North Division ShowdownNorth Division Showdown
Football

North Division Showdown

Stanford Cardinal (3-0 • 2-0 Pac-12)
Washington Huskies (4-0 • 1-0 Pac-12)

September 30, 2016 • 6 p.m. PT
Husky Stadium (70,083) • Seattle, Wash.

  Game Notes Depth Chart Live Stats Tickets

TelevisionLive national broadcast on ESPN with Joe Tessitore (play-by-play), Todd Blackledge (analyst) and Holly Rowe (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 93) and XM Satellite Radio (channel 197) will carry a national broadcast.

PollsStanford (7th - AP, 6th - USA Today) • Washington (10th - AP, 9th - USA Today)

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

Notes

  • Winners of seven straight, Stanford travels to Washington Friday for a Pac-12 Conference North Division matchup at Husky Stadium. The game will be broadcast live nationally on ESPN.
  • 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 18 consecutive weeks. This is first time both Stanford and Washington enter a meeting ranked by the AP since 2013 (No. 5 Stanford beat No. 15 Washington, 31-28) and first with both teams ranked in the top-10. The programs have split the 10 meetings in which both teams were ranked.
  • Stanford's series with Washington is its second oldest, and the Huskies are the Cardinal's most common out-of-state opponent.
  • Stanford has won seven of its past eight meetings with Washington, and with a win on Friday, Stanford will hold the upper hand in the series (tied at 41-41-4). Stanford only once defeated Washington from 1983-2003.
  • Stanford's seven-game winning streak is the longest since rattling off eight straight in 2015.
  • The Cardinal has won 15 of its past 16 outings, and matched a school-record seven straight Pac-12 regular-season road games (2010-11). No Stanford team ever has won eight straight conference regular-season road games. Stanford also won six straight conference regular-season road games from 1926-28, 1933-35 and 1974-75.
  • Friday's game will be the first played outside of California for the Cardinal since Nov. 7, 2015 (at Colorado), a span of 328 days.
  • Stanford is off to a 3-0 start for the fifth time since 2010.
  • Stanford ranks eighth nationally in scoring defense (12.0), 17th in rushing defense (95.3) and 33rd in total defense (337.7). Conrad Ukropina is tied for first in field goal percentage (1.000), converting all six attempts. Christian McCaffrey ranks second in rushing yards per game (145.3) and all-purpose yards (211.67). He's 15th in total rushing yards (436).
  • Under head coach David Shaw, Stanford is 29-8 on the road, 38-9 vs. Pac-12 opponents, 17-3 in September, 44-13 coming off a win, 20-9 vs AP ranked opponents, 29-7 when ranked higher, 7-0 on Friday and 18-4 on ESPN.
  • 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.