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After drying out from last weekend’s rain and hail beset final home game at present day Memorial Stadium, here are some observations, recollections, and speculations on the end of the Cal football season, the temporary pause in 2011 while Memorial Stadium is renovated, and seasons to come in 2012 and after. 

One set of thoughts—which I’ll get to near the end of this commentary—has to do with how the City and community might better respond to football day visitors to Berkeley. 

But first, the football. Soon after the beginning of November, the Cal football team had the prospect of closing out a so-far disappointing season in a respectable manner. 

Although the starting quarterback had been lost to injury, the Bears were returning home for a three game stretch after a win over Washington State that temporarily lifted the “Curse of the Palouse”, familiar to all long-time Cal fans.  

The final opponents were formidable—#1 Oregon, Top-10 Stanford, and middling Washington—but all the games were in Memorial Stadium where the team has had a golden winning record over the past several seasons. 

A single win out of the three games would make Cal bowl eligible and give them a 6-6 season. Two wins—especially if one of them were over Stanford in the Big Game—would mean a 7-5 final record, include a victory over a Top-10 ranked team, and take a lot of the sting out of earlier disappointments.  

And a win over #1 Oregon in particular would upset the national rankings and give Cal at least an enduring asterisk in college football annals. 

And winning three out of three, to end the season? It would be an almost fairy tale ending, with Cal finishing a solid 8-4, retaining the Axe, defeating two Top-10 teams (Oregon and Stanford) and definitively headed to a post season bowl and the chance of a 9 win season. 

Instead, November became a particularly bitter month. The Bears played unexpectedly close to Oregon but lost. Then a lackluster effort against Stanford—beginning with two Cal fumbles in their first three plays on offense—cost them the Axe and the chance for a winning season record. The loss ended their lengthy run of 50,000-plus spectator crowds at home.  

And a last second loss to Washington last Saturday before a hail-battered, crowd of under 45,000 on Thanksgiving weekend, made it 0-3 down the stretch in what San Francisco Chronicle writer John Crumpacker called “one ugly little football season.” 

The game was not only the end of the season but the last game at Memorial Stadium before the interior of the structure is gutted and rebuilt in a somewhat different configuration.  

Memorial, which opened in 1923 with a win over Stanford, was sent out with a discouraging defeat.  

There is one point of comparison between the 1923 opening game and the 2010 closer: Cal played Washington with a back and forth punting game in the first half that yielded only three points—a literally last second field goal by Cal—between the two squads after thirty minutes of play.  

Andy Smith, Cal’s legendary coach of the late ‘teens and early 1920s might have recognized the style of play. He disdained offensive theatrics, preferring instead to punt for position until the opponent made a mistake or broke under pressure.  

Unlike Smith’s “Wonder Teams”, however—the teams that generated the enthusiasm and money to build mammoth Memorial Stadium—the Bears didn’t win this year. 

Their 2010 performance also left questions in coaching.  

Cal’s Jeff Tedford has had a notable run to date. He started at Cal in 2002, after the team had its worst season in history and had finished 1-10. His first team went 7-5. His second team, 2003, went to the first of seven bowl games and finished 8-6. In his fourth season, 2006, the Bears won a share of the Pac-10 title for the first time since the 1970s (but, alas, not a Rose Bowl appearance).  

He’s had eight winning seasons in a row and has a 72-42 overall record at Cal, one season finish (2004) in the national Top-10, and—always a major factor for Cal fans—a 7-2-1 Big Game record against Stanford. 

Only two other coaches in Cal history have had a better long-term record, Andy Smith from 1916 to 1925, and Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf from 1947 to 1956.  

Smith also had eight consecutive winning seasons—1918 to 1925—and turned the Golden Bears into a powerhouse never seen before or since. His overall record was 74-16-7, and his teams won five conference titles and went to the Rose Bowl twice.  

At their best, they were literally unstoppable. In 1920 they scored 510 points over the season and gave up only 14, and were national champions. That year they even caused St. Mary’s—often a stalwart Bay Area football power—to give up football after a 127-0 defeat.  

A quarter century later Waldorf coached for ten seasons, and was 3-7 in his last, before he retired. His best run was six consecutive winning seasons from 1947 to 1952 before two tied, and two losing, years. He took Cal to three Rose Bowls. 

Tedford is now indisputably in the same league with Smith and Waldorf, although both a national championship (the Grail of any college football coach) and a Rose Bowl appearance (Nirvana for all Cal fans) have eluded him. But whether he will be able to sustain his run and make himself a singular success among Cal coaches remains to be seen. 

Can the program and institution sustain highly successful football for more than seven or eight seasons at a time, without long stretches of frustration and mediocrity in-between? “No”, if we use the 20^th century as a guide. “Maybe” (I’m quite skeptical) in the 21^st. 

The Bears will play “home” games in San Francisco in 2011, and are scheduled to return to an upgraded Memorial, with a smaller seating capacity, for the 2012 season.  

Before that return the expansive but awkwardly named “Student Athlete High Performance Center”, well under way outside the west wall, will be completed and occupied by coaching and training quarters for several sports, including football. 

In recognition of the last game before renovation, there were low-key commemorative moments interspersed through the game, with some of the history of Memorial related over the public address system and on the video screen by the south scoreboard.  

After the game, as the majority of Cal fans scattered and Washington fans cheered their players in the end zone, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Athletic Director Sandy Barbour made brief remarks to those remaining. 

Birgeneau read a speech in which he referred obliquely to the long running Stadium tree-sit confrontation. “We encountered some unexpected opposition, some legal and some colorful as only Berkeley can produce.” 

“This has been a long time coming, but the day is finally here”, Barbour said. “As a campus we have been dreaming about this moment for more than 20 years.” 

After the short ceremony, the crowd dwindled to a few hundred who watched the Cal Band and an enthusiastic rump contingent of the Washington Band alternate vigorous numbers facing the west bleachers.  

The Cal Band had played the Lady Ga Ga hit, “Bad Romance”, earlier in the game; the Washington Band reciprocated after, while groups of musicians from both bands set down their instruments to dance. 

Seagulls settled into the stands to pick through the rubbish, and some Cal fans tried out a sample section of seats from the new Stadium. 

A heavy security presence—both uniformed officers and rent-a-guards in yellow windbreakers—was somewhat inexplicably maintained around the perimeter of the field, guards glowering up at the few remaining spectators. I had been told that fans would be invited to come down to the field for a last visit after the last game, but that was not to be. 

Finally, as the bands wound down, after an afternoon of chilly rain showers, brief sun, and hail, the westering sun came out and glowed gold on both the yellow metal seats of the east bleachers where a big blue “C” is painted on the student rooting section and tree-softened but still scarred Charter Hill which was partially carved away in the 1922-23 construction of the Stadium.  

A few diehard “Tightwad Hill” spectators stood high on the damp slope amidst the pines until well after the game ended, perhaps remembering the best moments of past games viewed for free. 

I have my own short checklist of Memorial Stadium moments. I’ll leave the football highlights to others and, instead, note some of the non-athletic events that deserve to be remembered in association with Memorial Stadium. 

First, it has hosted speeches by two United States Presidents, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. (Should we hope for an Obama address there, too, someday?). Kennedy’s speech in 1963 at Charter Day was given to the largest crowd he ever addressed in person. 

Memorial was the scene of the first successful helicopter flight in the Western United States in the 1944s, as well as neighborhood-controversial concerts by Paul McCartney in the 1990s.  

Numerous Cal Commencement exercises were held there in the middle decades of the 20^th century, after the graduating classes grew too large for the Greek Theatre. A stage would typically be set up facing south, with graduates arrayed on the field, and family and friends behind them in the south end zone stands. 

Possibly the most unusual Memorial Stadium events were a memorial service in 1926, when the ashes of Andy Smith were scattered over the field from an airplane, and a 1940s extravaganza organized by the armed forces in which the playing field was turned into a Pacific Island and successfully assaulted in a mock battle before enthusiastically patriotic crowds.  

With Memorial Stadium under re-construction—estimated price tag, $321 million—2011 will mean a number of firsts for the Golden Bears and their hometown. 

For the first time in more than a century—since the 1890s—a year will pass with no intercollegiate football games played in Berkeley (I count as football the small number of rugby seasons in that period). 

By the same token, Cal will spend its first season ever playing all of its games “away”—including San Francisco’s AT & T Park in that definition. 

For the community, there will be no “football Saturdays” when tens of thousands of fans will trek into town looking for scarce parking, and pre-and-post game drinking and dining.  

This will undoubtedly be a relief to those who regularly leave town on football Saturdays, kvetch about traffic, or buy earplugs to keep out the Stadium roar. 

However, these five or six Saturday a year events may collectively bring to Berkeley more visitors than come for any other event or reason. They fill up local hotels, pubs, eateries, and pay parking lots. 

The temporary loss of this seasonal largess has already caused some consternation among downtown businesses. A recent article on the Berkeleyside blog mentioned some ideas the Downtown Berkeley Association is considering, including setting up big screens to try to attract smaller game day crowds of local spectators who can’t get seats at, or don’t want to travel to, AT & T Park for the season. 

We will also see whether the perpetual City complaints about Cal athletic events costing the municipality money hold water. The City should canvass its parking ticket and traffic fine revenues from home game days this year, as well as extra enforcement costs and sales tax revenues (if that’s possible). 

Then compare them, this time next year, to revenues and costs on the “home” game days when Cal is playing in San Francisco. 

Beyond that, I have a few suggestions for the City and local business organizations to consider in what can be an introspective year before Cal home football games return in 2012. 

First, can’t the City of Berkeley provide just a tiny fig leaf of welcome to all those visitors? 

How are they presently greeted? The City installs temporary flashing signs on trailers along the major streets heading to campus, including College, Telegraph and University. 

Thus, for many, their first experience of Berkeley is a big blinking board. “Football Game Days. Traffic Fines Doubled.” 

Absurd. Couldn’t that be composed with a bit of sensitivity? Perhaps, “Welcome to Berkeley. Drive Safely. Park Legally. Thank You.”  

Second, merchant groups would do themselves a favor by providing some coherent welcome to town. 

Before the Oregon game I was downtown, having lunch. I watched numerous groups of green and mustard clad visitors emerge from the BART Station and look around, then wander, in some confusion trying to figure out the way to the stadium, or what restaurants offered their favorite type of food before heading off to the game. 

Many looked quite bewildered. Our downtown is relatively small, but it can still be disorienting for the first time, especially if, like many Pac-10 fans, you’re used to driving up to your stadium and parking in open acres immediately surrounding it. 

One thing the Downtown Berkeley Association should do for every home game in the future is staff a temporary visitor kiosk in the BART plaza distributing hellos, good cheer, and practical information, maps, coupons.  

Where to find a good pizza joint? A gourmet meal? A kid-friendly restaurant? Cheap eats? Some entertainment after the game? A public bathroom? How to head to the Stadium? Where to stay in town if they come again? What Berkeley sights might they want to come back and see?  

I’d even like to see greeters downtown singling out fans in the opponent’s colors and approaching them to say, “Welcome to Berkeley, Thank you for visiting.” 

The Telegraph Business Improvement District could follow suit with some welcome points along Telegraph and College Avenue. 

Let’s actually try and tell all those thousands of people who form a captive visitor audience each year something about Berkeley beyond the fact that we increase parking and traffic fines when they’re in town. 

Berkeley has two years to get ready.