Stanford Cardinal (6-1 • 5-0 Pac-12)
Washington State Cougars (5-2 • 3-1 Pac-12)
October 31, 2015 • 7:30 p.m. PT
Martin Stadium (32,952) • Pullman, Wash.
Television • Live national broadcast on ESPN with Bob Wischusen (play-by-play), Brock Huard (analyst) and Shannon Spake (sideline).
Radio • Live coverage on Stanford’s flagship station -- KNBR 1050 AM -- with Scott Reiss ’93 (play-by-play), Todd Husak ’00 (analyst) and John Platz ’84 (sideline). The broadcast begins one hour before kickoff with the Cardinal Tailgate Show and concludes with the postgame Cardinal Locker Room Report. The game can be heard on Stanford student radio -- KZSU 90.1 FM -- and online at kzsulive.stanford.edu. Sirius Satellite Radio (channel 137) and XM Satellite Radio (channel 197) will carry a national broadcast.
Polls • Stanford (8th - AP, 8th - USA Today) • Washington State (RV - AP, RV - USA Today)
Live Stats • Live in-game statistics available at GoStanford.com
On the Web • GoStanford.com • WSUcougars.com • Pac-12.com • #GoStanford
• Riding its longest regular-season winning streak since 2012, eighth-ranked Stanford begins a two-game road swing when it faces Washington State at Martin Stadium on Halloween. The Cardinal is 13-5 all-time when playing on Halloween.
• The lone unbeaten team in Pac-12 play, Stanford is 5-0 against conference competition for the first time since 2011.
• The Cardinal enters the matchup ranked eighth by the AP and eighth by USA Today. Of Stanford’s 84 all-time AP top-10 rankings, 46 have been earned since 2010.
• Stanford has won each of its past seven meetings with Washington State, matching the program’s second-best active winning streak against any opponent (eight straight wins vs. both UCLA and San Francisco, which discontinued its major-college program in 1952). The Cardinal and Cougars have met in every season since 1995.
• Under head coach David Shaw, Stanford is 4-0 vs. Washington State, 33-8 in Pac-12 regular-season games, 17-8 on the road, 16-4 in October, 34-11 coming off a win, 22-6 when ranked higher than an opponent, 9-3 when ranked and on the road against an unranked Pac-12 opponent, 25-8 in night games and 14-4 on ESPN.
• Stanford has compiled a 60-14 record since 2010. Its 60 wins are the seventh-most by any college program over that stretch.
• The Cardinal leads the Pac-12 in a number of statistical categories, including: fourth-down conversion pct. (.875), first-down defense (118), kick returns (26.83), passing yards/completion (14.73), tackles for loss allowed (4.00), team passing efficiency (174.6), time of possession (35:36), total defense (339.3), turnovers lost (6) and winning percentage (.857).
• Sophomore RB Christian McCaffrey leads the nation with 259.7 all-purpose yards/game while ranking seventh with 136.1 rushing yards/game.
• Stanford requires students to declare a major before their junior year. Among the team’s upperclassmen, 16 majors are represented. Eleven Cardinal are engineering majors. Majors with three or more Cardinal student-athletes: communication, economics, human biology, management science and engineering, psychology, public policy, and science, technology and society.
• Situated in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford’s student-athletes are afforded the opportunity to experience the latest in cutting-edge technology, as the origins of some of the greatest hi-tech breakthroughs and most dynamic companies can trace their roots back to The Farm:
• STRIVR Labs co-founder and former Cardinal kicker Derek Belch has created a truly immersive, fully customizable virtual reality experience specifically for football teams. The platform has already changed the way Stanford’s quarterbacks prepare, and high school, college, and NFL teams are close behind.
• With the help of the Cardinal football team, a group of Stanford doctors and neuroscientists have been working to quantify the head trauma that players sustain during a game. The researchers developed custom mouth guards equipped with accelerometers and gyrometers that measure linear and rotational acceleration -- essentially, how violently the head gets whipped around during a game. The data from the sensors, which the scientists pull from the mouth guards after games and practices throughout the season, provides critical baseline data of how many jarring hits players typically experience.
• Temperature-regulation research of Stanford biologists H. Craig Heller and Dennis Grahn led to a device that rapidly cools body temperature and greatly improves exercise recovery. This is the sort of claim you see in spam e-mail subject lines, not in discussions of mammalian thermoregulation. By taking advantage of specialized heat-transfer veins in the palms of hands, “the glove” can rapidly cool athletes’ core temperatures -- and dramatically improve exercise recovery and performance.
• In 2012, Stanford became the first college program to use iPad playbooks, saving countless trees, dollars and man-hours.