“I can’t believe it’s that time of year again. The one week of the year that I dread more than any other. The week when I feel as if the weight of the world is upon my shoulders. Yes, it is Big Game Week, the annual football frenzy that ends Saturday when Cal visits Stanford to determine Bay Area pigskin supremacy.”

I wrote those very words last year and the year before that and the year before that and who knows how many other previous times. I use these words over and over again because they’re true. Except that the location changes back and forth every year.

Big Game week brings out that kind of passion and all football prognosticators worth their salt must issue a prediction before Saturday’s noon kickoff in Berkeley’s new-and-improved Memorial Stadium. Only a 97-pound weakling would refuse to do so.

Well, for reasons that will be explained as we work our way through this space, there will be no Big Game column this year. Which means no Big Game prediction.

Put simply, you can’t have the Big Game in the middle of October. The Big Game has been played at the end of the season since Christ walked Strawberry Canyon. Playing it now is sacrilege. I refuse to participate in this travesty by issuing any sort of pronouncement about the outcome.

Oregon and Oregon State play their annual Civil War game at the end of the season. UCLA and USC play their Los Angeles City Championship game at the end of the season. Washington and Washington State hold their “Apple Cup” at the end of the season. UC Davis and Sac State battle in the Causeway Classic at the end of the season. Heck, Army and Navy wait a full week after every other college football team has finished its season before doing battle.

You do not renew a 115-year-old rivalry in mid-October. You may as well have Christmas in July and Halloween in January.

Those greedy conference and network officials who see only dollar signs in expanding the league and signing fat TV contracts are responsible for taking the biggest game of the year and reducing it to also-ran status.

It’s no longer the Big Game, it’s now just Another Game.

The reason you play these rivalry games at the end of the year is to provide a chance for redemption for one or the other of these teams should they have a particularly bad season. Stanford can redeem an 0-11 campaign with a win over Cal, and vice versa. Head coaching jobs have been saved or lost over the outcome of the Big Game.

The one exception was the 1932 game that ended in a 0-0 tie. Fans weren’t pleased with either coach after that exercise in futility.

Both teams have had major disappointments this season that deserve a Big Game to set things right again.

Stanford, in fact, is coming off a devastating, heartbreaking, season-souring overtime loss to mighty Notre Dame that only a win over Cal can soothe.

I mean, there was reliable Stanford running back Stepfan Taylor, all 215 pounds of him, whistled down inches short of the goal line on the final play of overtime even as repeated TV replays seemed to show the ball breaking the plane of the end zone before his knee or elbow touched the ground.

If Touchdown Jesus saw the play from his lofty perch above Notre Dame Stadium, he apparently didn’t see fit to notify the replay booth and have the call reversed. Either that or Touchdown Jesus heard the whistle blow and concluded the game was over before Taylor stretched the ball over the end line.

The play didn’t necessarily cost Stanford a win, as some are claiming. Even if they had scored, the Cardinal still would have trailed 20-19. They might have missed the extra point. They might have gone for two and failed. They might have tied the game at 20 and lost in the second or third overtime. No one knows what would have happened. But the call did rob Stanford of its final chance at victory.

Cal has had no such drama in its season, but with four losses already, the Bears, too, need a Big Game win to set things right.

Unfortunately for both teams, Saturday’s showdown is now just Another Game.

Stanford, 31-21.

— Reach Bob Dunning at [email protected]

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