The Big Game Package:

• Traditions
• History
• Athletes and Coaches
• Day in the Life
• Voices
• Beat Cal Banners

Game Day
Cross Section:

• The Player
• The Trombonist
• The Tailgater
• The Announcer
• The Vendor

The day began at 4 a.m., when trucks started watering the dirt parking lots to keep the dust from flying. It ended some 22 hours later, when the tap ran dry at the Sigma Chi victory party.

October 4 was in many ways a typical Saturday at Stanford Stadium. The day's rhythms were familiar: the tailgating, the traffic, the Band, the game itself, more Band, more traffic, more tailgating. But nothing is normal when your opponents are the Fighting Irish, a legendary football powerhouse. On this Saturday, thanks to a great running game and stellar second-half defense, the Cardinal chalked up a convincing 33-15 win, increasing its chances for postseason Bowl play.

But the score doesn't tell the whole story. To really understand the richness of Game Day, you have to stop by the tailgaters, follow the Band, sit in the press box, walk with the vendors and celebrate with the winning team in the locker room. We did just that.

THE PLAYER
Kailee Wong sees himself sacking the quaterback--and making the pros

GRIDIRON GRIN: Wong, who made the game's greatest defensive plays, knows his number's lucky.

It's four hours until kickoff, and Kailee Wong is wolfing down his traditional pregame breakfast: two chicken breasts, potatoes smothered in maple syrup, two bananas, apple juice and water. "As I eat," he says, "I visualize how I'm going to defend their plays, and I see myself making big plays."

Wong, a senior defensive end and the Cardinal's best prospect for the pros, clearly has impressive and prophetic visualization powers. By the end of the day, he's proved himself the game's dominant defensive player, sacking Notre Dame's quarterback, forcing a fumble and deflecting a second-half field goal attempt with his left pinkie, which gets fractured in the process.

After the game, Stanford Coach Tyrone Willingham praises the performance of the defense in the second half: "We call that Kailee Wong time."

Wong's day begins with a rigid adherence to pregame rituals. He wakes at 7:30 at the Palo Alto Hyatt Regency, where the teams stays before home games in order to reduce distractions. He skims the Notre Dame scouting report and joins teammates in prayer. After breakfast--the same feast every Saturday, and he always sits by himself--Wong retreats to his room to watch ESPN's College Game Day. He cringes when he sees himself interviewed: "I look like an idiot." Then he puts on his game-day outfit--a blue suit, a white shirt and blue tie with a flower pattern--and joins the team for the short bus ride to the Stadium. Still keeping to himself, he listens on his Walkman to a special game-day tape featuring Ice Cube, Westside Connection and other artists who get him in the mood to do what he does best: pummel quarterbacks, running backs and offensive linemen. "Music to pump me up," he explains.

Wong learned mental preparation exercises from his parents as a high schooler in Eugene, Ore. His father is a native Hawaiian, his mother German-Scottish. Their son is a 6-foot-3-inch, 268-pound economics major who is as polite and poised as Cary Grant off the field and as ferocious as a pit bull on it. A First-Team All-Pac-10 selection last season, Wong is vying to become the first Stanford defensive lineman to earn All-America honors since Duncan McColl in 1976. Scouts figure he'll be a first- or second-round draft pick to the National Football League. His backup plan is to work as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

"Like most of my teammates, I chose Stanford because it excels in both sports and academics," says Wong. "I remember last season the team was debating the economic ramifications of Proposition 187 in the locker room. I guess that was unusual."

There's no debating how Wong feels about today's victory. As he jogs off the field, he makes a detour to the student section. Towering above the members of the Band jamming in their postgame show, Wong takes off his helmet and pumps it rhythmically over his head. The fans cheer wildly. This, too, is Kailee Wong time.

--Jackie Krentzman

120
doughnuts served at the Band breakfast

5
songs played by the Band at halftime

It's 7:30 a.m., and breakfast--the traditional beer and doughnuts--is already laid out on a table in the Band Shak's cavernous rehearsal room. But as the Stanford Marching Band's assistant manager, Claire Bacher needs to stay alert today. So while the first arrivals to the Shak grab a pastry and a Weinhard's Ale, Bacher chugs a glass of orange juice and heads off to the Dollies' dressing room to check in on the Band's five dancers. Because she watches out for them on game day, the Dollies refer to Bacher as "Mom." Or, says Dollie Emily Roley, putting an arm around Bacher's shoulders, "Sometimes we call her the Dollie Mama."

TOP BRASS: "Life is too short not to have fun," says Bacher, the Band's assistant manager.

An hour later, the 180 members of "the world's largest rock 'n' roll band" are well into their field rehearsal when one of Bacher's fellow trombonists arrives in the Stadium. "Excuse me," she says. "I have to go chase someone." And she takes off running, barefooted, with a half-dozen other horn players. They tackle the latecomer at the 40-yard line and pile on top of her. Three more stragglers get "piled" before the rehearsal ends. Even in the country's most unconventional marching band, there's a penalty for showing up late.

A fifth-year music and chemistry double major, Bacher joined the Band as a sophomore just for the fun of it. She learned to play the trombone, soaked up the Band's ethos of whimsical nonconformity and rose to become one of its leaders. The experience has changed her ideas about the future. "I don't think I'm going to become a chemist after all--much to my father's disappointment," says the soft-spoken 22-year-old from Bloomington, Ind. "Life is too short not to have fun."

Bacher's moment in the sun comes during "The Walk," a traditional serenade of the players as they head from the locker room to the Stadium. Bacher is assistant manager--"Ass Man" as the holder of the post is always known--and so she gets the honor of filling in at the baton for the drum major.

Once the game gets going, Bacher can relax as Band members settle into their role as a soundtrack to the action. Whenever there's a successful play, they stand and blast a song snippet. Bacher leans back, blowing the trombone and waggling the slide left and right, up and down, in sync with her Bandmates. For touchdowns--and there are four this afternoon--they break into "All Right Now," the team's unofficial fight song.

Today's halftime show--a typically tasteless 7-minute 30-second riff on the Fighting Irish that includes the Band spelling out the word "POTATO"--goes smoothly and gets its share of laughs in the student section. But, true to form, the routine offends many of the Notre Dame fans with its cracks about Catholicism and jibes at the "sparse cultural heritage" of the Irish. The next day, a group of Catholic school administrators will denounce the performance as "bigoted" and demand an apology. The Band will issue a lukewarm mea culpa for the anti-Irish insults, but that won't be enough for Athletic Director Ted Leland, who will decide to banish the Band from Notre Dame games until 2001.

Back in the stands for the second half, Band members strip off their red coats and start inventing cheers. With the home team on defense, they chant, "Blood, blood, blood makes the grass grow!" When the clock runs out, Bacher cheers the team's victory. But after playing at almost 30 games, she confesses that she still isn't that interested in the action on the field: "I think I'd like football more if I understood it better." One thing she does understand is the Band. And she loves it.

--Mark Robinson

72,548
paying fans

4,300
spectators in the student section

35
dollars asked for a scalped ticket

Dick Madigan has been tailgating in the same place near Stanford Stadium for 20 years. But this morning he discovers a boisterous bunch of newcomers in his spot. "I wasn't very happy about it," he says a few minutes later. "But now I've moved into Chuck Taylor Grove where I've always wanted to be anyway." He adds puckishly: "This is going to be much better."

Cars are forbidden in the grove, and that leaves plenty of room for table after table of food and drink set up under multicolored canopies. The scene gives the beguiling impression of a medieval jousting field surrounded by tented pavilions. Madigan and his wife, Jean, both class of '46, have driven down the road from Woodside to host some 20 or 30 friends and family.

PASS THE PAT