DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Many students made the
road trip to Cal to cheer on the Bruins and give them as much of a
home field advantage as possible.
By Adam Karon
Daily Bruin Reporter
BERKELEY “”mdash; Interstate 5 was a river of blue and gold
Friday evening as cars and trucks from both schools headed north
for what used to be called “all-Cal weekend.”
Nearly all of the 56,000 fans on hand to watch UCLA lose to
California 46-38 wore their school colors, which proved to be
eerily similar. So much so that even to the UCLA players it seemed
like home.
“Our fans are great,” said safety Marques Anderson.
“Any time they come to games it gets us hyped. Today it
almost felt like home.”
But the Bruins didn’t play that way. Amidst the blue and
gold in Cal’s Memorial Stadium, Saturday was an overwhelming
amount of red ““ on the faces of Bruins fans, flushed from the
sun and disappointed at the fate of their team.
Perhaps the thousands of UCLA fans on hand were simply trying to
give UCLA better odds of winning. After all, the Bruins hold a 4-0
record in Pasadena while they have yet to claim a victory on the
road.
Whatever reasons they might have, there were plenty of Bruins in
Berkeley on Saturday.
“I came up because all of my friends came up,” said
second-year electrical engineering student Andy Isaacson. “I
like football, but it was more of chance for a road trip with my
buddies.”
Asked how he felt about the result of the game, Isaacson merely
shrugged and said, “Oh well, at least they have good raves
here.”
Others took the result more to heart.
“I am disappointed we lost,” third-year student Evan
Ben-Artzi said. “But I was mostly disappointed that we had to
watch another team storm the field. We beat both Alabama and
Michigan and it’s tough to know that we will never (storm the
field).”
“I saw a lot of Bruin fans out there today,” said
freshman receiver Tab Perry, a native of nearby Milpitas. “It
felt good; it made us feel at home.”
Some fans were unhappy to see the Bruins squander a game to
another UC school.
“It’s tough to drive all the way up here in a
crowded car with annoying people to watch your team get beat by
Berkeley,” second-year business-economics student Jon Sher
said. “I’m glad I came, I just wished we could have
played better and had a bigger impact on the game.”
The fans did in fact have an effect on the game. Once overtime
rolled around, each coach tried to direct his team into an endzone
surrounded by their fans.
The Bruins fans in the south zone were so loud that Bears coach
Todd Holmoe changed directions prior to the start of the first
overtime.
“I love our fans,” wide receiver Brian Poli-Dixon
said. “We definitely take into account where our fans
are.”
Those fans that were able to endure countless repetitions of the
schools’ similar fight songs stayed to the end of a great
college football game. While there were no chants of “take
off that red shirt,” there was plenty of rivalry to go
around.
Bruin fans were restricted to each end zone, with the south side
housing students. With each round of the Berkeley fight song, UCLA
students broke into an 8-clap, hoping to drown out the Cal section.
Like the Bears football team, the UCLA section faced insurmountable
odds, but hung in the whole game.
It wasn’t until a Cory Paus pass was intercepted in the
last overtime that Bruins fans accepted their fate.
“Well, it’s back to the books,” Sher said as
he left the stadium. “I guess we’ll have to come up
again when I’m a senior.”
Two years is a long time to wait for revenge, but Bruins fans
will undoubtedly turn up the next time the team heads north.