Nov 15th, 2009
Preseason suspicions that this year’s Big Game would have Rose Bowl implications have turned out to be accurate — sort of.
The Big Game is next Saturday at Stanford -- Photo David Gonzales
The guess back in August was that Cal might be playing for its first Rose Bowl berth since the 1958 season when the Cal-Stanford game rolled around on Nov. 14. Turns out the Bears are out of the picutre, but Cal’s 24-16 win over Arizona on Saturday boosted Stanford’s Rose Bowl chances, and the Cardinal would have a shot at its first Rose Bowl berth since 1991 if it beats the Bears.
Even if Stanford beats Cal, the Cardinal is still a long shot to make it to Pasadena, because it would need Oregon to lose one of its remaining games and probably also would need Oregon State and Arizona to lose again as well. The only two-way teibreaker Stanford would win is with Oregon, and the Cardinal would lose the tie-breaker in most three-way ties as well, so it still needs some breaks.
Stanford could certainly claim it deserves a berth in the Rose Bowl, though, after the beating the Cardinal put on Oregon (51-42) and USC (55-21) in consecutive weeks.
Check out the Cardinal’s impressive resume at the moment:
– The 55 points Stanford scored against USC on Saturday was the most yielded by the Tojans in a game — ever. Stop and let that piece of information sink in for a moment. Making that statistic even more impressive is that the Cardinal pulled it off on the Trojans’ home field, and USC had lost only one home game since 2001.
– The 34-point margin of victory was the largest against the Trojans since Pete Carroll became head coach. Not quite as impressive as the above number, but pretty good.
— The last three USC home losses have all come against Stanford — in 2009, 2007 and 2001.
— Stanford scored 106 points the past two week against what were supposed to be the two best teams in the conference — Oregon and USC.
– TB Toby Gerhart rushed for 401 yards against No. 8 Oregon and No. 9 USC and is now part of the Heisman Trophy discussion. Similar games against Cal and Notre Dame should get Gerhart an invitation to New York even if he doesn’t win. The odds of a running back winning the award are poor, and a player from a team ranked outside the top 10 has not won the Heisman since 1998. But none of the star-anointed quarterbacks has blown anyone away yet, Stanford is moving up in the polls, and the voters tend to latch on to players who make a late-season push.
— Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck is now running neck-and-neck with Oregon’s Jeremiah Masoli for all-conferenc honors. The next few games will determine the winner.
— The Cardinal went for a two-point conversion leading 48-21 with less than seven minutes left. Got to love Jim Harbaugh.
