellotti said. "Sometimes there hasn't been a crowd here. There have been more Duck fans than other people."

As an experience, this game was reminiscent of those Oregon-Washington games in the mid-1990s, when Oregon, up-and-coming, finally had some success against the Huskies, the program it so dearly wanted to match and surpass. Saturday, California, a football program modeled in so many ways on Oregon's, had the louder uniforms, the fuller stadium, the faster and more explosive offense, the hungrier team, and the better team."

This Time, it's Cal that makes the Fashion Statement
The Oregonian

"The Ducks obviously didn't keep the crowd out of the game, either. A record 72,516 fans loudly answered coach Jeff Tedford's pleas to make Memorial Stadium a noisy place. They did that and briefly broke into an "overrated" chorus in the fourth quarter."

Bears too smart, too tough
The Oregonian

"A t halftime, the California student section used colored cards to put together a little vignette that began with a duck in flight, changed to a shotgun blasting the duck out of the air and concluded with the duck being served on a platter.

Smart kids, those Cal students. In three minutes, they described the game.

Cal brought a 12-gauge, Oregon a popgun."

......

Cal could be nation's No. 2 team
The Sporting News

"There goes that damn cannon again.

BOOM!

It's up there, perched on a hill outside Cal's Memorial Stadium. But fans don't mind. Heck, no. The loud echo through Strawberry Canyon makes this zany and brainy crowd giddy because it signals a Golden Bear score.

BOOM!

See, there it goes again. And so it went on this night during a -- What else? -- thunderous 45-24 Cal victory over Oregon. It was a showdown that would determine who is the second-best team in the Pac-10. But, who am I kidding? Given another unimpressive USC win (this time over Washington), this was a showdown to determine who was the best team in the Pac-10.

And it wasn't even close. It's Cal.

Go ahead, pull the string on that cannon again.

BOOM!

---------------------------------------

Boom! :-)


Bear Territory Cheer: Featuring Dan, Morgan, and Yours Truly:

Ahem...

Hello.

Is this thing on?

Good.

::clears throat::

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

::cough::

Thank you.