It’s always been impressive to see a Stanford running back run over someone, like Muster and Vardell did before Gerhart. Somehow they can’t recruit a guy like that every year, especially the years we’ve had bad coaches. Still the career rushing leading at Stanford remains Darrin Nelson. There are several reasons for that, such as Nelson getting a lot more carries his first two years than Gerhart did, but it does point out that you may even get more yards if you have the speed to go around a defender.

I wouldn’t try to predict the Stanford-Notre Dame result myself. With Kelly in his first year and Harbaugh still improving his team, even if the Cal fans prefer to stick their heads in the sand about that, almost anything might happen. I remember years ago when the Irish came out in their green uniforms and shocked USC. The stadium went so crazy, even Touchdown Jesus was jumping up and down. The Irish haven’t needed stunts like that for Stanford, but after two losses, who knows?

This series has changed since it started in 1988. Notre Dame was ranked in the top ten each year through 1994. In 1990, when Stanford first won, 36-31, at South Bend, the Irish were #1. Then as the Irish were getting worse, Stanford was getting even more worse. The 2009 win was the first win over the Irish since Willingham was still coach in 2001, a drought even worse than the one against Cal because of those bad, bad coaches. So now it’s the unranked Irish and the ranked Cardinal. May the best team win. I want to see a scoreboard after the game before deciding if that was the case. I bet they’ll be more running around defenders on both sides than running over them.