Saturday was the last time Cal faced USC, at least for the foreseeable future. As one of the most established rivalries in the conference, of course, the game went in the most chaotic fashion possible.

Of course.

It was Pac-12 mayhem in all its glory and then some. It was a perfect, fairytale game for the end of this historic rivalry — unless you’re a Cal fan, in which case your team lost in unimaginably cruel fashion. Or, unless you’re a USC fan, in which case your team played … pretty bad.

But it was a fairytale game for college football fans, and it really doesn’t get any better than that.

So, like with every fairytale, let’s start from the beginning.

The game finally got underway after a delay due to about a dozen protesters sitting at the 50-yard line before kickoff, in favor of a UC Berkeley professor’s reinstatement.

Once things got rolling, right off the bat it looked like the Bears would be playing defense — and of the subpar variety — all day: The Bears held the Trojans to a field goal on USC’s first possession, but swiftly lost the ball on a turnover caused by a botched handoff from Fernando Mendoza to Jaydn Ott on just the second play of their first drive. The Trojans would go on to hold Cal scoreless at 10-0 until the last four minutes of the first quarter.

Scoring from both sides — well, from USC and Ott — would bring the score to 28-17 at the half.

It’s halftime and the Bears are up on a ranked opponent, you would think the world is upside down. Well, the world was about to get even weirder.