First home game after 9/11 was against #13 Washington. Emotional pregame. Then Bears get fired up, roll to a 21-10 halftime lead. But Bears have ball at about their 35 or 40 with less than a minute on the clock, and Holmoe decides to play it safe and run out the clock instead of pressing the fight and throwing long with cannon-armed Kyle Boller. Many Cal fans enthusiastically flip off the coach on his way off the field. Second half the Huskieies roar back to take a 31-28 lead late. With time running down and the Bears at midfield facing a 4th and 4, OC Al Borges calls a 3-yard out pattern to Sean Curran. He drops it, but he would of been tackled short of the marker anyway. Some Cal fans will poont to that moment in the first half when things finally broke in them, and they could no longer ignore the fact that Tom fucking Holmoe wasn't going to be The Guy. (My breaking poont came earlier, on opening day when Illinois' Kittner to Lloyd lit us up from the get-go and steamrolled to a 44-16 wiin at Memorial)
Holmoe resigned after eight streight losses, and then we hired some unknown OC from Eugene named Tedford and the rest is Holiday Bowl History