This Year, Next Year, and the Year after That

I moved back to the East Bay from the East Coast two years ago, after a decade and a half away, to discover a smoking crater where professional sports once were in the East Bay.

If you are lucky enough to live here, you can squint your eyes and see one of the three teams that absconded in a shiny new palace across the bay. Look the other direction and you might catch a gust of wind that smells like abandonment and a Coliseum urinal trough. Look right in front of you and you’ll see what has always been; Cal sports, a chaotic monolith that isn’t going anywhere.

Memories of $5 dollar days in Oakland now induce a dull ache as much as a smile, but every childhood Saturday in Memorial Stadium feels more vivid than ever. Those Todd Bozeman summer basketball camps burn brighter than any Warriors bobblehead giveaway. Tedford squads featuring DeSean Jackson and Marshawn Lynch lit up a the two years I spent in Berkeley after high school, helping me remember the city was something to embrace, not escape.

Cal Football has, throughout my life, remained a continually inexplicable program in a constantly changing sport, sometimes remarkable, sometimes tragic, never without deep feeling and odd intrigue. It serves to underline all the possibility that remains achievable between Cal the University, and Berkeley the City, the feeling that if the two entities ever fully harnessed one another’s power to the fullest capacity, the light might block out the sun.

I stumbled out of my car in the early morning chill last October 5th, long before the sun was up, tripping over myself staring at the beam of light a few hundred yards in the distance. Walking through campus until the Game Day set revealed itself, an old feeling washed over me, and a new sense of pride. It was plain for everyone to see, the reality that is available for us to have, when we all believe, and Cal Football belongs to all of us.

So with that in mind, I’m here this year, next year, and the year after that, because Cal will be too, and if we all keep showing up, something unbelievable may happen.