For the briefest of seconds, I allowed my heart to overrule my head.
I was not optimistic about this game. The Stanford Cardinal came in relatively healthy and had figured out their new, kinda pass-first offense. The California Golden Bears’ offense was stagnating at best—and would again have to rely on the defense to create scoring opportunities against an offense that knew to avoid just that.
And sure enough, Stanford raced out to a 10-point lead and looked ready to blow the Bears out.
But then the Cal offense woke up enough to scratch out two field goals and David Shaw went really conservative really early and Cal was running the all–Malik McMorris offense to perfection and we were going to drive to take the lead before halftime and then we were going to get the ball to start the half and keep on scoring.