Ouch.

I was out of town all day yes­ter­day and got back late enough that I did­n’t both­er to check any sports scores. I had had some inti­ma­tion of the rude infor­ma­tion that await­ed me in the San Jose Mer­cury News sports sec­tion (owing to an ill-timed con­so­la­tion call from the Chi Alpha leader at Berke­ley).

So we lost Big Game. Again. And we lost Big Game big. Almost as bad­ly as it has ever been lost (although out­ranked by our 1930 41–0 romp over Cal).

I think the prop­er atti­tude is con­veyed in Mark Pur­dy’s col­umn:

Oh, it could have gone worse for Stan­ford on a windy, blus­tery after­noon. But only if a tree had fall­en on The Tree.

Cal’s 41–6 vic­to­ry Sat­ur­day was so awful, Stan­ford fans spent the sec­ond half leav­ing in droves — in lux­u­ry cars, actu­al­ly, but in drove-like for­ma­tion.

Heh. It’s a game we lost, but it’s only a game.

Of course, had we won I’d be singing an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent tune about the rel­a­tive impor­tance of squash­ing one’s rivals like bugs. But we did­n’t win, and so I adopt the more ratio­nal atti­tude. 🙂