Hawkeyes haven’t faced a Christian McCaffrey

So who has Iowa's football team played against that resembles Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey?

I'm not talking about this season. I mean ever.

McCaffrey has broken Barry Sanders' 27-year-old NCAA record for all-purpose yards in a season with 3,496. That's with one game still to play, against the Hawkeyes in the Rose Bowl.

Oh, he's a sophomore.

McCaffrey had 461 all-purpose yards in the Cardinal's 41-22 win over USC last Saturday in the Pacific-12 Conference championship game. Those yards don't include his 11-yard touchdown pass, his second TD throw of the season.

He has 1,847 rushing yards, 1,042 kickoff return yards, 540 receiving yards (and a team-high 41 catches), and 67 punt return yards.

The next-closest player to McCaffrey in all-purpose yards is also from the San Franciso Bay Area. But Tyler Ervin of San Jose State has 1,086 fewer yards than McCaffrey!

The Big Ten's leader in that department is Ohio State's Ezekiel Elliott, with 1,861. McCaffrey has almost double that.

On a Los Angeles Times blog post after the USC-Stanford game, Lindsey Thiry wrote this:

Nobody can stop Christian McCaffrey.

McCaffrey is one of the three Heisman Trophy finalists. One is Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson, who has 3,512 passing yards and 887 rushing yards for a 13-0 team. It's hard to pick against him.

Another is Alabama running back Derrick Henry, who has 1,986 rushing yards and 97 receiving yards for a playoff-bound team. Henry will probably win.

The reason McCaffrey probably won't is seven of his team's games have started after 10 p.m., Eastern time. If this guy had been doing that stuff at Notre Dame or Michigan or Alabama or Florida State, he'd be the winner.

Repeat: 3,496 all-purpose yards, over 1,000 more than anyone in the country.

I'm a Heisman voter, and as such, I'm not allowed to announce my vote until the results are released Saturday night. So I can't tell you who I voted for atop my ballot when I transmitted it Monday.

But I will say this: I watched Stanford's 38-36 win over Notre Dame on Nov. 28, and was very impressed by the Cardinal's No. 5.

So is Stanford. The school has a website called WildCaff.com.