"(S) port elaborates in its rituals what it means to be human: the play, the risk, the trials, the collective impulse to games, the thrill of physicality, the necessity of strategy; defeat, victory, defeat again, pain, transcendence and, most of all, the certainty that nothing is certain--that everything can change and be changed.


But if sport is a powerful expression, it is also an expression of power."

{More} The Nation, on Sports : A View from Left Field . By Gerald Early, from THE NATION, August 10, 1998.

American track and field athletes Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right) protest with the Black Power salute as they stand on the winner's podium at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It's Big Game Day

Herb Caen It's Big Game Day, one of the happy November rituals. "They call it the Big Game because it really is," I wrote a thousand years ago, but the detractors tend to downgrade it now as just another game between two teams that aren't going anywhere. It's a classic, they say, only for the old grads who remember the heroes of their youth, from Andy Smith's Wonder Teams to Stanford's cocky Vow Boys, from Vic Bottari, Sam Chapman and Jackie Jensen to Ernie Nevers, Biff Hoffman and Frank Albert. True and false. There is something special about the Big Game, and the memories have a lot to do with it. The players sense that they are part of the myth-ology, and rise to the moment.

I've seen my share of Big Games, but seldom a dull one. Something wild and crazy always happens, the melodramatic ending as the clock winds down and the shadows grow long across the stadium floor and you know that another chapter is ending in the long story of a fascinating rivalry. Could two schools be more different than Cal and Stanford! Yet, it works.' - Herb Caen (more)