Cal's Barrett Miller Faces Former Stanford Teammates in Big Game

Imagine Donald Trump suddenly endorsing liberal values. Or Anthony Hopkins playing a goofball in a slap-stick comedy.

It’s sort of the unfathomable situation Cal’s Barrett Miller will step into on Saturday. After playing the past four Big Games as a starting offensive lineman for Stanford, the institution from which he graduated, Miller will turn around and be a starting offensive lineman for the Cardinal’s archrival in Saturday’s Big game at Stanford Stadium, his home field the previous four seasons.

“It’s definitely a lot more strange than I’ve felt in any other game,” Miller said this week.

Miller had basically retired from football after the 2022 season, but an injured knee recovered better than he had expected, and with the coaching change at Stanford, he decided to put his name in the transfer portal. Cal responded quickly, so he transferred and arrived at Cal this past summer, becoming, it is believed, the first scholarship player to transfer from Stanford to Cal.

He’s not sure how all the Stanford players will react to his presence on the Cal line, saying there may be some “vendetta” feeling on the Cardinal side, but he also will be playing on a Stanford Stadium field that is so familiar to him.

“In the back of my mind, I think of this as my last home game, because this is a place I played for four years,” Miller said.

He wonders whether some of the Stanford players resent that he left Stanford Stadium to play for the Cardinal's Bay Area rival.

“There is a little extra to prove, because some of the guys across the bay will look at me a little different for leaving,” he said in the video atop this article, “so I think I might get some different attitudes, some better looks from some of the guys I played against before. There’s a vendetta, I think, guys might have against me.”

He remains friends with starting Stanford defensive lineman Tobin Phillips, someone Miller may be asked to block, but he said all the communication he had had with former Stanford teammates during the season suddenly stopped this week.

Miller was on the winning side in only one of the four Big Games he started for Stanford, the Cardinal winning in the shortened 2020 pandemic season, but Cal winning in 2019, 2021 and 2022. But he’d like Cal to deliver its third straight Big Game defeat to Stanford this year, because it is the celebration after a win that he remembers most about his Big Game experiences.

“The win against any other opponent doesn’t feel the same,” he said.

As he prepares to defeat the school that gave him a degree in mechanical engineering, Miller acknowledges the peculiar circumstances.

“I think I’m in a very unique situation,” he said. “It hasn’t really hit me yet, because I feel like every other game I’ve played, it’s like I have to understand this D-line, I have to watch so much film. But for this one Big Game, I know exactly who I’m going against. I played four years against them, scout team, starting and in practice. So I know these guys, so it’s a little weird.

“I’m in a position where I have so much respect for Stanford, but yet now I’m bleeding blue for Cal. So it’s a hard thing to be in, but at the same time, I love the Big Game, either side, I love the rivalry, I love everything about it.”

Follow Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

Find Cal Sports Report on Facebook by going to https://www.facebook.com/si.calsportsreport