119th Big Game119th Big Game
Football

119th Big Game

Stanford Cardinal (7-3 overall • 5-3 Pac-12)
California Golden Bears (4-6 overall • 2-5 Pac-12)

November 19, 2016 • 2:30 p.m. PT
Memorial Stadium (62,467) • Berkeley, Calif.

Game Notes Depth Chart Live Stats Tickets

TelevisionLive national broadcast on Pac-12 Networks with Roxy Bernstein (play-by-play), Anthony Herron (analyst) and Lewis Johnson (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 132) and XM Satellite Radio (channel 202) will carry a national broadcast.

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

Notes

  • The 119th edition of the Big Game will be contested Saturday at Memorial Stadium.
  • Stanford has faced Cal more than any other opponent, while also enjoying long-standing rivalries with USC (94), UCLA (88), Washington (87), Oregon State (83), Oregon (80), San Jose State (67) and Washington State (67).
  • Stanford's 61 wins over Cal are the most against any opponent.
  • The Cardinal has won six straight over Cal, its longest streak since seven straight wins from 1995-2001. That seven-game win streak is the longest in the series history. Stanford's margin of victory during the current six-game streak is 23.2 points.
  • Stanford has won three straight games in Berkeley, its longest winning streak at Cal since the Cardinal won four straight from 1962-68.
  • Stanford has held each of its 10 opponents under their season scoring average.
  • Stanford ranks 14th nationally in scoring defense (19.4) and 11th in sacks (3.20), a figure that leads the Pac-12. Christian McCaffrey leads the Pac-12 with 193.22 all-purpose yards/game and 123.9 rushing yards/game, with the former ranking second nationally. For his career, McCaffrey is averaging 177.75 all-purpose yards/game, the most of any active FBS player.
  • McCaffrey (3,434) is 89 yards away from passing Toby Gerhart (3,522) for third on Stanford's career rushing yards chart.
  • Under head coach David Shaw, Stanford is 5-0 against Cal, 24-9 on the road, 41-12 vs. Pac-12 opponents (regular season), 41-7 vs. unranked opponents, 18-5 in November, 46-15 coming off a win, 27-7 in day games and 9-3 on Pac-12 Networks.
  • Stanford's 73 wins this decade are the most of any private school, ahead of Baylor (63), TCU (63), Notre Dame (59) and USC (59).
  • 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'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.