Last updated on January 13, 2025
Tonight, the Cal Bears face off against the Miami Hurricanes.
This morning, students seemingly swarmed the Memorial Glade behind the EPSN College GameDay table in larger numbers than 4/20 or graduation. Marshawn Lynch, the absolute Bowser of Berkeley, reprised his iconic drive on the injury cart. Nick Saban appeared as probably the only West Virginian in the Bay Area.
And an entire Cal nation erupted as Pat McAfee predicted a Cal upset.
Yet, as much as my head is swimming with Berkeley enthusiasm, we all know we are getting rolled tonight.
Cam Ward will probably lead the undefeated Hurricanes into the ACC championship this season as they dominate the power rankings. Even though they barely survived Virginia Tech last week, they have an outstanding receiving team that will probably slice through the Cal defense. On the other hand, Cal fell to FSU, who has had a historic losing streak this season. Our O-line couldn’t protect Mendoza, and our kicker doesn’t know how to kick.
But that’s not stopping the animal energy of my alma mater. My favorite part of McAfee’s prediction is that right before he predicted Cal, he drops every stat proving why Miami will steamroll us tonight and then yelled “I don’t care…You tell the whole damn world this is Bear territory!”
That’s sort of how I feel about the election in exactly 30 days.
Throw every stat out the window; we are winning tonight. Much like Cal football fans today, there is this almost deliberate ignorance about the election — with the American people fixating on the overall perception of politicians over policy proposals.
Take, for example, the vice presidential debate this past week. There are no consensus power rankings in political debates like college football, but J.D. Vance swept Tim Waltz. Vance seemed more poised and relaxed as he focused his attacks on just policy. He was a disciplined attack dog that actually showed empathy for Waltz’s son who witnessed a shooting. For his part, Waltz seemed uncomfortable and floundered in his answers at times, especially on the question about his whereabouts in China.
Even if you look at the substance, Vance’s best moment of the night was when he slammed Waltz on the economy, but his worst moment was when he refused to say who won the 2020 election.
And that’s my point. As much as the Democrats want to focus on those few minutes of Vance being squeamish about the 2020 election, I doubt that voters much care. In fact, going into the vice presidential debate, the RCP betting odds showed Kamala Harris leading by a solid 3.5 points, and then she was only up by 0.6 points after the debate. Keep in mind this is down from her 7.3-point lead after she debated Trump.
As always, perception is king in politics. And we live in unprecedented times where a typically overlooked vice presidential debate can move the needle in an incredibly close election. We live in a time where a vice presidential candidate can refuse to name who won the 2020 election and still be crowned the winner. We also live in a time where the leading presidential candidate has proposed the highest capital gains tax rate in nearly a century, right before a possible recession. That’s not really apples to apples, but you get my point.
We are thirty days out from another “This is the most important election of our lives,” and the question we have to ask ourselves is why our political rallies look like college football games.
I want Cal to win so bad tonight because of the sheer pride I would feel if our fractured football program takes down a goliath against all odds. And the irony doesn’t escape me on how this is the literal football version of the political debate between California and Florida.
Yet, if and when we lose tonight, I’ll cry, get up the next morning, attend mass, and spend the afternoon at the Georgetown Wharf while mosquitos make a buffet out of my legs.
But we can’t have the same mentality about politics. We can’t just think that Democrats and Republicans are sports teams that win or lose every four years. We can’t just believe the refs are rigging the game without evidence or arrogantly believe we can win without practicing the run drills.
Politics should be much more than emotional allegiances where our election landscapes are more complicated than the division of athletic conferences. Politics is like if the Superbowl determined the employment rate, or if tonight game’s established military stability in the Taiwan Strait. Those are the kinds of stakes we face in politics.
I know it’s improbable we get back to issues of the election, but I have hope America upsets.
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