Even two decades later, what took place at Memorial Stadium in the 1986 Big Game remains coated in disbelief.

How could a 1-9 Cal team, with a head coach who had been fired three weeks earlier, with a quarterback who hadn't started a game all season and an offense that hadn't scored a touchdown in nearly a month, beat a 7-2 Stanford team that had secured a Gator Bowl bid and had won road games against Texas and UCLA?

On Saturday, the Golden Bears will be an overwhelming favorite against the Cardinal in the 109th Big Game. What generally is considered the biggest upset in the history of the rivalry came in Big Game No. 89:

California 17, Stanford 11.

Under the late Jack Elway, the Cardinal opened the 1986 season with a 31-20 victory at Texas. Led by a strong defense and the running of Brad Muster, who would set a school record with 243 carries for 1,053 yards and 12 touchdowns, Stanford rolled into Berkeley on Nov. 22, 1986, having beaten UCLA 28-23 at the Rose Bowl in its previous game two weeks earlier.

The Cardinal seemed to be in great shape, but two things -- one mental and one physical -- would work against Stanford. The physical: Quarterback John Paye, who had enjoyed an excellent junior year in 1985, had endured a shoulder injury that got progressively worse in '86.

"I remember I couldn't throw a football more than 20 yards," said Paye, who now runs Paye's Place, an athletic facility in San Carlos.

The mental: Stanford had another regular-season game, against a good Arizona team, the following week in Tokyo. How much that played into the Cardinal overlooking Cal is hard to measure, but it was a factor.

Under Joe Kapp, the Bears opened the 1986 season with a 21-15 loss at Boston College. After beating Washington State 31-21 the following week, the Bears proceeded to drop eight in a row. Kapp was fired after a 27-9 loss to Oregon, but would remain head coach for the season's final three games. The first two of those three were a 49-0 waxing at Arizona State and a 28-3 drubbing at USC.

"We were crumbling from the inside out," said linebacker David Ortega, now the compliance director in the Cal athletic department.

The season was particularly tough on quarterback Kevin Brown, who had started nine games as a junior in 1985. Brian Bedford started the first four games in '86, and when the coaches decided to replace him, they chose true freshman Troy Taylor over Brown.

"You see your window of opportunity shutting with every week that goes by," Brown said. "The window's now slamming, slamming on my fingers."

Courtesy of the broken jaw Taylor sustained in the game against the Trojans, Brown and his fingers received one reprieve: He would get the call against Stanford.

Brown thought that for a team that hadn't won a game in two months, the Bears "had a staggering good week of offensive practice. ... It seemed to come together so well, almost to the point where it surprised me."

If the Bears needed some bulletin-board material, Stanford defensive back Toi Cook was happy to oblige. Cook, from Southern California, didn't think the Big Game compared with the USC-UCLA rivalry so he "wanted to add some spice to the game."

Cook, now a senior vice president for Gersh Sports in Beverly Hills, said, "All I talked about was kicking Cal's ass. It was showmanship. ... I knew it would get a lot of attention -- and it did."

Looking for a little more motivation, Kapp called upon 74-year-old Natalie Cohen to lead the Axe cheer to his players right before the game. After Cohen's exhortations, Ortega recalled, "We ran out on the field together, as a team. We didn't do that every week that year."

One axiom that applies whenever one team is a heavy favorite is for that favored team to jump on the underdog early, to prevent the underdog from believing it has any chance of winning.

Stanford looked as if it would follow that axiom to the letter. On the game's opening possession, the Cardinal marched to a 1st-and-goal at the Cal 7. The drive stalled, though, and David Sweeney missed a 21-yard field-goal attempt.

Momentum, Bears.

Sweeney's miss "got the guys believing: Maybe today is gonna be our day," said Cal offensive lineman Kam King, who runs King's Gym in Glendora (Los Angeles County) and does commentary on high school football telecasts.

Stanford's empty possession not only buoyed the Bears, it got their fans involved.

"Those Cal crazies got all excited," Paye said.

"Our fans will rally when they see anything good happen," said Brown, who works in marketing and communications for Delaware Investments in San Francisco.

The Bears scored first on a field goal early in the second quarter. Midway through the period, they put together a 93-yard drive for their first touchdown since a 33-16 loss at Arizona on Oct. 25. The key play was a 61-yard pass from Brown to Mike Ford. As he released the ball or soon thereafter, Brown took a helmet-to-helmet hit and sustained a concussion.

So even though he was able to complete the drive with a 5-yard pass to Wendell Peoples, Brown later in the half had a tough time remembering what he'd done.

"It was frightening," Brown said. When he was on the sideline, Brown told backup quarterback Brad Howe, "Stay by my side." Brown figures that if what is known about concussions now were common knowledge then, he might not have been allowed to continue playing.

Although, considering how desperately Brown wanted to make something of his final collegiate appearance, it's hard to imagine Brown giving up his opportunity.

"You would have to have broken his leg," King said, "and taken him off on a stretcher for him to leave the game."

The game's signature moment came midway through the fourth quarter. The Bears, leading 10-3, had a 2nd-and-7 at the Stanford 47. The play call was for an option end-around, with Brown pitching the ball to Ford. Cal's Vince Delgado had scored a touchdown on the option end-around in Stanford's 24-22 victory the previous year.

Brown said that when he got the call, "I was smiling to myself, because it probably won't work. But, if this does work, this game is so over."

Ford took the pitch and angled deeper behind the line of scrimmage than he normally would. A block by receiver James Devers sprung Ford down the Stanford sideline. King's block took care of Cook at the 40, fullback Todd Powers laid out defensive back Brad Humphreys just inside the 30 and Ford breezed into the end zone to put Cal in front 17-3.

King takes particular satisfaction from that play. "An open-field block ain't easy," he said, "especially for a lineman against a DB."

Brown recalled Stanford linebacker Dave Wyman "kicking the pylon because he probably just couldn't believe this was happening two years in a row."

Paye, meanwhile, was putting together some solid numbers (23-for-35 for 224 yards), but he amassed them in a particularly painful way: Cal sacked Paye seven times.

"There were some pretty good shots on him," Cal linebacker Hardy Nickerson said. "With every one, you could see him getting up slower and slower -- and the crowd was getting louder and louder and louder."

The Cal fans were probably in deafening mode with Stanford facing a 3rd-and-21 at its 31 with less than six minutes remaining. Though clearly hurting, Paye managed to uncork a pass about 55 yards in the air. Jeff James made the grab near the Cal sideline and raced to the end zone. Just like that, the Cardinal had life.

The natural question for Paye: With his shoulder problem, how was he able to make that pass?

"It was probably the last (lengthy) throw of my career," Paye said. "It was just frustration."

Cal's lead was just six after Paye connected with Jim Price on the two-point conversion.

On its final possession, Stanford got as far as the Bears' 37, but then consecutive sacks of Paye effectively ended the game.

When the game officially ended, bedlam engulfed Strawberry Canyon. As hundreds of Cal fans made their way onto the field, Kapp got a ride on the shoulders of some of his players in his final game as his alma mater's head coach.

Kapp, who lives in Los Gatos and remains involved with Cal, said his recollection of that victory ride is a little sketchy but, "I don't care where my body was; my mind was in a good place."

Nickerson's place soon was on a ladder, conducting the Cal band, as he had the previous November after the Bears' 14-6 win over USC. Nickerson had a 16-year NFL career. He and his wife, Amy, run Nickerson Realty Group in the Charlotte, N.C., suburb of Weddington. Nickerson also does color commentary on the Tampa Bay Bucs' radio broadcasts.

Ortega, a redshirt freshman in '86, had considered transferring during that season. He said "that whole atmosphere at the end of the game, hysteria for a 2-9 team," persuaded him to remain in Berkeley. In fact, he remembers that during the celebration, an alum whom he didn't know began yelling at him, "Ortega, you better not go anywhere. You gotta stay."

Cook, who played on the 49ers' 1994 Super Bowl champion team, spent 11 years in the NFL. He believes the fact that 1986 was Stanford's first above-.500 season since 1980 was a reason for the Cardinal's loss that day.

"We didn't have the winning reservoir to look past anyone," Cook said.

The Big Game was Paye's last complete game as Stanford's quarterback. He split time with Greg Ennis against Arizona in the Cardinal's 29-24 victory at Tokyo. A month later, with Ennis playing the entire game, Stanford lost 27-21 to Clemson in the Gator Bowl.

Cook said that Gator Bowl loss, in his final college game, was more disappointing than was the upset in Berkeley.

On YouTube, there's a clip -- not of great video quality, but still ... -- of Cohen merrily leading the Bears in a postgame rendition of "Hail to California." Included in the clip is Kapp's farewell speech to his players.

Kapp's first Big Game as a coach ended with The Play in 1982. His last Big Game was The Upset. Which does he remember more fondly?

He can't decide. Said Kapp: "Which sister do you love more?"

As much euphoria as you'll see on that clip -- King said Cal's win "really kind of healed a lot of the pain from the season" -- some Bears later pondered not how they upended Stanford, but how a team that beat Stanford could have endured such a dismal season.

"That was the sentiment as we sat in the locker room," Nickerson said. "There were so many teams we could have beaten that year; that was so frustrating."

One great thing about the Big Game is that relatively unheralded players can have their names become part of their school's lore by doing something special on one Saturday.

Brown was 15-for-23 for 221 yards in the 1986 Big Game. To this day, he says with a mixture of embarrassment and pride, a few of his friends still call him BGH:

Big Game Hero.

Close calls for big favorites

Since the end of World War I, only three times in Big Game history has one team come into the game with one or no wins and the other with a winning record. 1986 was one of those times. In the other two, the team expected to win did so, but had its share of anxious moments:

1947: In his first Big Game, head coach Pappy Waldorf brought an 8-1 Cal team to face an 0-8 Stanford team. The Bears trailed late in the fourth quarter before Jackie Jensen teamed with Paul Keckley on an 80-yard touchdown pass. The Bears prevailed 21-18.

2001: In the last Big Game for both Cal head coach Tom Holmoe and Stanford head coach Tyrone Willingham, the 0-9 Bears gave the 6-2 Cardinal a scare before Stanford extended its Big Game winning streak to seven -- all under Willingham -- with a 35-28 decision. Chris Lewis threw four TD passes for the Cardinal. Cal was at midfield on the game's final play, and Kyle Boller's Hail Mary pass fell incomplete.

-- Steve Kroner

Big Game flashback

It is widely speculated that Cal junior Marshawn Lynch will turn pro after this season, which means Saturday will be his final Big Game. This is the first in a daily series on how other great running backs fared in their final Big Game.

Ernie Nevers, Stanford, 1925

Named the greatest college player ever by Sports Illustrated in 1962, Nevers was the subject of a bitter recruiting battle between Stanford and Cal coming out of Santa Rosa High, with Cal initially being Nevers' preference. He later played pro football and baseball, and, as a pitcher, gave up two of Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in 1927.

In the 1925 Big Game, coached by Pop Warner and playing in his final college game, Nevers, a fullback, handled the ball on all but three offensive plays while scoring two touchdowns, rushing for 117 yards and punting eight times for a 42-yard average in a 27-14 win, Stanford's first Big Game victory in 11 years.