College football's deadliest day happened in San Francisco 125 years ago

In 1900, Stanford and Cal weren’t even a decade into the rivalry that’s now known simply as the Big Game. But from the very first matchup in March 1892, during Stanford’s first school year, tens of thousands of fans converged in San Francisco at a stadium in the Mission District for the annual showdowns. Cal went winless in the first seven — four Stanford wins and three ties — but won back-to-back games in 1898 and 1899, with San Francisco Mayor (and Cal alum) James Phelan giving the school the famous Football Players statue (made by Berkeley resident Douglas Tilden) as a prize for winning two games in a row. The prize raised the stakes for the 1900 showdown, leading to some intense hype ahead of the Thanksgiving Day tilt. On game day, an estimated 19,000 fans descended on the stadium as early as four hours before the 2:30 p.m. kickoff, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, with tickets going for $1 — around $40 in today’s money. The paper called it the largest crowd to ever attend a football game on the West Coast. The hefty cost and packed house sent fans scrambling for other ways to watch the game. The nearby glassworks factory seemed to offer a good view from the roof. As a 2015 feature from Stanford Magazine’s Sam Scott broke down, glasswork factory superintendent James Davis was warned about the potential for onlookers by game organizers, but underestimated how many people would actually flock to his building. About 20 minutes after the game began, the factory roof caved in from the middle, sending dozens of men and children falling down 45 feet. Even worse than the fall for many was the landing: The factory had its furnace on to prepare for its first day of throwing glass just a few days after the game, leaving the brick cover an estimated 500 degrees to the touch. Even with the limited factory staff immediately scrambling and rescue efforts kicking into action almost immediately, the human toll was considerable: By the next day, at least a dozen people were already declared dead. The Examiner categorized another dozen as “will probably die.” The San Francisco Chronicle listed more than 100 people as either “Seriously Injured” or “Slightly Injured” on the front page of the following day’s paper. Perhaps the most stunning detail about the day, in retrospect, is how the game proceeded with only a short pause in the action. The strong performance from Cal up to that point led one Cal supporter to think the commotion was a ruse from Stanford and yell, “It’s a job!” When other Berkeley fans joined in, attention turned back to the field and the game action resumed. Stanford would eventually take the game over in the second half by kicking a late field goal (then worth five points) for the only scoring play of the rivalry showdown. Stanford fans celebrated the win by storming the field and parading down Market Street to the Palace Hotel. At the same time, the rest of the city scrambled to get victims to hospitals across the city for treatment of their injuries and burns. Crowds also gathered at the factory, hospitals and the city morgue, desperate for information. For as tragic as the accident was, the news cycle and the community moved on expeditiously from the disaster. It only took a week for a coroner’s jury to place official blame on the victims themselves for going up on the roof. In a 2012 feature for SF Weekly, Joe Eskenazi dove deep on the changes in the legal system since then. The doctrine of the time — contributory negligence, which says a victim can’t collect if they had any blame for an incident — is now barred in most U.S. states. Eskenazi used the 2011 attack on Bryan Stow at Dodgers Stadium as an example to compare to the modern era (Stow was later awarded $18 million by a jury for the attack). Six years later, an earthquake and fire would change the city’s barometer for devastation, sending the 1900 disaster to the annals of history. There’s hardly any visible reminder of the Thanksgiving Day Disaster in the Bay Area. There is no plaque honoring the deceased in the Mission District or on either school’s campus. In fact, Scott only found one grave from a victim of the tragedy.