(09-29-2025, 02:33 PM)gailtate Wrote: 2015? Northwestern? 9am Pacific? How'd that work out? Oh, yes, and this time I think we can forget Pasadena...
Looking back to 2009, the first winning season for the Harbaugh-coached teams, I can find the following games played at 9 am PT:
Sept. 12, 2009: Wake Forest 24 (finished season 5-7), Stanford 17 (finished season 8-5)
Sept. 13, 2013: Stanford 34 (11-3), Army 20 (3-9)
Sept. 5, 2015: Northwestern 16 (10-3), Stanford 6 (12-2)
Sept. 4, 2021: Kansas State 24 (8-5), Stanford 7 (3-9)
Nov. 2, 2024: NC State 59 (6-7), Stanford 28 (3-9)
I agree that the Northwestern game was the worst Stanford played all season in 2015, but it was the first game of the year against a good team. In spite of its horrible performance in the Outback Bowl versus Tennessee, Northwestern finished 23rd in the final AP poll.
Like Eric, the 9 am game that stands out to me is the Wake Forest game in 2009. I know it was only Andrew Luck's second game, but that was a gut-wrenching-last-minute-come-from-ahead loss to a team that was down 17-3 at halftime.
The post-Covid losses can be explained just as easily by the fact that Stanford was not good.
What's clear is that we can expect more 9 am body-clock games, so if it's an issue--common sense says yes, but the data above are inconclusive--we better figure it out now so that we don't lose these games when our team is actually good.
If there's one thing people have learned in Berkeley, it's that you can't put "Cal football" and "Rose Bowl" in the same sentence. The words just don't fit. You'd be better off linking "covered wagons" with "Mars travel." (Bruce Jenkins, Cal '70, SF Chronicle, Nov. 11, 2017)