Returning to PasadenaReturning to Pasadena
Football

Returning to Pasadena

Stanford Cardinal (2-0 • 1-0 Pac-12)
UCLA Bruins (2-1 • 0-0 Pac-12)

September 24, 2016 • 5 p.m. PT
Rose Bowl (92,542) • Pasadena, Calif.

Game Notes Depth Chart Live Stats Tickets

TelevisionLive national broadcast on ABC with Chris Fowler (play-by-play), Kirk Herbstreit (analyst) and Samantha Ponder (sideline).

RadioLive 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 84) and XM Satellite Radio (channel 84) will carry a national broadcast.

PollsStanford (7th - AP, 6th - USA Today) • UCLA (RV - AP, RV - USA Today)

On the WebGoStanford.com • UCLAbruins.com • Pac-12.com • #GoStanford

Notes

  • Stanford returns to a familiar destination Saturday when it travels to the Rose Bowl to face UCLA in a prime-time matchup on ABC. During its last trip to Pasadena, the Cardinal won the Rose Bowl Game on Jan. 1 when it defeated No. 6 Iowa, 45-16.
  • Stanford is ranked seventh in the AP poll and sixth by USA Today. Dating to Sept. 20, 2015, Stanford has been ranked by the AP in 17 consecutive weeks. Either Stanford or UCLA has been ranked in each of the past eight matchups between the two programs.
  • Stanford's eight straight wins over UCLA are tied for the program's best active win streak against any opponent (also eight straight wins vs. Washington State), and marks the longest winning streak for either team in the series. Stanford has scored at least 24 points in each of the past eight wins against the Bruins, winning by an average of 18.2 points.
  • Save for WWII, Stanford and UCLA have met in every season since 1925, and 72 times in the past 71 years (twice in 2012).
  • Stanford head coach David Shaw is undefeated against six Pac-12 opponents, including UCLA. In addition to the Bruins, the Cardinal has not lost to Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon State and Washington State during Shaw's tenure. Shaw has six wins over UCLA, the most against any program.
  • When Stanford and UCLA met in 2015 at Stanford Stadium, one jaw-dropping catch by Francis Owusu nearly overshadowed a record-setting performance from Christian McCaffrey. Owusu pinned the ball on the back of a defender in the end zone for one of the most memorable catches in recent memory and McCaffrey did most of the rest with a school-record 243 yards rushing and four touchdowns in No. 15 Stanford's 56-35 victory over No. 18 UCLA. McCaffrey scored on a 70-yard run out of the Wildcaff formation, returned a kick 96 yards to set up another score and ran for three more touchdowns in a virtuoso performance that broke Toby Gerhart's school record of 223 yards rushing in a game set in 2009. McCaffrey finished with 369 all-purpose yards.
  • For the first time in the 56-year history of the conference preseason poll, Stanford was chosen as the favorite to win the Pac-12 Conference title. The media poll has correctly selected the conference champion in 29 of 55 previous polls, but only twice in the last nine polls. The Cardinal was not picked to win as much as the Pac-12 North Division in any of its three recent championship seasons (2012, 2013, 2015).
  • Stanford has won at least 11 games four times in five seasons under head coach David Shaw. From 1891-2010, the program recorded four 10-win seasons.
  • Stanford is 49-6 this decade in games played on California soil. Under head coach David Shaw (2011-current), Stanford is 20-2 vs. in-state opponents.
  • Under head coach David Shaw, Stanford is 28-8 on the road, 37-9 vs. Pac-12 opponents, 16-3 in September, 43-13 coming off a win, 36-5 vs. unranked opponents and 9-4 on ABC.
  • Stanford's ongoing streak of seven consecutive winning seasons is the longest in program history since an 11-season streak from 1968-78 under John Ralston, Jack Christiansen and Bill Walsh. The program's longest streak (not including the rugby years) is 13, from 1923-35 under coaches Andrew Kerr, Pop Warner, and Tiny Thornhill.
  • The Cardinal returns 48 letterwinners (20 offense, 24 defense, four specialists) and 14 starters (five offense, six defense, three specialists) from last season's Pac-12 championship team that finished 12-2 and won the Rose Bowl Game against Iowa. Only 24.5 percent of this year's Stanford roster is composed of fourth- and fifth-year seniors. Underclassmen make up 75.5 percent of the 2016 roster.
  • Stanford's 2016 roster includes student-athletes from 29 states, Canada and Austria.
  • Stanford requires students to declare a major before their junior year. Among the team's upperclassmen, 15 majors are represented. Eight Cardinal are engineering majors. Majors among Cardinal student-athletes include: architectural design, biomechanical engineering, civil engineering, communication, computer science, Earth systems, economics, human biology, Japanese, management science and engineering, philosophy, psychology, public policy, science, technology and society, and urban studies.
  • 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 student-athletes 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.
  • The program partnered with APTUS Sports to maximize athletic and academic development. Prior to the season, each player completed 10 game-like exercises in 30 minutes on a special tablet that assessed how quickly and accurately they learn, react and adjust. APTUS analyzed individual, group and team data, and reported the findings to the coaching staff.
  • In 2012, Stanford became the first college program to use iPad playbooks, saving countless trees, dollars and man-hours.