by Allen Kellogg

Berkeley, California

The University of California, Berkeley has agreed to a deal with rival Stanford in which the results of the 1982 Big Game will be reversed to give Stanford a 20-19 win. In return Stanford will pay $450 Million over 9 years to Cal athletics. The money will be used to pay off the $450 million defect Cal athletics has racked up, Mike Williams, the Cal Athletic Director, said.



“We are going to use the money responsibly to keep our athletic department afloat,” Williams said, “I promise none of the money will go towards the 24 Karat Gold Jacuzzis I am installing in my 12 new homes.”



Cal athletics racked up most of its debt ($321M) by needing to renovate their stadium in order to make it earthquake standards compliant. With a fault line running directly under the stadium, the whole structure was in danger of collapsing during a quake. Cal’s athletic department has been hemorrhaging money and reportedly lost over $20 million in 2016 alone. The university tried several creative ways to finance their new stadium including selling seats for up to 50 years at a cost of $250K. Despite the oblivious value considering the current inflation rate, there were very few takers.



“Going to Stadiums and watching sports live is so 20th century,” Cal alum and tech CEO Harmony DeLuccio said, “Why should I pay money when I can stream the game on VR. I can actually watch the game from our 4th string walk-on LB view. You haven’t lived until you have seen football from a players perspective on the bench.”



The influx of funds is good news for Cal’s non-revenue sports too. Several sports were on the chopping block including fencing, diving, track and baseball. Cal also announced that 4 more sports will be added in 2018 including Women’s speed walking and Magic the Gathering. Several upgrades to venues have been schedule and will cost a significant amount of money. “Only two fans may be watching us and yeah both those fans are my dads, but they deserve to watch me play competitive table tennis in a luxury suite” Cal table tennis player Bethany King said.



The 1982 game was marked by a famous controversy that went down if football lore as “The Play”. Stanford led 20-19, but had to kick off with only seconds remaining. With no time on the clock, Cal in desperation tried a series of laterals in order to keep their hopes alive. The ball ended up in the hands of Dwight Gamer who was allegedly tacked by Stanford at midfield, but lateraled the ball to back Richard Rodgers. The cameras in the early 80’s were shit and it’s impossible to determine if Gamer was down.



This is not the only controversy associated with “The Play”. Mariet Ford got the ball from Gamer and was caught by three Stanford defenders at the 27 yard line. He was falling forward, but blindly threw the ball over his shoulder where it was caught Kevin Moen at the 25 yard line. However, because both men were running in stride and the trajectory of the football could not been seen because of the shit 1980’s video cameras, it was impossible to determine if the move was an illegal forward pass or a backwards lateral. Moen would score an alleged touchdown running through the Stanford band leading to Joe Starkey’s infamous radio call, “Oh, the band is out on the field!”

Stanford issued a statement saying that it was happy to help with Cal’s financial difficulties and that they made the decision because they wanted to help a fellow university and not at all for petty reasons. Stanford fans celebrated their 1982 win with white wine and cheese and said they were glad the result of that game had been corrected. It was such a injustice one Stanford fan said, the ball was clearly going forward.



“It’s nice to know that complex problems and injustices can easily be solved with 9 figure checks,” Stanford President Marc Tesser-Lavigne said. According to Tesser-Lavigne the $450M was “pocket change” and he would also forgive the band by taking it off probation and allowing it to continue as a student-run organization.



The quarterback of that 1982 Stanford team, John Elway said, “Having that 1982 injustice overturned is the highlight of my whole career both in college and professionally. I no longer have a losing record to Cal. This is the happiest day of my life cause I seriously cannot stand those guys. It’s been 35 years and they haven’t shut up about it. I seriously hate those guys.”



When pressed for comment an NCAA spokeswoman said that the NCAA didn’t care about the agreement because they were too busy trying to gather evidence to determine if Ole Miss had stopped cheating and counting their money from the 2016 college football season.

Notes:

The Big Games all time series is now 64-45-11 in favor of Stanford



Stanford breaks its tie with Iowa for 64th on the all time wins list with 629



Cal remains 52nd on the list, but now has 653 wins all time.