College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football first gained popularity in the United States.
Big Game is the name given to the California–Stanford football rivalry. It is an American college football rivalry game played by the California Golden Bears football team of the University of California, Berkeley and the Stanford Cardinal football team of Stanford University. Both institutions are located in the San Francisco Bay Area. First played in 1892, it remains one of the oldest college rivalries in the United States. The game is usually played in late November or early December and its location alternates between the two universities every year. In even-numbered years, the game is played in Berkeley while odd-numbered years are played at Stanford.
The Washington Huskies are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Washington, located in Seattle. The school competes at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Big Ten Conference.
The Stanford Tree is the Stanford Band's mascot and the unofficial mascot of Stanford University. Stanford's team name is "Cardinal", referring to the vivid Stanford Cardinal Red color, and the university does not have an official mascot. The Tree, in various versions, has been called one of America's most bizarre and controversial college mascots. The tree regularly appears at the top of Internet "worst mascot" lists but has also appeared on at least one list of top mascots.
The Illinois Fighting Illini are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The university offers 10 men's and 11 women's varsity sports.
The Oregon Ducks are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Oregon, located in Eugene. The Ducks compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Big Ten Conference. With eighteen varsity teams, Oregon is best known for its American football team and track and field program, which has helped Eugene gain a reputation as "Track Town, USA". Oregon's main rivalries are with the Oregon State Beavers and the Washington Huskies.
The Stanford Cardinal are the athletic teams that represent Stanford University. Stanford's program has won 136 NCAA team championships, the most of any university. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 48 consecutive years, starting in 1976–77 and continuing through 2023–24. Through June 2024, Stanford athletes have won 554 individual NCAA titles.
The Utah Utes are the intercollegiate athletics teams that represent the University of Utah, located in Salt Lake City. The athletic department is named after the Ute tribe of Native Americans. The men's basketball team is known as the Runnin' Utes; the women's gymnastics team is known as the Red Rocks.
John Reinhold "Chief" Bender was an American football player and coach of football, basketball and baseball. He served as the head football coach at Black Hills State University (1905), Washington State University, Haskell Indian Nations University (1908–1909), St. Louis University (1910–1911), Kansas State University (1915), and the University of Tennessee (1916–1920), compiling a career record of 67–32–7. He is one of the few college football head coaches to have non-consecutive tenure at the same school. Bender was also the head basketball coach at Washington State (1907–1908) and Tennessee, and the head baseball coach at Washington State and Tennessee.
The Ball State Cardinals are the athletic teams that represent Ball State University, located in Muncie, Indiana. The Cardinals are part of the NCAA Division I Mid-American Conference. Charlie Cardinal is the team mascot.
The Stanford Cardinal football program represents Stanford University in college football at the NCAA Division I FBS level and is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The program was previously in the Pac-12 Conference. The team is known as the Cardinal, adopted prior to the 1982 season. Stanford was known as the "Cardinal" for its first two decades of athletic competition, then more commonly as the "Cardinals" until 1930. The name was changed to the "Indians" from 1930 to January 1972, and back to the "Cardinals" from 1972 through 1981. A student vote in December 1975 to change the nickname to "Robber Barons" was not approved by administrators.
Since the 1960s, the issue of Native American and First Nations names and images being used by sports teams as mascots has been the subject of increasing public controversy in the United States and Canada. This has been a period of rising Indigenous civil rights movements, and Native Americans and their supporters object to the use of images and names in a manner and context they consider derogatory. They have conducted numerous protests and tried to educate the public on this issue.
The Arkansas State Red Wolves are the athletic teams of Arkansas State University. They are a member of the Sun Belt Conference in all sports except women's bowling, a sport not sponsored by that league, competing at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level. As of the next NCAA bowling season in 2023–24, the bowling team will compete in Conference USA, which absorbed the single-sport Southland Bowling League after the 2022–23 season.
The UC Davis Aggies are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Davis.
The 1972 Rose Bowl was the 58th edition of the college football bowl game, played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, on Saturday, January 1. The Stanford Indians of the Pacific-8 Conference upset the undefeated and fourth-ranked Michigan Wolverines of the Big Ten Conference by a point, 13–12, repeating as Rose Bowl champions. The Player of the Game was Stanford quarterback Don Bunce.
The Stanford rugby teams of 1906 to 1917 represented Stanford University as the school's only football program during those years, replacing American football with rugby union. The school had played American football from 1892 to 1905, but in 1906, concerned with the growing levels of violence in football, Stanford and other universities changed to rugby. Stanford played twelve seasons of rugby, during which it played other college teams, club teams from the United States, Canada, and Australia, as well as the New Zealand national team and Australia national team. Despite the team's success, it became clear that other schools were not adopting rugby in large numbers, and after rival California returned to football in 1915, Stanford faced a limited number of potential opponents; and after a year of playing neither sport officially due to World War I, the school returned to American football in 1919.
The 1972 Stanford Cardinals football team represented Stanford University in the 1972 NCAA University Division football season. Following the departure of head coach John Ralston for the Denver Broncos in early January, defensive backs coach Jack Christiansen was promoted to head coach. Stanford finished at 6–5, but were 2–5 in Pacific-8 Conference play, tied for sixth.
The 1919 Stanford football team represented Stanford University in the 1919 college football season.
The Stanford–USC football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the Stanford Cardinal and the USC Trojans. The two teams will no longer be in the same conference in 2024 and played the last scheduled game of the series on September 9, 2023, with the Trojans winning 56–10. The two teams first played in 1905 and began playing regularly in 1918. Between 1911 and 1913, there were rugby games played between the two schools. In some places, these games are counted as football games. The only six years in which the rivalry was not played since that year were in 1921, 1924, the three years of World War II (1943–1945), and the Covid season in 2020. The teams have frequently vied for the conference championship and a berth in the Rose Bowl. Stanford is USC's oldest current rival.
