For many new freshmen like Eva Bassett, the first Big Game marked a period of deep disappointment.
“I’ve just been hearing so much about this game for all of my life,” Bassett remarked, “If I’m being honest, I’m glad I had my first time, but it really wasn’t that memorable to me.” This sentiment, alongside the complaint that it was difficult to notice when the game had even started, was echoed by several other new students.
Mia Soloman (’27) shared her disappointment with the Flipside, pointing out that the freshman class’s high expectations potentially contributed to the game’s downright disappointing performance. “I mean from all the fuss I assumed it would be at least six-and-a-half to seven quarters but I guess four is perfectly average…”
Stanford isn’t alone in its student body’s shame over their microgames. Many schools across the country—through absolutely no fault of their own—also struggle with the embarrassment of underwhelming and underperforming teams. CAPS has started a new initiative to work on breaking the stigma of unusually small games for universities across the nation, claiming that if these techniques for breaking the internalized size shame are working for KSig, they can work for anyone.
The Stanford football players, still in the beginning of their healing journey, have released a statement on the team’s Instagram story defending the grandeur of the Big Game, claiming “People need to understand the context— it was just cold out, but it’s normally bigger, we swear!”
CAPS wants to emphasis that the “size doesn’t matter” and that men are so much more than just the size of their game, like really, it’s the game’s personality that makes the difference. Although the actual scoring of Big Game was unimpressive, nothing could possibly be bigger than our players’ hearts and team spirit, so what more could we ask for? (Besides of course, a winning team.)
