Fun Facts: Iowa-Stanford, the Tom Petty Edition

What would a Rose Bowl be without Fun Facts? Or roses?

But especially Fun Facts.

1. Iowa and Stanford have never met in football. Iowa began playing football in 1889, Stanford in 1892.

2. The closest to Stanford an Iowa team has ever played was the Rose Bowl, 357 miles away from Palo Alto. The closest to Iowa a Stanford team has ever played was Madison, Wis., 176 miles from Iowa City.

3. Iowa has been in five previous Rose Bowls and won two. The average margin of victory in those games was 19.8 points, and none were decided by less than 12 points.

4. Iowa is 14-13-1 in bowls. Stanford is 12-13-1.

5. For the first time in its history, Iowa owns a three-game losing streak in bowls. But since 2001, only Ohio State (7) has more bowl wins among Big Ten teams than Iowa's six.

6. Stanford played in the first Rose Bowl. It lost to Michigan, 49-0, in 1902. Stanford quit with eight minutes remaining. The game was so lopsided that the bowl wasn't resumed for another 15 years.

In 1902 the field was 110 yards long. Forward passes were illegal. Teams were given three downs to move five yards. Touchdowns and field goals were worth five points apiece. Games consisted of two 35-minute halves.

On New Year's Day in 1903, football was replaced by Tournament Park instead hosting a polo match. Inspired by the popularity of the literary classic 'Ben Hur,' Roman-style chariot races were featured from 1904-1915.

Responding to public demand, the Tournament of Roses reinstated football in 1916, and the Rose Bowl football game appears to have caught on.

This was the longest Fun Fact ever.

7. Since Iowa's last California bowl-appearance (a 13-13 tie with BYU in the 1991 Holiday Bowl), the Hawkeyes have played in nine bowl games in Florida, six in Texas, and two in Arizona.

8. Stanford has had four Heisman Trophy runners-up in the last seven years. They are Toby Gerhart (2009), Andrew Luck (2010 and 2011), and Christian McCaffrey (2015).

9. Iowa quarterback C.J. Beathard and Stanford starting center Graham Shuler are from Franklin, Tenn. Hawkeye fullback Macon Plewa is from Franklin, Wis.

10. Stanford has players from 27 different states, but none from Iowa. The Hawkeyes have no players listed as being from California, though punter Dillon Kidd was born in San Diego and played at El Camino Community College in Torrance.

11. The last Iowa player to score in a Rose Bowl was 285-pound offensive lineman Ted Velicer. He caught a deflected Matt Rodgers pass for a 2-point conversion in the Hawkeyes' 46-34 loss to Washington in 1991. Velicer was inducted into the Preble High School Hall of Fame in Green Bay, Wis., in 2014.

12. In that game, Washington went for a 2-point conversion after scoring a touchdown that gave it a 39-14 lead. It failed.

13. Stanford kicker Conrad Ukropina is from Pasadena. He was 101-for-101 in PAT kicks in his high school career at Los Angeles Loyola.

14. Iowa scored 40 points at Northwestern in October. Stanford scored six points at Northwestern in September.

15. Stanford won the NCAA men's soccer championship on Dec. 13. Stanford has won an NCAA title in at least one sport each of the last 40 years, and has 108 team NCAA championships. It has won the last 21 Division I Learfield Sports Directors' Cups. The men's soccer title, though, was the school's first.

16. McCaffrey and quarterback Kevin Hogan both had passing, rushing and receiving touchdowns in Stanford's 41-22 win over USC in the Pac-12 championship game.

17. Former Iowa athletic director Bump Elliott was among the inaugural group of Rose Bowl Hall of Fame inductees, in 1989. Former Hawkeyes coach Hayden Fry was inducted into that Hall in 2010.

18. Stanford defensive end Aziz Shittu has 11 tackles for losses. He posted this on Twitter on Dec. 13:

Where does the money from the Pac12 championship go?December 14, 2015

Where does the money from the Pac12 championship go?

— shiTrue (@AzizShittu)

19. Pete Beathard, the great uncle of Iowa quarterback C.J. Beathard, threw four touchdown passes for USC and was Player of the Game with Wisconsin QB Ron Vander Kelen in the Trojans' 42-37 Rose Bowl win over the Badgers in 1963.

20. President Herbert Hoover of West Branch, Iowa, joined 400 students at Stanford for inaugural ceremonies that opened the university on Oct. 1, 1891. He was part of the school's first graduating class, in 1895.

Hoover organized the fourth Cal-Stanford game. He also held the Florida state record for largest bonefish caught from 1947 to 1958.

It's as if he has his own set of Fun Facts right here.

21. Brent Musburger will do the play-by-play of this Rose Bowl for ESPN. It will be his 12th Rose Bowl for ABC/ESPN. He did play-by-play for four Iowa games on CBS in 1985, a season in which the Hawkeyes also made it to Pasadena.

22. Among Stanford's alumni are the CEOs of Google, Yahoo, Instagram and Netflix.

23. Stanford is in Santa Clara County. A 2013 census showed the county has more than 7,000 homeless people, giving it the fifth-highest homeless population per capita in the country. That isn't really a fun fact.

24. In-N-Out Burger has two locations in Pasadena, and 305 total.

25. 'Iowa' is 75 percent vowels. 'Stanford' is 25 percent vowels.

26. 'Take back Pasadena' is a line in the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song 'Jammin Me.' I don't know why Petty included that line, or used it right before 'Take back El Salvador.'