Hlas: Stanford’s loss at Northwestern means nothing

LOS ANGELES — You may have wondered the following:

How fearsome can Stanford's football team really be when it lost 16-6 at Northwestern while the Hawkeyes hammered the Wildcats in Evanston, 40-10?

Of course, if you play the comparative-score game you could note Memphis beat Ole Miss, but Alabama did not. Which wouldn't mean a thing on Jan. 1 were the Crimson Tide to face Memphis.

But it's still a bit jolting to compare box scores of the two Rose Bowl teams' games at Northwestern. Iowa rushed at will on Oct. 17, amassed 492 yards, and overpowered a Wildcats team that is 10-2 and hasn't lost since that day.

Stanford was held out of the end zone on Sept. 5 by the Wildcats and managed just 240 yards. It went on to average 452 yards over its next 12 games, 11 of them victories. So what the heck happened at Northwestern?

Some outsiders suggested playing at what was 9 a.m., Pacific time, messed with them. Stanford's players, though, sound a little peeved when they hear that used as a theory for their loss.

'We go through 7 a.m. workouts all the time in the summer and we do 6 a.m. workouts in the spring,' Stanford All-America running back Christian McCaffrey said. 'That's not an excuse for us at all.'

What it was is the Cardinal got outplayed on the road by a good Northwestern team. Then they quickly got much better.

'We had a lot of first-game mishaps,' said Stanford senior offensive guard Joshua Garnett. 'A lot of things just didn't go our way that game. That wasn't on the coaches. It wasn't on anyone else but the players not executing to a high enough level.'

'We couldn't get in any rhythm offensively,' McCaffrey said. 'We were playing real tight.

'I think after that game we had two options. We could have sat around and moped about it and start becoming 'me' guys. But instead we came together as a team. We played with a chip on our shoulder.'

Stanford's players are Stanford students, which means they're articulate. In Monday's session alone, I heard words from them like 'emulate,' 'cognizant,' 'euphoric,' and 'magnificent.'

But that doesn't mean they won't slip into sports cliché-speak. McCaffrey and Garnett both dropped the 'chip on our shoulder' phrase on me. Whenever two or more players on the same team use a phrase like that, it's usually something that had already spread across their squad.

'After that game we kept a chip on our shoulder,' Garnett said. 'We understand what that feeling was and throughout the rest of the weeks we just reminded each other not to forget what that Northwestern game felt like. Don't forget.'

'That's definitely a real thing,' McCaffrey said. 'Still to this day we have a chip from that game.'

And, they have an opponent here that not only conquered Northwestern, but is the king of the Wildcats' Big Ten West Division. So the Cardinal have a chance to use their last game to feel they can right the wrong from their first game.

For those looking for pseudo-edges like Iowa walloping the Wildcats while Stanford was silenced at Northwestern, here's another:

The Cardinal played here three years ago and two years ago. This will be quarterback Kevin Hogan's third Rose Bowl start. That's got to give Stanford a foothold in the foothills of Pasadena, right? Well, not to hear Stanford's guys tell it.

'I don't think it's too much of an advantage,' Hogan said. 'This is, in my opinion, the best bowl there is. You're going to get up no matter what. You're going to have the same feeling every time.

'I could play in this game 100 times and I'd still have that same feeling running out the tunnel onto the field. They're going to experience the same thing. We're still going to feel like little kids running out of the locker room.

'I know both teams are going to bring their best that day.'

Northwestern, meanwhile, will play Tennessee in the Outback Bowl on the other side of the country. What the Wildcats did against Stanford and Iowa will be of less importance here than the windchill in What Cheer.

Comments: mike.hlas@thegazette.com

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