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To borrow the well-worn line from Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, 1999 was the best of seasons, and it was the worst of seasons for Cal football. It was the best in the sense that the Pac-10 conference was a wide-open run for the money. No one team arose as a dominant force, indeed whole weeks passed without a Pac-10 representative among the top 25 teams in the country. This may have injured conference pride, but it made for a very exciting season. Fielding an offensive team that could most mercifully be described as "game," Cal stayed at least technically in the hunt for a piece of the conference title for more than half the season, and as late as the penultimate match with Oregon's Ducks, could picture themselves playing in a bowl game. Had either the Oregon or Washington games featured different final two minutes, the Bears would be playing football in January. The journey was great; one could only wish the destination had been a bit more appealing. It was the best of times because Cal went into every Pac-10 game with a reasonable hope of winning, and acquitted themselves well almost each week. By hook or by crook they were in almost every game. The only exceptions were due to extraordinary circumstances. The final score of the Big Game, 31-13, sounds lopsided, but the game seemed in doubt until well into the fourth quarter. The trip to Lincoln, Nebraska where the defense played bravely but the outcome was written in stone was actually a closer game than the final score attested. Nebraska could field three teams, and the starting team is the most important thing in the state. What can be done in a situation like that except play with honor? The only true deviation from a season of exciting contests was the bizarre debacle against the Washington State Cougars. Travelling to Pullman has been a dastardly enterprise for Cal in recent years, and 1999 was no exception as the only truly awful team in the Pac-10 cast a spell on the Bears. But Pullman was an aberration. If one could put aside the desperate longing of the true Cal fan for nothing but victory, it was one entertaining season. What made it the best of times? Cal fielded a ferocious defense that could play with any team in the country. And Cal beat both Los Angeles schools. It is small to gloat, but gloat I did when Cal shut out UCLA and shut up the Trojans and their annoying band. It was sweet to watch Nick Harris punt. This young man is destined to play on Sundays, and the reliability and finesse of his punts amounted to poetry in motion. The game is called football, but it is rare to see anyone with a foot so talented. No stereotypical punter who avoided physical contact, Harris was a football player who punted. He was even assessed an unnecessary roughness penalty for a blow he delivered after a punt against Oregon State. And, finally, we were able to watch the emergence of Joe Igber, a true freshman who showed flash and talent at running back. A pleasing combination of talent, intelligence, and articulateness, Igber promises three more years of adrenaline-pumping runs. Each time he touches the ball one believes that anything is possible. Sadly, 1999 was the worst of times, too. The Bears offense was anemic all year. On the first play from scrimmage in the first game against Rutgers, Marcus Fields broke free for a long touchdown run. In a way it was the high point of the offense for the year. In fact, the offense began taking hits even before the season started. Two nascent quarterbacks fled the squad before the season because of the anticipated arrival of a mighty freshman quarterback, Kyle Boller, who had a stack of press clippings a mile high. Foreseeing no chance to play, a sophomore transferred and another incoming freshman changed his school. This left the quarterbacking chores to sophomore Sam Clemons and the redoubtable Boller. Although Clemons entered the first game against Rutgers as the starter, it was not long in that game before Boller took the helm. By the third week of the season, Boller was the starter, and he remained in charge until injured in the tenth game against Oregon. Though he showed flashes of brilliance, no consistent blaze of glory manifested itself. Boller's injury set the stage for high drama. In one of those twists of fate that seem dropped directly from a scriptwriter's table, by the Oregon game Clemons had sustained a leg injury, leaving senior Wes Dalton, a local boy from Danville, a walk-on who had been fifth on the depth chart as late as last spring, to pilot the frayed Bears into the Big Game. Dalton played with great heart against Stanford, almost breaking the game open on one or two plays, but in the end he could not ignite the moribund offense. Focusing on the quarterback situation as the reason for the poor offensive season is not fair. No part of the offense functioned well. The offensive line did not block as well as it might, though things seemed to improve as the season went on. More critical was the receiving corps, which succumbed to a raft of injuries. There was a problem of simply putting bodies onto the field. Prior to his injury, Clemons was working as a wide receiver. This is a testimony to his athleticism and heart, but it also demonstrates how depleted the receiving corps was. Before the season ended, Marcus Fields, the original starter at tailback and several defensive backs would be put at receiver. Indeed, one of the most exciting offensive plays of the year was a touchdown pass to Drae Harris, a cornerback switched to offense, who took a short pass and ran 83 yards against Oregon State. Tribute though this is to Harris, it is not an endorsement of the supply of natural wide receivers. This was simply not an offensive year. It was the defense that carried the team and provided excellent entertainment. Why was the defense so good? Defensive coordinator Lyle Setencich took what had been an embarrassing Cal defense a few years ago and made it formidable. Using intelligence and wily planning, working out of a set of basic formations that disguised what they were doing, the defense, in my son Danny's word, "ruled." Watching them fight gamely against Nebraska and against the pyrotechnics of BYU was inspiring. In the Big Game the defense played with ferocity and skill. Stanford's first three drives in the third quarter netted a negative 15 yards, a negative 17 yards, and a negative 5 yards. The defense largely throttled the Cardinal attack, but it received no help from the offense. No defense can hold forever. The most exciting moment in the Bears' games this year were when Deltha O'Neal touched the ball. A low murmur of "Deltha, Deltha" would rise each time he went back to receive a kick. When he intercepted a pass each Blue heart rose. Amazingly, he returned four interceptions for touchdowns this year, tying an NCAA record. Between his kick returns and his defense, he single-handedly kept Cal in several games. What could match his virtuosity in the Big Game? After Stanford's opening touchdown, O'Neal returned the ensuing kick-off 100 yards for six points. Later he returned a punt for a touchdown. O'Neal personally scored 12 of Cal's 13 Big Game points. Stanford finally gave up and started kicking off out of bounds, happily taking the penalty that put the ball at the 35. It was small price to pay for keeping the ball away from O'Neal. As if his special teams play was not enough, O'Neal intercepted a Stanford pass in the end zone. It had to be one of the greatest individual efforts ever seen in a Big Game. Just watching him was worth the price of admission. Sekou Sanyika was another joy to behold. Sanyika played brilliantly, my favorite game of his being against Washington, where he twice intercepted the Huskies quarterback, using both guile and athleticism to keep the Bears alive. At times I would just train my binoculars on him and watch him work. There was also Andre Carter, playing both strong and smart at defensive end penetrating into the opponent's backfield and disrupting things; and Pete Destefano, roaming the secondary looking for someone to pop. There was always excitement when the defense was on the field. Though I have singled out a few players, the whole defensive cast deserves great credit. Early in the season Matt Beck, one of the defensive stalwarts, was lost to injury, and yet they played on. Limiting high-powered offense after high-powered offense, they kept Cal competitive. A tip of the collective hat to Setencich and his troops. My favorite spot on campus is the statue of Pappy Waldorf that sits at the edge of Faculty Glade. When working through a difficult problem, I sit on the nearby bench and cogitate. The statue stands for the love of players for their coach, but it also reminds one of a time when Cal football was a dominant national force. I often wonder if those days can ever return. Big-time college football is now a full time business. And it is a real business. Coaches like Florida's Steve Spurrier command salaries in the millions of dollars. At schools that play football at the top level, football players are creatures apart from the campus. The players are local heroes, and they are treated with kid gloves in all aspects of their life. The football program has a life of its own. It is not so at Cal. The coaches here are smart and dedicated, but they are not the titans of the campus. The players have excellent training facilities, but they have to go to classes at Berkeley, where there are few places to hide. I had one of the starters in my Law and Society in China class last spring, and I can attest that Brian Surgener is not only a fine tight end, but also a good student. Nor did I even know he was a football player until the end of the semester. The bottom line may be that, under the current state of college athletics, the Golden Bears may never seriously contend for a national championship--but they are still great fun to watch. If the Pac-10 bubbles along at its current state of stasis, the dream of a bowl appearance can still delight. And never forget that the Cal stadium is the best place in the world to see a football game. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon few experiences can match watching the Bears in action. I wish we had won them all, but I still think it was the best of times. Go Bears! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sportswriter Robert Berring, Boalt '74, MLIS '74, grew up in Canton, Ohio, home of professional football's Hall of Fame. Although he was a football fanatic, poor vision prevented him from playing the sport; he did, however, excel academically. Berring was the first student from his high school to go to an Ivy League college. "I was so hopelessly in love with football," he says, "that I went out for and became Harvard's football manager." Which was a fairly big job in those days, he says; the student manager arranged trips, booked hotels, and paid expenses. "A lot of little tycoons held that job," says Berring, "including the current vice president of Disney." After completing a non-tycoon major in Chinese languages at Harvard, Berring came to Berkeley for law school. In an unprecedented set of flip-flops, Berring transferred from Boalt to Harvard Law School after his first year; and then transferred back to Boalt after year two. "I may be the only person to transfer out of Harvard Law School," says Berring. As a result of this cross-cultural research, Berring found out "that Berkeley is a much better place to be than Harvard." He's been here ever since, and is currently Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law as well as Law Librarian at Boalt Hall. Berring has written for the Monthly about the fate of the library, the world of cyberspace, and the problems of privatization. |
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