Rose Bowl Prep

Of course there's lots going on in the news with all the prep and anticipation of Stanford going to the Rose Bowl.  Here are a bunch of snippets and thoughts...

Tweet from Zach Ertz
Man what an incredible run! Coach Harbaugh told us what this place had in store for us and three BCS games later he was 100% right #GoCard

Stanford doesn't travel well.  Article about our Inverted Fan Base.

Stanford Defense
Stanford currently ranks No. 1 in the NCAA in rushing defense (71.33 yards/game), sacks (4.42/game) and tackles for loss (9.25/game). Stanford also owns the 11th-best scoring defense (16.92 points/game) and eighth-best third-down defensive efficiency (29.53 percent).



Some stats that will matter at the Rose Bowl

• 3 - # of bowl eligible teams (out of 3) in our non-conference schedule this season.  All other bowl bound teams this year had at least one game against a whimpy opponent.
• 11 - average margin of victory this season, down from 21.3 last year.  We have escaped a bunch of close games this year (San Jose State, Arizona, Wash St, Oregon State, Oregon, UCLA)
• 1442 - record breaking yards by Stephan Taylor, becoming the all time leading rusher for Stanford
• 30 - # of points scored by the DEFENSE this year

Last Time we Won at the Rose Bowl (tweet from David Lombardi, ESPN analyst)
Another note of interest: Stanford has not won Rose Bowl as the Cardinal. They won in their final game as Indians: 13-12 over Michigan, 1972

YouTube video: Pac-12 Champions, True Stanford Men

Football team heads south, starting with a trip to Disneyland, with Wisconsin, for media day.

Tweet from David Lombardi
@ShayneSkov11 check Google's traffic report on your fwy. "Animals on road." That referring to the front 7?




Lowrys Beef Bowl
Freshman Josh Garnett wins, after eating 7 plates of prime rib. Said he could have kept going, but they ran out of time.

Senior tight end Zach Ertz remarked on Joshua Garnett's performance at the Beef Bowl at Lawry's Prime Rib in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. Garnett ate a team-high seven 24-ounce hunks of prime rib. The next-highest was believed to be four.

"He wasn't even phased at the end," Ertz said. "He said he could have eaten at least three more pieces. He said it could have easily been 10, but he ran out of time."

Stephan Taylor - Stanford MVP

The team voted Stephan Taylor their MVP, and posted this highlight video.

http://vimeo.com/54719606

#16 UCLA 24 - #8 Stanford 27. PAC-12 Champions!

Wahoo!  We're going to the ROSE BOWL!

A cool quote in the post-game writeups:  Kevin Hogan took Stanford where Andrew Luck never could.

This one was much closer than last week when we handled the Bruins easily.  UCLA played so much better, stopped our offense, and generally caused a bunch of trouble.  Makes you wonder if they sort of laid down last weekend to get to play us this weekend instead of Oregon?

Jordan Williamson kicked a 36 yard FG to break the tie in the 4th quarter with 6 minutes left.  UCLA had a chance to tie with a 51 yard FG with a few seconds left, but failed.

Funny - Cheri was texting me earlier in the game when they were ahead, saying "I hear San Antonio is nice this time of year".  They had a bunch of people at their place watching the game now that they're all huge Bruin fans (Zack is a freshman in the band this year).  The general consensus was that whoever lost this game will go to the Alamo Bowl.  Turns out maybe THEY'RE going to Texas, not me!  :)

Crappy crowd - embarrassing that we can't sell out for the PAC 12 championship game. It was raining, so that kept some away, but come on!  Official attendance said 31,622 but it looked to be far less than that.