Beat Army.

At 5:45 a.m. on Saturday morning, they were turning people away from the Varsity parking lot at Stanford.  All systems were go for the spectacular opening game of the new Stanford stadium!  Even at the pre-crack, the air was electric.  Jumbo-trons were flaring, spotlights were beaming, the wind was whipping the flags into a frenzy.  And the new building is indeed awe-inspiring.  Where the old stadium felt lived-in, with concrete piled into a generally oval shape, the new building has sharp walls that shoot up into the atmosphere, with tiny "S" flags perched all around the perimeter.  It looks like that scene from Gladiator, where Gluteus Maximus enters Rome and sees the Colosseum for the first time.  Only this one isn't digital.

It looks like money.

As I left the swimming pool in the morning, there was already building excitement there as the pools got set up for a water polo tournament.  Unnaturally tall and well-built dudes in black matching sweatsuits were pacing the deck and marking their territory; parents were trundling in with folding chairs and lunches, wearing supportive sweatshirts and baseball caps.  As I left campus I was passed by a coach full of Santa Barbara competitors, and they peered out the window, (I imagined) marveling at the monstrous stadium.

And I was going to the game!

Ace is a Stanford alumnus, and he and his roommate managed to get sold-out tickets through some inside channel for Stanford's first home game.  It was against Navy, for which I planned to cheer, since my brother attended USNA (and my own college didn't have football).  Although - my attitude was mostly to show solidarity with the other Navy-affiliated supporters, because it seems to me that, at least while my brother was there, at Annapolis the football players themselves served mainly as an irritant and source of scandal and low morale for the rest of the midshipmen.  I certainly don't want to support that particular culture.  But viewing them as merely a means of showing school spirit, I was pleased to have the opportunity to bust out my insignia'ed polo shirt and look wholesome.

The opening ceremonies were pretty neat.  They did one of those card tricks, where spectators hold up a colored card assigned to their seat, so that a pixellated picture appears across the stadium.  The first one was meant to look like a ribbon, so that this would be the "largest ribbon cutting in history."  It was a fair effort.  Much more exciting was the Navy Seals who parachuted in with yellow smoke and various school and national flags.  It was remarkable how they started out looking like they weren't even going to make the stadium, but swirled and sailed down and down and down, ultimately landing very gently right on the 50-yard line.

An 11-year old girl sang the national anthem, and I must say she did a mighty job.  It's a wide ranging song, and so often you become very aware of that when somebody's singing along prettily about the dawn's early light, when suddenly they break out the belting Whitney Houston hollering for the rocket's red glare.  But this girl actually made the whole thing cohesive and tuneful, and sound not nearly as difficult as it is.  I usually really dislike when little kids do grown-up things, or things in grown-up ways, but this child pulled it off.  And then, not even a full second after "brave" rang out, two F-18s rocketed overhead.  It was rousing, the crowd erupted.  For the nutty-crunchy-hippy population that makes up Palo Alto, those fighter jets sure brought out the Dick Cheney in all of us.     

They did a similar "card stunt" at half-time, trying to do a sort of stars-and-stripes effect.

The game began inauspiciously for Stanford, and pretty much stayed that way till Navy won, 30-3 or something.  The spectators' enthusiasm over the stadium dissipated over the course of the game, and there were multiple causes. 

One, the football team was disappointing. 

Two, Stanford cheerleaders did not do much to whip up the crowd.  The Navy cheerleaders were going nuts, hand-standing (by which I mean the girls were standing on the extended hands of the boys), back-flipping, you name it - they did not let up through the entire thing.  But they remained firmly planted in front of the corner occupied by midshipmen, whom my taxes apparently paid to fly out here.   (And the midshipmen exhibited equivalent, and consistent enthusiasm - military-pressing one another up into the air every time their team scored (more) points.)  The Stanford cheerleaders seemed shyer and simply didn't get around the stadium very much.  They were also rather conservatively dressed, wearing, as far as I could tell, turtlenecks under their tank tops.  Maybe the Navy cheerleaders (sir, yes sir!) were bouncing around just to stay warm. 

Finally, there was no Stanford band.  Can you believe that?  They're being suspended for (as I understand it) busting up their old rehearsal facility with sledgehammers when their new one was built...not realizing that the old facility was actually rented and in no need of being demolished, thanks anyway.  The announcer piped in some recorded Stanford band music at various points, but it was weird and too disembodied to count.

But whatever the reason/s, the Stanford crowd was distracted.  Like when you buy a child an awesome new fire engine for Christmas and he spends all morning playing with the box, the Stanford fans watched the game and the new stadium hoopla for a few minutes, before becoming  deeply absorbed in the cards they used for the "card stunt" during the ribbon cutting.  The project?  Seeing who could make a paper airplane that would fly as far as the field. 

It started with one or two airplanes, sailing down from the bleachers overhead, and gradually increased until it was a veritable hailstorm.  Usually they'd fall short and poke some unsuspecting spectator in the back of the neck, but occasionally one actually touched grass and everybody in the section would applaud.  I'm sure a recording of the crowd played alongside a tape of the football game would provide comic dissonance like in a Kung Fu film or Singing in the Rain, since the cheering had little relevance to the progress of the game.  Somewhere in the third or fourth quarter, the Stanford fans ripped off an enormous roar of approval and celebration and when I looked onto the field to see what had happened in the game, I instead saw that an airplane had made it to the 50 yard line.  I didn't hear that much enthusiasm at any point before or after.

This little girl found the airplanes highly collectible.

Speaking of collectibles, the F-18 pilots were introduced in person at half-time, and then proceeded to be mobbed by kiddies asking for autographs.  Can you see Maverick and the Iceman doing that?