It’s the minimal crowd noise that’s reminiscent of a
high school game.
It’s the half-empty seats vacated by an apathetic fan
base.
It’s the wooden infrastructure that seemingly belongs in
the 1930s.
Together, and there’s very little to suggest Stanford
Stadium is a tough venue to play a football game, which makes
UCLA’s recent troubles in Palo Alto all the more
inexplicable.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s just a
weird environment,” offensive tackle Ed Blanton said.
“You just can’t put your finger on it. It’s hard
to explain.”
When the Bruins travel north to play Stanford (4-2, 3-1 Pac-10)
this Saturday looking to preserve their No. 6 BCS ranking and
unblemished 7-0 record, they will be trying to do so in a place
where past UCLA teams came, saw and were unexpectedly conquered by
the Cardinal.
And Stanford Stadium has not only been the site of single-game
losses for the Bruins, but where entire seasons have crumbled.
In 2001 a then-fourth-ranked and undefeated UCLA team paraded
into Palo Alto only to be stunningly and thoroughly outplayed by
Stanford in a 38-28 defeat. The Bruins went on to lose their next
three games and did not play in a bowl game that season.
In 2003 a 6-2 Bruin team on a four-game winning streak
confidently entered Stanford Stadium like its predecessor, only to
be stripped of its swagger after a 21-14 loss to the Cardinal. UCLA
went on to lose its next four games, including an embarrassing bowl
defeat to Fresno State.
“(Playing at Stanford) has always been challenging for
this program for a number of years,” UCLA coach Karl Dorrell
said.
The Bruins aren’t without their theories as to what makes
Stanford Stadium a tough place to play.
Blanton says it could be the track that separates the field from
the stands, acting as an unnecessarily large buffer between the
fans and players.
Running back Maurice Drew says it’s the mellow atmosphere,
which almost acts as a sedative and lulls visiting teams to
sleep.
Senior linebacker Spencer Havner says he doesn’t rule out
the possibility it’s Stanford’s mascot, a tree, that
dances around aimlessly on the sidelines and at halftime.
“Stanford is just a weird program,” Havner said.
“I thought a Cardinal was a bird, and then I thought it was a
pine tree (because of the mascot). And what, it’s a color?
Then why does their band dress in trees or something? Their whole
operation is weird.”
Whatever it is, it doesn’t change the fact that UCLA
hasn’t won at Stanford since 1997, and more importantly,
hasn’t won the last two contests up in Palo Alto, in which it
had significantly more riding on the games’ outcome than the
Cardinal did.
To combat a possible repeat of history, two weeks ago before the
Bruins’ game against Washington State, redshirt senior
cornerback Marcus Cassel addressed the rest of the players in a
team meeting by presenting them an overhead slide.
On it was a recap of UCLA’s 2001 season featuring a
game-by-game record, with a special emphasis placed on the
Bruins’ loss to the Cardinal, a loss that eliminated talk of
a national title and ended UCLA’s undefeated season.
“Back in 2001, we were riding high and that’s how I
always thought it was supposed to be,” Blanton said.
“Then we suddenly crash. Knowing that, it helps.
I’m trying to get the guys to remember that we’re
doing well, but we have to be prepared to play,” Cassel said.
“The (2001) team is in the past. This is a different team.
This team, we’ve been ready up to now, and there’s no
reason we shouldn’t be ready this week.”
That preparation began minutes after UCLA’s victory over
Oregon State last week when word spread in the Rose Bowl locker
rooms that Stanford had manhandled Arizona State. Though the news
elicited somewhat of a surprised response from both Bruins and
Beavers, it’s no secret the Cardinal has markedly improved
from the beginning of the season.
Since losing its second game of the season to UC Davis, a
Division II program, Stanford has won three of its first four
conference games and currently sits alone in fourth place in the
Pac-10.
“Considering the way they started, they surprised me with
how much they turned it around,” senior safety Jarrad Page
said. “They’ve done a really good job. They’re
definitely not where they started off the season.”
That’s not to say the Bruins are overlooking Stanford,
when in fact, quite the opposite is true.
This week in practice, many seniors said they planned to remind
their younger teammates of the lessons they learned in losing at
Stanford.
Other players said they’re choosing to look at more recent
history, such as UCLA’s 21-0 shellacking of Stanford last
year at the Rose Bowl, instead of focusing on the more distant
past.
Yet come this Saturday, the Bruins say they will be ignoring
that Stanford is dead last in the Pac-10 in total offense (311.2
yards per game) and near the bottom in total defense (436.7 yards
allowed per game). They will be forgetting that Stanford Stadium
has been a tough place to play in recent years. And they
won’t be lulled to sleep in an atmosphere conducive for it,
not with this much riding on the line.
“It’s just a weird aura around them, but we’re
going to go up there and create our own energy,” Havner said.
“We just have to not worry about all that other stuff. The
game will take care of itself.”