![]() Of course not everybody shares my passion for spectator sports. ![]() Winning, while preferable, is perhaps less important to most than nabbing the best tailgating spot. Most visiting teams are granted a courteous reception. I have never heard a Stanford crowd boo a Stanford team, no matter how inept the performance. Applause, rather than cheering, is the standard form of approbation. Compared with fans at other schools, Stanford rooters tend to be unusually reserved. In the four decades since then, I've traveled more than 100,000 miles to see nearly 1,000 Stanford games in 15 sports. Third, Stanford Stadium was (and remains) the largest privately owned stadium in the country. Second, the school won an average of 60 percent of its athletic contests. I was not sure that I was one, but I thought it was a worthy ideal to pursue. First was the University's effort to appeal to the Uncommon Man. ![]() Three years later, when I was considering where to attend college, a few facts beckoned from the Stanford Freshman Handbook. In defeat, they were cheerfully singing "Come Join the Band." After Stanford lost, 23-20, I passed some students as I made my way to the streetcar stop. It was 1953, and the football team was playing at USC, just 20 miles from my home in Long Beach, Calif. I was 14 the first time I saw a Stanford game. (We lost 21-14 after a last-minute pass from Cal's Rich Campbell to Joe Rose, but who remembers that?) (We lost to Washington that day, 27-24, crushing our Rose Bowl hopes in a year when only five Pac-10 teams were eligible, but who remembers that?) The other is a panoramic view of the crowd at Big Game in 1979. ![]() One is a photo of me and my daughter, Shelley, taken in Stanford Stadium on her 14th birthday in 1980. Just two pictures on the wall of my study. I no longer have many overt Stanford displays in my home. I videotape televised home games that I'm attending, but never watch a replay of a loss except to review a crucial officiating call against us. Every year I vow not to berate the officials at basketball games - a promise I generally break even as I remind myself that referees love the game as much as I do. I cheer a little more than most Stanford fans, but I feel self-conscious about it. I wear my class ring only during Big Game week, a tradition I have followed for 40 years. I seldom go to games dressed in Stanford apparel. My own rooting style is somewhat more understated. She quit the vigil only when she got pneumonia. His note said: "I can't stand their fumbling anymore." Or the Milwaukee woman who sat atop a 40-foot tower waiting for the Brewers to win seven games in a row. Or the Denver resident who attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head after a Broncos' loss. His last request was to know whether the Dodgers had beaten the Giants that day. Consider the Brooklyn man executed for murder in Massachusetts on April 21, 1941. I have every Stanford Band recording made since 1954 and often listen while shaving each morning.Ī fan, according to the American Heritage College Dictionary, is "an ardent devotee, an enthusiast." Fanatic is defined as "a person marked by an extreme unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause." The distinction, then, apparently rests on whether the enthusiasm is ardent or unreasoning. On the first day that the DMV took orders for seven-character license plates, I stood in line to secure "IM4LSJU." After routinely commuting 900 miles per trip for 16 years to see most home football games, I rearranged my life to live within half an hour of Stanford Stadium. In two previous homes, I insisted that my dens be carpeted in cardinal red to match the Stanford banner on the wall.
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