Stanford Puts On a Show : Big Game: A 41-21 victory over Cal is overshadowed by halftime activities.

This is a rivalry that for the past 100 years has been lurching along on tradition and bravado. One team must come from behind and win, something improbable must happen. Controversy must be stirred.

When Stanford plays Cal, it’s always something.

Saturday’s Big Game, the 95th incarnation, offered all standard components of big-time football rivalries: hard hitting, broken plays and a wild finish--and that was only the halftime show. The game itself was all dash and color and, except for a what-else-is-new late surge by the underdog Bears, the outcome was all but decided after the first quarter.

That Stanford won, 41-21, was no surprise. The Cardinal (9-3) has flourished under first-year Coach Bill Walsh. They love him in Palo Alto. In keeping with the hyped-up punctuation that seems to happen during Big Game week, Walsh was being called the Genius around Stanford again.

Around Berkeley, another first-year coach is being called much worse. The Bears finished the season at 4-7, with team infighting and Coach Keith Gilbertson’s job on shaky ground. Stanford, co-champion of the Pac-10, will go on to a bowl game. Cal has another year to think about the next Big Game.

Things got off to a quick start as Cal scored on its first possession, a 43-yard field goal that seemed to herald good things for the Bears. It proved a false hope. Cal did not score again until the frantic fourth quarter.

Stanford led at the half, 14-3, but the real action broke out after the teams left the field.

The halftime show paid homage to the 10th anniversary of the Play--the five-lateral kickoff return through the Stanford band that gave Cal a last-second victory. The show disintegrated into a melee between a few Cal fans and the Stanford band. It set the tone for what many view as an ugly turn in this rivalry.

But before that, came the show. The Stanford band offered up its unique blaring musicality and casual formations. In the Stanford band, musicians don’t so much march in line as wander.

At least a few Cal fans were displeased with Stanford’s irreverent presentation. During the band’s performance, a fan dashed onto the field and charged the Stanford mascot, a tree. The fan felled the mighty Redwood and began pounding on the Stanford student hidden beneath the costume.

The crowd delighted in the pummeling, convinced it was part of a zany skit. The police, too, looked on with amusement until Stanford band members--having rushed to the tree’s defense--pinned the Cal fan and began kicking him. As campus police ran to rescue the fan, another fracas began in the end zone and band members rushed to intervene.

As the Stanford band was herded off the field by university police, the Cal band high-stepped onto it. As the ultra-traditional band began to play, Stanford students began to chant, “Boooring, boooring.”

The Cardinal fans then turned tradition on its head by pelting the Cal band with oranges. Singled out for massive bombing was the Cal band director, who made a tantalizing target as he perched atop a ladder near Stanford’s end zone. Big Game tradition holds that Cal fans launch the orange missiles at the Stanford band, but, this, too has been claimed by Stanford.

Cal fans grew stoic in the second half, as Stanford marched up and down the field, monopolizing the ball and running the clock. When Glyn Milburn of the Cardinal returned a punt 76 yards for a touchdown, making the score 34-3, Cardinal fans began to chant, “Five more years” a derisive allusion to Stanford’s five-year Big Game streak without a loss. Cal fans showed some stirrings of life as they mounted a counter-cheer that was clever but unprintable.

Many Cal fans left during the third quarter. Those who remained turned on their team and took to shouting mock cheers with every Cal first down. There weren’t many.

The fourth quarter dawned with a 50-yard scoring play from Cal quarterback Dave Barr to wide receiver Sean Dawkins. The two-point conversion attempt failed and Stanford led, 34-9, with 12:07 left in the game.

The lead was 41-9 when Stanford’s Ozzie Grenardo fumbled a punt and Cal recovered. Dawkins scored again on a 14-yard reception, and, again, Cal failed on the two-point try.

Cal recovered the onside kick on the ensuing kickoff and mounted a 36-second scoring drive, Mike Caldwell catching a nine-yard scoring pass. The two-point conversion failed, again, but Cal needed 20 points with 1:47 left in the game.

Who needs the Stanford band for zany? Again, Cal recovered the onside kick, but the Bears could score no more.

The end of the game did not signal the end of the action. A contingent of Cal fans managed to wrest the big red Stanford flag from its bearer. Cardinal fans retaliated by parading the Axe, traditionally awarded to the winning team. In the stands, the student sections were erupting. Cal’s huge student section left its seats, and, as one, marched across the field to the face down the Stanford students.

Like West Side Story without the music, the two groups taunted and jeered each other, hardly pausing when campus police formed a battle line to keep them apart. Fights broke out, epithets were hurled.

The tradition, the pageantry, the spectacle. The Big Game.