It's a long and storied rivalry, beginning in 1892.
March 19, 1892: The first Big Game between Cal and Stanford is nearly not played because they forgot to bring a football, forcing future president and Stanford manager Herbert Hoover to improvise. : r/CFB
March 19, 1892: The first Big Game between Cal and Stanford is nearly not played because they forgot to bring a football, forcing future president and Stanford manager Herbert Hoover to improvise.
The full story of the first Big Game between Cal and Stanford is documented in the Sports Illustrated vault, with future president Herbert Hoover prominently involved in the wild story around organizing the game. vault.si.com
5000 people attended the game.
Meanwhile students chose a young Hoover (class of 1895) to arrange the California game. Gambling on the gate, he approached Dave Goulcher, San Francisco sporting goods dealer, with an order for new uniforms—all on credit. Goulcher acceded. Hoover and his California counterpart, Herbert Lang, rented the Haight Street baseball grounds in San Francisco for $250. And, in a burst of optimism, Hoover ordered the printing of 5,000 tickets.
On the eve of the contest college students boiled through San Francisco streets. Flashing their school colors they banged, rattled and blew a variety of noisemakers in a concerted effort to draw attention to the mayhem of the morrow. The next day, while players started toward the field from downtown hotels in gaily bedecked tallyhos, Hoover was confronted with a curious problem at the scene of impending action. The 5,000 tickets (priced at $2) had been sold, and still drays and carriages arrived laden with fans. Gold and silver currency already was spilling from bags over the floor of the ticket booth. The frantic Hoover quickly sent assistants to scour the neighborhood for wash boilers, dishpans, bathtubs—anything to hold more coins. Hastily organizing a force of student police, he directed them to escort a customer to the gate in return for each cash payment. By game time 5,000 jammed the stands and several thousand more jostled in a driveway around the field.
However, they forgot to bring a football, so they had to adjust on the fly.
Between bets which made the heavier California team 10-1 favorites, the boisterous throng sounded off with fish horns, Chinese fiddles, conch shells, rattles, bazoos and bells. The noise continued after the players rolled up in their tallyhos and took the field. Soon, however, they quit the gridiron amid a mighty silence. There was no football!Horrified, Hoover begged Goulcher, who had come to see his uniforms in use, to ride into town and get one. That unhappy man made the trip but could find no bladder for a football. Instead he put a punching bag bladder in the pigskin, creating a not-so-prolate spheroid. Over an hour passed before he returned to the field with his awkward invention.Whittemore, who won the toss, quickly noticed that the ball was misshapen, and chose to kick off. When unsuspecting California fumbled a few plays later Stanford took over on the Bears' 45. They tried a great experiment which they had been practicing under Whittemore's direction. The ball was centered to Quarterback Tom Code, who gave it to Whittemore. While Code and Fullback Carl Clemans led him to the center of the line, the other halfback, Paul Downing, who had received the ball in a hand-off, ran unnoticed down the sideline. It was probably football's first reverse play. When the confused Californians finally turned around they saw Downing squatting on the ball between the goal posts. Almost an hour and three-quarters later the referee blew the final whistle. Stanford had won, 14-10. |
