Fighting, football, and fermented beverages

Now with even more alliteration!

The first Cal football home game took place this saturday, and it was a good one. We kicked Minnesota’s ass (42-17), had a number of spectacular plays, and the event was generally entertaining. The most exciting thing wasn’t the football, however, but the card stunts.

I was on the side of the student section, so I was able to view all the proceedings sans cards and therefore (sort of) sans partisanship. Also, I was less drunk then most. Basically, once the cards were passed out, people started realizing that the Rally Committee or the fans or someone had passed the cards out all wrong, and the section-specific directions were severely mixed up. Still, people dug merrily into their cards and seemed ready to give it a go anyway. That is, until head’s starting turning around up toward the middle of the bleachers where a number of students were standing and seemingly dealing with some sort of fracas. From what I can piece together after talking with friends, there was a fight that broke out in that area, possibly concerning the misallocated cards, the end result being that the entire middle of the student section was standing right when they decided to put the camera on us.

The mic men tried to calm things down but there was nothing doing, and then the big screen became uninterested in our plight and moved on to the girl’s lacrosse players on the field. The mic men said something about card stunts being passed over, and a general murmur of discontentment was heard from the crowd. After a minute or two (during which the mic men looked exasperated), they decided to try and direct us to do card stunts anyway. This was a failure before it began, though, as there was no big screen coverage with which to gauge the accuracy of the stunts. Seeing as all the cards had already been mixed up the results were probably pretty damn hilarious for the alumni section, though; (Eva says: “I was laughing my ass off”).

After about a minute the crowd had given up, and the chucking of cards began! Rally Comm desperately tried to get people to pass in the cards rather than fling them about, but when has that ever worked? Us students, after all, needed some compensation for the absolute failure that card stunts turned out to be. I have no hate for Rally Comm, though; they were very composed throughout the whole ordeal, and, I mean, c’mon; they’re Rally Comm! Spread the love.

And that’s about that. The Cal Band gave a good performance (ah, the sweet sonorous sounds of Blondie as performed by a marching band) and, as mentioned, our football team rocked everyone’s socks right off. Good times.

Posted on 09/11/06 at 7:12PM,