Finally time to win in California?

The last time the Arizona State football team won a Pac-10 game in California;

• Google was just another search engine
• Bill Clinton was president
• Baseball fans still enjoyed watching Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire play and we all thought they were just naturally strong guys
• The Bone Collector was the Number 1 movie in America
• RIM had just introduced the BlackBerry to the market
• There were no iPods
• Napster was all the rage
• I had no kids

November 6, 1999 was the last time Sun Devil football won a conference game in the state of California. That was a 26-16 win over USC, well before they were the USC we all despise today. Future NFLers shined in that game with Todd Heap scoring a TD and more than 100 yards receiving and JR Redmond racked up more that 150 all-purpose yards.

The last time they won at all in California was 2002 when they escaped San Diego State with a 39-28 win. Thanks Koetter for preparing the boys to show up in California. In case anyone is interested, Koetter was 1-12 in California during his time at ASU.

Clearly Saturday's game against Stanford is a big one beyond the obvious reasons of staying undefeated, beating a team they should beat and continuing to climb the rankings. Getting a conference win in California will truly represent the changing of the guard for the program and will go a long way in demonstrating to the locals who need to fill the stadium that ASU is for real.

On paper Stanford doesn't look great, but this is a team that gave Oregon all they could handle last weekend and they have a fiery up and coming coach in Jim Harbaugh. Should be a good one and the first close game from start to finish ASU has played in thus far in 2007.