What happened to my team? Oh, here irt is!

 As an East Coast resident, I have mercifully been spared the tragic disappointments of over half a century of University of California football. The last time the Golden Bears had been to the Rose Bowl was in 1959, the year I became a student. TV executives wisely spared us the pain of watching a a perpetually losing West Coast team.

 

But there I was Friday night watching Cal play a conference game against Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., nowhere near California.

 

 That’s because Cal is now in the Atlantic Coast Conference, and I am surrounded by four teams just over the Virginia border in North Carolina and two others in Virginia. Their games are even on the ACC TV network, which I get. How crazy to dump the  traditional Cal-UCLA rivalry to play the likes of Pittsburgh and North Carolina State. But the Pac 12 folded, and Cal had to find new competitors.

 

I decided to take advantage of this anomaly when my friend, David Glass, suggested that we see one of these games. David, also a Cal alum, drove down from Washington,D.C.,  picked me up in South Boston (VA)  and took me to the Allegacy Federal Credit Union Stadium in Winston-Salem, two hours from my home.

 

Was I blown away by this place! Since its renovation in 2005, the arena fits in well with the new money-grubbing professionalism of today’s college sports.

 

Would they sell alcohol when most of the students were under drinking age? Silly question! Right at the entrance there was a rum vendor. Beer everywhere! Food? Anything you want. What’s next? A betting window?

 

I had only been to two two college football games in 63 years, one in the Ivy League (that should not really count) and one when Cal played North Carolina in Chapel Hill 10 years ago. But it was nothing like this.

 

The big-screen TV could have been in a pro stadium. But then, it is a pro stadium now, I guess.  There were close-ups of fans, contests, fireworks, ear-splitting music, everything.

 

The stadium, which holds 31,000, was only about half full, but there were an amazing number of Cal fans in our section for a school so far away. Hey, why would anybody want to leave California? Oh, I’d better not answer that.

 

Gee, this would have been a better column if Cal lost, especially after the team frittered away a 15-point lead. But the Bears’ quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, passed for 385 yards,  including an awesome 40 passes in the first half. The Bears won 46-36. And amazingly, kicker Ryan Coe made two 54-yard field goals, redeeming himself after missed short kicks forced Cal to lose two recent games.

 

So there is hope, and I might as well enjoy college football’s greed and lopsided geography that are here to stay.