Stanford Cardinal (8-3)
Rice Owls (3-8)
November 26, 2016 • 5 p.m. PT
Stanford Stadium (50,424) • Stanford, Calif.
Game Notes Depth Chart Live Stats Tickets
TelevisionLive national broadcast on Pac-12 Networks with Ted Robinson (play-by-play), Yogi Roth (analyst) and Cindy Brunson (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 132) will carry a national broadcast.
On the WebGoStanford.com • RiceOwls.com • Pac-12.com • #GoStanford
Notes
- Stanford concludes its regular season Saturday with a nonconference home contest against Rice. The game kicks off at 5 p.m. PT and will be televised on Pac-12 Networks.
- Stanford is 1-3 all-time against Rice and 4-8 when facing a Lone Star state opponent. The Cardinal also is 1-0 vs. Southern Methodist, 2-2 vs. Texas, 0-1 vs. Texas A&M and 0-2 vs. TCU.
- Stanford has won at least eight games for a school-record eighth straight year.
- Head coach David Shaw is 10-0 at home against nonconference opponents. The Cardinal has a 15-game home nonconference win streak dating to the final contest of 2007 vs. Notre Dame.
- Saturday marks the first time since 2001 that Stanford ends the season against a team other than a conference opponent or Notre Dame (the 2001 game against San Jose State was moved to the end of the season due to 9/11). The last time Stanford had a scheduled game to end the year against a non-league opponent other than Notre Dame? That was a trip to Hawaii in 1972.
- Rice is the only team in the current Conference USA structure Stanford has faced.
- The Cardinal has not dropped a regular-season finale since 2008, and is 5-0 in such affairs under head coach David Shaw.
- Stanford ranks 19th nationally in red zone defense (.763), 17th in sacks (2.91) and 20th in scoring defense (20.5).
- All-America running back Christian McCaffrey leads the nation with 205.6 all-purpose yards/game and is seventh with 1,399 rushing yards. He's fifth with 139.9 rushing yards/game, a figure that leads the Pac-12. He has 14 total touchdowns, third-best among conference players and 21st nationally.
- In the past four games -- all Stanford wins -- McCaffrey has accounted for 787 rushing yards (second among all FBS players), nine rushing touchdowns (fourth), 118 touches (second), 894 scrimmage yards (second), 223.5 scrimmage yards/game (second) and 10 scrimmage touchdowns (second).
- For his career, McCaffrey is averaging 181.51 all-purpose yards/game, the most of any active FBS player. LSU's Leonard Fournette (155.66) is second.
- The Cardinal offense has been finding its groove in the midst of a four-game winning streak. Stanford has averaged over 500 total yards of offense in each of its past three games, a first for the program since 2011.
- In the past three games, Stanford has rushed for 1,004 yards, third-most among FBS teams and trailing only run-first programs Air Force (1,192) and Navy (1,190). But only Stanford has averaged over 500 yards of total offense during the past three weeks.
- Stanford has held each of its 11 opponents under their season scoring average.
- Under head coach David Shaw, Stanford is 33-6 at home, 42-7 vs. unranked opponents, 19-5 in November, 47-15 coming off a win and 10-3 on Pac-12 Networks.
- Stanford's 74 wins this decade are the most of any private school, ahead of Baylor (63), TCU (63), USC (60) and Notre Dame (59).
- The Cardinal is 49-8 at Stanford Stadium since 2008.
- Stanford is 52-8 this decade in games played on California soil.
- 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.
- 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.