​Even if the old-timers in Berkeley and Palo Alto resist the notion, they know the truth: The Big Game is not nearly as big as it once was, and its once lofty position on the Bay Area sports landscape continues to shrink with no signs of recovery.

What has happened to diminish the Big Game? Short answer: Way too many negative trends that have been going on way too long.

The games themselves have been largely one-sided and predictable for a generation now. The schools, the Pacific-12 Conference and television networks continue to do too much screwing around with the game’s date and time of kickoff.

Finally, many of the game’s most notable traditions are dead or fading, and so are some of its most noteworthy figures. To wit, the rivalry lost “Mr. Stanford,” the colorful ambassador and storyteller Bob Murphy, just before this season started. Murphy, who died in August at age 86, had more choice Cal zingers than anybody and circulated them all at various annual luncheons. He was a Big Game fixture, and the event could use some of Murph’s Golden Bear roasting right about now.

And Joe Kapp, the larger-than-life Cal icon, is 79 and receding from public view as he battles Alzheimer’s disease. His presence is so sorely missed, too. If nothing else, the Big Game needs a good, old-fashioned Kapp kick in the butt.

The popularity of certain events runs in cycles, but there’s no question the Big Game is in a down cycle, and a pretty deep one at that. Will it ever climb out? You have to examine the most glaring issues and draw your own conclusions. Of course, we could just blame the nut-bags in the Stanford Band, but for once, it doesn’t appear to be their fault.

Here’s a more thorough checklist:

Competitive imbalance >> As Big Games go, Saturday’s 120th renewal seems a decent match. At least there are stakes for both teams. With a victory, Stanford still has a shot at the Pac-12 championship game. Cal can become bowl eligible in coach Justin Wilcox’s first season, a development few thought possible at season’s outset.

Then again, the Cardinal is favored by more than two touchdowns to win its eighth straight Big Game, which would set a record for consecutive victories. Moreover, the last five Stanford beat-downs of Cal have been by double digits to the cumulative score of 202-86.

Worse yet, the rivalry has been one-sided one way or the other since the mid-1990s. Stanford won seven straight from 1995 to 2001. Then Jeff Tedford arrived at Cal and the Bears won seven of the next eight. Now we’re on this eight-game game stretch started by Jim Harbaugh in his final season in 2010 and sustained by David Shaw ever since.

The last decent game? Eight years ago in 2009, when Michael Mohamed intercepted an Andrew Luck pass at the Cal 3 with 1:36 to go to preserve a 34-28 Cal upset over a 14th-ranked Cardinal team. And the last truly wild Big Game affair? That starred a guy named McCaffrey — not Christian but Ed, his dad — in Stanford’s 27-25 last-second “Revenge of the Play” upset in 1990. Long time ago. Too long. Today’s Cal and Stanford students weren’t even born.

Scheduling >> The game no longer is the regular-season finale on a late November Saturday afternoon. Stanford hasn’t played Cal as the last game of its regular season since 2008, and that year, the Bears closed their season against Washington. So much for the epic season-ending showdown between rival schools.

It used to be you could count on Cal and Stanford meeting for the last game of every season. That alone made the Big Game special. It almost always started between noon and 1 p.m., too — time to tailgate in the morning and celebrate victory with a nice dinner afterward.

Those days are gone. Cal will play its final regular season game next week against UCLA for the second year in a row. Stanford will be hosting Notre Dame in what has become the school’s real Big Game — more prestigious, more competitive and more compelling.

The Big Joke, of course, came in 2012, when the Big Game was slotted for Oct. 20, just the seventh game of the year. That seemed to signify that the conference and the TV networks could do just about anything they damn well pleased with this once-prestigious events. And they pretty much have.

In recent years, or since the conference has been at the mercy of broadcast partners ESPN and FOX, it’s been about varying start times, often on short notice. Saturday’s game will kick off at 5 p.m. Last year it was 2:30. The year before that, 7:30. The year before that 1 p.m.

More competition for audience >> Before 2012, the Warriors cast no shadow on anybody in October, or any other month.They had been to the playoffs only once in 18 years. Nobody was talking about them. Now they’re two-time NBA champions. Everyone is in their shadow.

It didn’t help that the baseball Giants went deep into the postseason in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and the A’s at least got there a couple of times, thus luring more eyes away from Strawberry Canyon and Stanford Stadium. The 49ers, although on hard times now, went to three straight NFC title games and a Super Bowl when Harbaugh moved just down the freeway from Stanford to Santa Clara.

There’s just not as much buzz about college football as there once was in the Bay, and that’s surprising as stellar as Stanford has continued to be under Shaw. It gets very little attention on sports talk radio, and in the social media world, it’s a veritable ghost town. If there no chatter, no buildup to the Big Game, then how do you have a real Big Game?

The general demise of tradition >> There used to be a bona fide Big Game WEEK. There would be a Monday press conference luncheon featuring both coaches, a handful of key players and a horde of media. Then there was the annual midweek Guardsmen Luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, in which high-powered alums from both schools gathered for a joint celebration of the Big Game that generated big bucks for charity.

Somehow, despite it being for such a worthy cause, even that has withered away. The 2015 Guardsmen event, the 66th annual, was the last held at the Fairmont. It moved to the Julia Morgan Ballroom in 2016, and this year, it simply didn’t come off at all. Sad. Cal has blamed Stanford’s lack of active participation for sucking the spirit out the event, and apparently, now the life.

Other long-standing traditions are now committed to history. Of course, the monolithic old Stanford Stadium, which at one time routinely sold out its 90,000 capacity for the Big Game, also met the wrecking ball in 2005. Its more modern and comfortable replacement, which holds a shade over 50,000, still has tickets available for Saturday’s game.

That development, by itself, says it all. The Big Game has, in too many ways, become a big shame. What might save it? How about a competitive, exciting game for starters? You have to begin the big comeback somewhere.