Big Game Quotes

Big Game 2024 Quotes

I know it’s a bit late for this, but thanks to everyone who came along for Big Game yesterday! I really loved the effort put into all of our costumes, and the fact that Kal fans were booing us that loudly especially during the halftime show meant that we were really killing it (unlike the football team:smiling_face_with_tear:)! On a personal level, the band and the band alone made my day and prevented me from sinking into a depressive slump over the rest of Thanksgiving break. At the end of the day, we’ll get those dirty bears next time, and even if not, THE BAND ALWAYS WINS!

Big Game 2025 Quotes

Thanks again to everyone old and new who showed up to Big Game!! I really think that intense rivalry games like this always brings out our best every year. This is why you come to Stanford, and this is why you join Band!

Words can’t really begin to describe how big of deal Big Game was for both our football program, for us in Band, and for the university, but here are some numbers:

1. Obviously this is our first time taking the Axe since 2020 and the first time beating Kal at home since 2017 (when we had superstar running back Bryce Love)
2. Saturday’s victory means that the last time Kal had the Axe for more than four seasons would be during 2002-2006 (when they had some guy named Aaron Rodgers at QB – I wonder what he’s up to these days)
3. With a point difference of 21, this is the most lopsided Big Game win for us since 2014 (when Christian McCaffrey was a frosh)
4. This is the best PFF-graded single-game performance by our defense (Matt Rose my GOAT!) since 2015 (when we last went to the Rose Bowl)
5. Our defense also is the first team to hold Kal’s offense (again with a 5* QB) to under 4 yards per play since 2023
6. We recorded 5 sacks against Kal’s QB which is the most sacks we’ve had in a game since… last year’s Big Game
7. On the other side of the ball, our offensive line only gave up 1 sack compared to 9 against UNC two weeks ago. The pessimistic view is that Kal’s defensive line is really that bad and Notre Dame will expose us this upcoming Saturday, but there’s always hope that our OL has figured things out and has overcame injury bugs that plagued us for multiple years in a row.
8. Much more importantly for us, if you missed the Stanford Report email this morning, 6,481 out of 17,314 of our students attended Big Game, which is the highest ever student attendance at a home football game (and by extension the largest crowd of students ever to watch us perform)! It would be pretty unfathomable to get almost 40% of your entire student body to go to one football game even at the most football-crazed public schools in the Midwest or Southeast, but we did it. Much thanks to all of you who managed to convince a friend or three to show up to Big Game and make history; I really think that this statistic alone can mark a real turning point in our football program and a potential return to the old glory days of “intellectual brutality.”
9. This is the SECOND time that Justin Wilcox lost his job after getting his team curb-stomped by Stanford. Last time it happened was in the 2015 Pac-12 Championship Game, where a Christian McCaffrey masterclass both sent us to the Rose Bowl and got Wilcox fired as U$C’s defensive coordinator.