25 years later, the band still comes onto the field …
Hard to believe it’s been 25 years since “The Play.” It’s been replayed and talked about countless times since. Versus reunited John Elway, Kevin Moen, Gary Tyrrell and Joe Starkey to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that game and share their memories in an hourlong special called Cal vs. Stanford: 25 Years Later, airing Nov. 24 at 6pm ET (it reairs Nov. 24 at 11pm, Nov. 28 at 7pm & 2am, and Dec. 1 at 2:30pm). The special was taped last month, and I had the chance to talk to each of the participants to get their memories of that legendary game.
Gary Tyrrell (Stanford trombone player) “It reminds me of overall what a fantastic game it was, even before the last two minutes, but especially in the last two minutes. It was my senior year, so it was my last Big Game as an undergraduate. We had a bowl game at stake, and everyone in the stadium was really, really into the game. But as I watch that final kickoff return, I also remember what a drag it was to have that victory stolen from us, and that’s really the way it felt at the time.”
Kevin Moen (Cal football player) “When I had scored, run over Gary, the guy in the band, and was kind of celebrating myself, what happened was I got swarmed by a whole group of people. So my thought at that moment was, ‘I hope I live through this.’ And I wasn’t really too concerned as to what was going on because literally I had 15 or 20 guys piled on me. So I just kind of took a seat in the end zone and didn’t really understand everything that had just occurred. But when I heard the cannon go off, I knew that indicated that we had won the game and the whole place went crazy.”
Joe Starkey (Cal radio announcer) “From my standpoint, it’s probably like somebody who’s had a hit single and for the rest of their career they’re going to have to play that hit when they get out in a concert, even if they’ve heard it themselves a thousand times. But I’m aware that it has a special hold on the public. It has regularly been chosen as the most exciting play in college football history. And I was lucky enough to be there and call it, so why not enjoy it?”
John Elway (Stanford quarterback) “It’s something that at the time was pretty traumatic for a 22-year-old kid — to have everything kind of flash in front of you when you think that you’ve won a football game that you make a great comeback in, and then go through that kind of play, and flags everywhere, the chaos that went on. I can still get the feeling that I had of disbelief at the time of it, but then looking back now, it’s nice to be a part of college football history and a game like that.”
Versus airs the 2007 edition of The Big Game between Stanford and Cal live on Dec. 1.