"They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon Blues."

I knew from the moment I heard that song that the geniuses behind Steely Dan, Walter Becker and Donald Fagan, were both college football fans and kindred spirits. The song, Deacon Blues, is off their monumental Aja album that was released in 1977. It has taken the Wake Forest Demon Deacons that long to achieve an outstanding football season (or one with a winning record to be exact) here in 2006. They have a lock on getting a bowl bid, and the higher the better is my thinking for this great college that has been mired in football loserville for almost an eternity.

Any other year and the Demon Deacons are the feel good story of the year. But since they're the Deacons they lose out this season to Rutgers on the feel good side. The Scarlet Knights, who are now very improbably undefeated this season, have stolen the crown of fleeting-football-limelight from the Wake Forest campus for the year. Rutgers, the campus where the first collegiate footbal game was played in America back in 1869, owns the media bragging rights this year by virtue of their victory over the nation's third ranked football team, Louisville, a little more than a week ago. Red seems to always trump blue.

This gets me to the little college rivalry game on the west coast this weekend between USC and Cal. For years this was no rivalry. USC just beat up Cal as part of the football routine in the Pac-10 conference on the way to Trojan championships or bowl bids.

I was a student at Cal in 1975 when Joe Roth and Chuck Muncie led the Bears to a win over USC in Berkeley on the way to their co-championship of the Pac-8, the last conference football title the Golden Bears have seen. They didn't beat USC for another decade when they pulled off an unlikely win, again on the Berkeley campus on November 9, 1985. I remember the day because my youngest son was born early in the morning on that date, and I took my eldest to the game. I remember walking with my son on my shoulders and hearing the private school kids from USC, who had made the trek to the game, comment after the shocking loss on how run down the Berkeley campus looked in comparison to their very expensive private school digs in the heart of Watts.

Just a week ago this Cal-USC game looked epic. Maybe not quite as epic as Ohio State versus Michigan, but just a click down from college football's biggest rivalry. But the Golden Bears weren't so golden in the Arizona sun as they let a two touchdown lead melt like a bad slurpy on warm astro-turf. The huge build up by the national media did not transpire, and the game for most of the country is a second billed afterthought following the featured presentation on the Columbus campus in Ohio.

This should have boded well for Cal, but the Berkeley City Council decided to sue the University this week on the promised retrofit of ancient Memorial Stadium, which the University has promised coach Jeff Tedford. There should have been no local distractions from this game this week by a former player turned mayor in Berkeley. But it happened. The annual USC battle has turned into the Big Game the past several years for Golden Bear fans. Stanford has fallen on real hard football times for the moment, and the Bears resurrection under Jeff Tedford has been almost as miraculous as the stories at Wake Forest and Rutgers this year. This Saturday they play for the roses.

"They got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon Blues."