Stanford Cardinal (8-2 • 7-1 Pac-12)
California Golden Bears (6-4 • 3-4 Pac-12)
November 21, 2015 • 7:30 p.m. PT
Stanford Stadium (50,464) • Stanford, Calif.
Television • Live national broadcast on ESPN with Dave Flemming (play-by-play), Chris Spielman (analyst) and Todd McShay (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 (15th - AP, 15th - USA Today) • Cal (NR - AP, RV - USA Today)
Live Stats • Live in-game statistics available at GoStanford.com
On the Web • GoStanford.com • CalBears.com • Pac-12.com • #GoStanford
• The 118th edition of the Big Game will be contested Saturday at Stanford Stadium.
• Stanford has faced Cal more than any other opponent, while also enjoying long-standing rivalries with USC (93), UCLA (87), Washington (86), Oregon State (82), Oregon (79), San Jose State (67) and Washington State (66).
• Stanford’s 60 wins over Cal are the most against any opponent.
• Fifth-year senior DE Brennan Scarlett will make his Big Game debut Saturday. Scarlett, Stanford’s first-ever graduate transfer, joined the Cardinal after four seasons at Cal. However, Scarlett did not play in the Big Game during his time with the Golden Bears due to injury. There were several WWII-era players who played for Cal while enrolled at Berkeley for a Navy training program, then played at Stanford after the war, including Richard Madigan, Fred Boensch, Jim Cox, Marty Anderson, George Quist, Bill Hacten and Babe Higgins. Dale Rubin played for Cal in 1962, then transferred and played for Stanford from 1964-65.
• Stanford has won eight of its past nine games and 11 of 13 dating to 2014.
• The Cardinal enters the matchup ranked 15th by the AP and USA Today.
• Under head coach David Shaw, Stanford is 4-0 vs. Cal, 35-9 in Pac-12 regular-season games, 28-4 at home, 14-5 in November, 12-1 coming off a loss, 24-7 when ranked higher than an opponent and 15-4 on ESPN.
• The Cardinal leads the Pac-12 in a number of statistical categories, including: third-down conversion percentage (.496), third-down conversion percentage defense (.348), fourth-down conversion percentage (.900), first-down defense (177), passing yards allowed (214.1), tackles for loss allowed (4.80), time of possession (35:57), total defense (348.4) and winning percentage (.800).
• Sophomore RB and Heisman Trophy candidate Christian McCaffrey continues to lead the FBS with 241.80 all-purpose yards/game, more than 30 yards over second-place Tyler Ervin of San Jose State (209.8). Since 1978, only four other Pac-12 players have averaged 200 or more all-purpose yards/game for an entire season -- USC’s Marcus Allen in 1981 (232.6), Stanford’s Glyn Milburn in 1990 (202.0), USC’s Reggie Bush in 2005 (222.3) and USC’s Marqise Lee in 2012 (206.4). Coincidentally, Milburn’s teammate in 1990 was Ed McCaffrey (Christian’s father), who had 61 receptions for 917 yards and a conference-leading 91.7 receiving yards/game that season.
• 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 email 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.