From trombone to tradition: A father passes on Big Game legacy to daughter

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tyler Bridges ‘81 grew up within walking distance from the Stanford stadium.

“The big game was a big deal,” Bridges said of his upbringing in Palo Alto in the ‘70s. “It was the Super Bowl of the Bay Area.” 

His daughter, Luciana Bridges ‘25, however, was born over 4,500 miles away from campus, in Lima, Peru.

“American football is not the sport that we grew up with,” Luciana said. She was raised with Peruvian football — soccer. 

This father and daughter duo had different upbringings. Separated by a generation, they were united in their experience at Stanford by a football game, seated in the Leland Stanford Jr. University Marching Band corner of the stadium.

All four years as an undergraduate at Stanford, Tyler Bridges was a part of the band.

“Anybody who was in the band in its heyday, the sixties, seventies, and eighties, remembers it as an absolute highlight of their time at Stanford,” Bridges said. 

During his four years playing trombone in the band, he attended many football games – both home and away. It was unclear, though, how many of those games the 144 members of the band remembered back in the day. Bridges fondly recalled their traditions of beer and doughnuts at 7 a.m. on gameday and their schemes to bring blenders into the stadium with alcohol to make mixed drinks after their pregame show.  

This year, Luciana joined the band for a day at the SMU game. With no prior musical experience, she thought she was going to be stuck in the corner, perhaps playing a stop sign. Instead, she was given the option to play any instrument she wanted — and she chose the trombone. 

“[My dad] always had these crazy anecdotes of [the band] being insane or just not very PC,” she said. The band today has a no-alcohol policy. “It was very different from the picture he had painted for me… but it was really fun.”

The most remarkable moment in Stanford football history for Bridges was a year after he graduated, a moment that would inspire a multi-year long research project. He was listening to the 1982 Big Game on the radio across the country in Washington DC with a group of Stanford fans. When the Stanford team, led by their star senior quarterback John Elway, kicked a field goal in the final seconds, they went off and partied. 

“I didn’t know that Stanford had lost the 1982 Big Game until I picked up the front page of The Washington Post the next day,” Bridges said. Soon after, he learned about The Play — as the Stanford band was rushing the field to celebrate the victory, the Cal team completed five lateral passes to run the ball into the endzone for a last-second comeback. In the process, Gary Terrell, a trombone player — just like Bridges — was knocked to the ground. 

“The time he showed me the video [of the play] he borderline was about to cry, and I did not understand him. It’s just a football game,” Luciana said of her father’s passion for the moment. 

However, Bridges noted that even 40 years later, The Play is “the most famous ending in the history of college football — of all the tens of thousands of college football games.”

“It touched me because I had played in the band for four years,” Bridges said.

So, Bridges decided to immortalize the moment in a book, “Five Laterals and a Trombone,” which he published in 2022 on The Play’s 40th anniversary. After 375 interviews and many hours spent sifting through newspaper articles from 1982 in the basement of Green Library, Bridges’ book ended up preserving not just The Play, but the rich and passionate history of Big Game rivalry. 

“Cal versus Stanford is one of the great all-time rivalries in college football,” Elway ‘83, former Stanford quarterback and Pro Football Hall of Famer, wrote in the forward of the book, reminiscing on his time with the Cardinal. 

Luciana went to the Big Game in 2022 with a group of Latin American friends who didn’t understand football or the significance of the Big Game.

“I kind of was like an expert because of my dad’s book and him showing me the play so many times and it became a core principle of my childhood to be honest,” Luciana said.

Years after watching her dad tear up when watching The Play, Luciana has gained a new perspective on the importance of American football since going to Stanford.

“It wasn’t, and isn’t just a football game. I think there’s an element to it that a lot of people maybe discount initially but beyond the concussions and maybe some of the politics around football. I would say it’s a sport that brings people together,” she said.

Luciana is planning to go to the big game this year and convincing as many of her friends to come with her. 

The rivalry between Stanford and Cal transcends generations. Bridges attended Stanford when the atmosphere surrounding the Big Game was equivalent to that of the Super Bowl and has helped his daughter see the magic again. 

“I hope that someday, that the rivalry, the excitement, the spirit that I got to see as a kid growing up and as a student, I really hope that returns,” Bridges said.

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