'The Play' still resonates 40 years later
Kevin Moen (26) leaps with the ball in the air after scoring Cal's winning touchdown in a dramatic, five-lateral-fueled 25-20 win over Stanford on Nov. 20, 1982 in the game known as "The Play." Credit: AP/ROBERT STINNETT
To paraphrase The Beatles, "It was 40 years ago today / Cal and Stanford brought the world “The Play.’’
On Nov. 20, 1982, it was the Stanford Band — not Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — that grabbed center stage and became part of “the most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart-rending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football.”
That’s how Cal announcer Joe Starkey called it, seconds after uttering seven words that have become part of the lore: “The band is out on the field!”
Forty years later, there’s a new book to commemorate “The Play” titled “Five Laterals and a Trombone: Cal, Stanford and the Wildest Ending in College Football History.”
Author Tyler Bridges, a former Stanford trombonist himself, reconstructed the final 21 seconds of mayhem at Cal’s Memorial Stadium that afternoon by interviewing hundreds involved, from players and coaches to referees and, of course, Stanford band members.
A quick-as-possible refresher on “The Play”: Stanford, leading 20-19 after making a field goal with four seconds remaining, went with a squib kick on the ensuing kickoff from the Stanford 25-yard line (a penalty for excessive celebration after the field goal moved the ball back from the 40).
Cal’s Kevin Moen fielded the bouncing kick at the Cal 45 and made the first of five laterals, to Richard Rodgers. Moen eventually got the ball back on the final lateral around the Stanford 25 and weaved his way through a sea of red and white . . . Stanford band members.
You see, when Dwight Garner took the second lateral on “The Play,” he appeared to be tackled at the 50-yard line (some players maintain they heard a whistle) and the Stanford band, as well as some Stanford players on the sideline, charged the field to start their celebration.
However, a series of continuing laterals kept “The Play” alive, and Moen — who encountered the first band member just inside the 20 — reached the end zone to cap Cal’s wild 25-20 win, then bowled over trombonist Gary Tyrrell before racing through more musicians with the ball clutched above his head.
The field was a sea of confusion. Players either celebrated or shook their heads “no” depending on which uniform they wore. Some band members froze in place, some scurried back into the end zone. Game officials huddled to sort it all out, eventually ruling “The Play” was good.
Cal had won the 85th Big Game, capturing the Stanford Axe (the rivalry’s traveling trophy) in the kind of finish you’d believe only if you saw it with your own eyes, as the 75,662 in attendance had. No one else saw it because the game wasn’t televised — even in the Bay Area, let alone nationally. There were no top plays on “SportsCenter.” No instant reaction on Twitter or Facebook. Nothing.
(Bridges said the game was recorded by a company that employed both Stanford and Cal broadcasters for a replay to be shown that night. Also, a local TV station sent a cameraman to the game.)
Joe Manniello, an editor on the sports copy desk, has written the NFL picks column since 2015. Manniello joined Newsday in 2004. He graduated from St. John's.
