Today, the Stanford Axe Committee announced the second annual BEAT CAL pictures contest! Created as a way to tie together students, alumni, and other Cardinal fans from around the word in a show of school spirit, last year's contest elicited submissions from as far as Paris (right) and even the battlegrounds of Iraq. To submit your photo, email it to beatcalpictures@gmail.com by November 24th, 2007. The top student and top alumni photo will be announced during Big Game Week. The winning prize: eternal glory.

Entries will be judged on creativity of composition, boldness of statement, artistry, and intangibles. Just to give you some ideas, previous BEAT CAL banners have been seen on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, on the side of Meyer Library, and on the Great Wall of China. But not every banner has to be huge. My favorite BEAT CAL picture of all time is an astronaut alum (Scott Parazynski, '83, MD '89) holding a small BEAT CAL sign in the space station Mir. Here is a description written by Chris Chapman '08 about last year's Stanford-in-Paris student photo winner:

We had a lot of fun doing this! We met just across the Seine from the tower at the Trocadero plaza. It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon -- luckily, as it may have been the last day of blue sky for the month! We got a lot of stares and laughs with our giant cardboard posters, and many people stopped to take their own photos -- including Sami Bendak, the father of a recent graduate. We quickly took as many shots as we could, as most of us had to run back to class! We all thought that this one came out as the best of the series. We hope you like it as much as we do!