WEEKEND REFLECTIONS: Minnesota @ Cal
This past weekend, I flew to the Bay Area for the Minnesota Gopher football game vs. the Cal Golden Bears. Some thoughts:
-We were staying in downtown San Francisco. My Uber from the airport late Thursday night had no reservations about using the fairly empty freeway to lay the hammer down.
-Friday we took the ferry to Alcatraz (very cool), and then went to PacBell/AT&T/Oracle/Whatever the Hell the Naming Right Are Park.
-I didn’t like the ballpark, even compared with it’s contemporary in Detroit. Moving around inside the stadium was very difficult, and the very busy concession stands kept the hallways pretty clogged.
-One of the long lines was for the signature food item of the ballpark: garlic fries. Garlic is applied in quantities that would make Koreans beg for mercy. The Giants would beat the Dodgers with a walkoff grand slam in the bottom of the 10th. We ended up in a tiki bar drinking very tasty rum-based mixed drinks.
-The next morning, we weren’t in any great hurry to get going, just to go down to breakfast. We initially attempted to go to the burrito place in the Mission District that SFBadger suggested. However, we didn’t have 3 long city blocks worth of line on our schedule. Disappointed, we got munchies from the busiest McDonalds any of us have ever seen, then hopped onto the BART over to downtown Berkeley
-The campus of the University of California is a really neat campus. A creek runs through it, along with lots of large, old-growth trees. Given that it was game day, it was not surprising to see much more foot traffic than the normal Saturday. Apparently, it was also Band Alumni Day. We went past the marching band HQ, which was next to Haas Pavillion, and then we went to the commercial district along Telegraph Avenue to watch the afternoon games from back East.
-The bar we were atwas clearly playing for the heavily Minnesota crowd. Two trips through the Rouser, more Prince than I’ve heard in the last few years put together, and PBR on tap.
-It is a very strange feeling to be watching the night games from back East b in full darkness, while it’s still broad daylight outside the bar.
-Tailgating wasn’t much of a thing in Berkeley, which was not a surprise. There isn’t much surface parking. However, the few spots in campus were occupied by tailgaters. Not much, but still present. After watching the night games through about halftime,we stop at one of these tailgates and continue going up the hill towards the stadium.
-Have I mentioned yetthat we’ve been going uphill all afternoon? There is a great deal of verticalrelief on the UC campus. The elevation of street level at the Downtown Berkeleyis ~190 feet above MSL. The elevation of the stadium concourse is ~410 ft. Allof this occurs in slightly over a mile. Our calves were very sore the remainderof the trip.
California Memorial Stadium is the 20th venue in which I’ve witnessed a college football game.
1. Metrodome
2. Kinnick Stadium, Iowa
3. Camp Randall, Wisconsin
4. Husky Stadium, Washington
5. Reser Stadium, Oregon State
6. DKR Texas Memorial
7. Vanderbilt Stadium
8. Jack Trice Stadium, Iowa State
9. Farout Field, Missouri
10. New Brickhouse
11. Razorback Stadium, Arkansas
12. Michigan Stadium
13. Nebraska Memorial Stadium
14. Neyland Stadium, Tennessee
15. Ohio Stadium
16. Byrd Stadium, Maryland
17. Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis ***
18. Ford Field, Detroit ***
19. Folsom Field, Colorado
20. California Memorial Stadium
The stadium is halfway built into the hill, so the concourse only goes around the west side. The access to the seating bowl in the student section, which is right behind the visiting bench, is from the top of the bowl, following the natural relief of the ground. It’s dedicated to those who served in World War I. The stadium was gutted after the 2011 season, and the interior rebuilt with seismic consideration, considering that the Hayward Fault runs right under the stadium. You can see the huge expansion joints in strategic places around the stadium.
One thing that us season ticketholders at the New Brickhouse should not take for granted is the seat pitch. In order to get the requisite numb of rows into the stadium, they had to shrink them up front-to-back. As a man who’s 6’4”, this is a very noticeable thing. I was turned totally sideways for most of the game.
Sunsets at the New Brickhouse are as good as they come in college football. But the ones from the concourse here are mighty pretty too.
Oski, the mascot forthe University of California, looks like he just did 15 years at Leavenworth. The game was one of the few times in my Gopher fandom where I’ve seen one player’s mistakes so directly impact the outcome of the game. The last time was at Camp Randall in 2008, where Adam Weber’s happy feet led him to throw 4 interceptions in the second half of that Axe game.
An old man sitting next to us was a delightful fellow to sit next to. He’d had season tickets since the Free Speech Movement era, and was in the stadium for The Play. He pointed out that it happened right in front of our seats, in the SW end zone. He reminded me of our old friend Gatorama, if only he’d had tickets for 50+years.
After the end of the game, we headed out and returned towards downtown Berkeley by way of the residential neighborhood just south of campus. Boy, what a difference. This ended up being the fraternity and sorority house locations. Fortunately, the students themselves were well into party mode, and didn’t give anyone any grief.
Had I known that we were going to be a night game, we probably would have stayed somewhere in the east Bay, so we didn’t have to hustle back to the BART station in downtown. As it was, we barely made it in time for the second-to-last BART back to San Francisco.This was a relief, since I was bracing for a $100 Uber.
Going to both the Giants and Cal games, one thing I noticed that there was a certain coarseness and considerable lack of filter about the cheering by those in attendance. Now I’m a big boy, and this didn’t bother me. But there was enough, both in intensity and word selections, for me to even notice such things. Anyhow, our group had a great time on the trip, and we’re looking forward to going to Chicago in November.
