[box]Breaking down the Battle for the Golden Horseshoe and the Blue-Green Rivalry. [/box]
Soccer
With 11,075 fans looking on in dead silence, former Cal Poly defender and four-time All-Big West Conference selection Patrick Sigler stepped to the penalty spot. As cool as ice, he trotted to the ball, fooled the goalkeeper right and slotted the penalty kick into the bottom left corner of the net.
With that, the silence of the sold-out crowd erupted and pandemonium ensued.
The kick gave the Mustangs men’s soccer team just enough to edge the Gauchos 2-1 in overtime, one of the many dramatic and raucous matches the two teams have produced in years. Cal Poly versus UC Santa Barbara is known across campus as the highest profile sporting event of the year for many Cal Poly students. With crowds of as much as 10,000-plus spectators per match on multiple occasions since 2006, the game has taken on an aura rarely seen on the collegiate stage.
“I felt like I was on TV or in a video game,” senior forward Benny Estes said of Sigler’s late-game heroics last season. “It was just an amazing feeling and I think a lot of the fans felt it as well. To be able to be a part of that makes it really memorable.”
Collegesoccernews.com, a leading collegiate soccer website, even billed the matchup as the greatest rivalry in college soccer.
“The fan base of both schools have made this one truly special,” the website wrote in a 2011 article. “You want passion in a game, then check out UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly.”
The Blue-Green Rivalry has drawn nine of the top-23 regular season attendance figures in NCAA history. Since 2007, the Mustangs and Gauchos have averaged 7,531 per match for a total of 90,374 fans in the last five years. Two of those matches at Alex G. Spanos Stadium have been sellouts of 11,075 spectators.
The product on the field has been deserving of the rivalry moniker, as each game in the last half decade has been heavily contested. Seven of the 12 matches played have gone into overtime, just one of them being won by Cal Poly in the extra frame. The Mustangs have gone 3-6-3 during the stretch, each of their wins coming at home.
Last October, Sigler’s penalty kick winner in the final minute sent the home fans into a frenzy — an estimated 8,000 Cal Poly students attended — as they rushed the field after the final whistle had been blown.
A similar scene played out in 2010, when Cal Poly senior Chris Gaschen rifled an overtime winner into the back of the net to give Cal Poly a sudden-death victory.
“The fact that Cal Poly is able to beat a team that is ranked much higher than them and that (UCSB) is a local foe makes this rivalry,” biochemistry senior Evan Buck said. “There’s just a general hatred between both schools.”
The proximity of the schools allows the supporters to travel to each other’s home venues and the atmosphere mirrors cultures outside the United States. Cal Poly’s 2-0 away loss at UC Santa Barbara last season produced a 13,822 fan figure—the fifth largest in history.
The Mustangs and Gauchos will duke it out in another home-and-home series in 2012, as Cal Poly will visit Santa Barbara on Friday, Oct. 19th and will host the Gauchos on Saturday, Nov. 3.
Football
Meanwhile, the Cal Poly football team has developed a rivalry with another University of California campus — UC Davis. The Mustangs and Aggies play not only for bragging rights and conference supremacy each year, but for a chance to lift the Golden Horseshoe Trophy.
While The Battle for the Golden Horseshoe was often played on one of the final Saturdays of the regular season, due to conference realignment Cal Poly and UC Davis will play their annual game next Saturday in Alex G. Spanos Stadium. Both Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) squads made the jump from the Great West Conference to the Big Sky Conference in 2012.
Having won the previous three years, the Aggies hold a 5-3 advantage since the inaugural horseshoe game and lead the all-time series record 19-16-2. The two teams have been playing since 1939, but the game wasn’t considered much of a bout until 2004-when the horseshoe trophy was made.
In 2010, a year in which Cal Poly’s frustrations were most visible, UC Davis escaped San Luis Obispo with a narrow 22-21 come-from-behind defeat that knocked the Mustangs out of playoff contention.
“It heightens the awareness of the rivalry and the importance of the game just because it is our first Big Sky game,” Cal Poly head coach Tim Walsh said. “We’re expecting it to be a great football game, but I think that it’s our time and our turn to come out on top.”
The Mustangs dominated the first half in the heartbreaking home loss two years ago, but a trio of field goals and two touchdown passes in the game’s final 10 minutes, including one with 35 seconds remaining, handed Cal Poly a knockout punch to its FCS playoff future.
“It makes it just that much worse … but we’re looking promising this year and I’m pretty sure the Golden Horseshoe is coming back to San Luis,” junior linebacker Xavier Ramos said.
Because this year’s contest will be the first conference game of the season for both schools, the outcome will dictate how each squad plays throughout its Big Sky schedule, according to Walsh.
While it may not determine any playoff positioning so early in the season, the Cal Poly-UC Davis rivalry, along with its soccer counterpart, is bound to cause a bit of pandemonium.