Note: The following appears in the Stanford football gameday program.
It is a 37-hour drive from Stanford, Calif. to Clemson, S.C., a total of 2,573 miles. When Stanford takes the field in Memorial Stadium today, it will have traveled the furthest to face the Tigers in a football game among the now 63 teams that have played in this stadium that opened in 1942. The previous long trip took place for the season opener in 1990, when Long Beach State came to Clemson and made a 2,317-mile journey (for fans traveling by car) from its campus in Long Beach, Calif.
Stanford’s appearance today is the result of the ACC expansion with the addition of Stanford, California and SMU, making the ACC a 17-team league for football and 18-team league for other sports. Stanford is one of 15 FBS schools in a different conference from the one it was in last season.
It is a major change to the landscape of college football. Stanford is a prime example, as it was in the Pac-12 Conference (previously the Pac-10 Conference and Pac-8 Conference) since 1918.
With Stanford, the ACC has added one of the premier academic institutions that also excels when it comes to its all-around athletic program.
The following are some facts about Stanford athletics.
• Current or former Stanford athletes combined to win 39 medals at the 2024 Olympic Games, more than any other school. It is interesting to note that another new ACC member, California, had the second most (23).
• Stanford has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup 26 of the 30 years it has been held and finished runner-up the other four years. That includes winning the award for the best all-around athletic program 25 consecutive years.
• The program has won 60 NCAA team national championships over the years, including six in the same year twice. The Cardinal have an active streak of 48 consecutive years with at least one team national title. The second-longest active streak is six years in a row by North Carolina. The second-longest streak by any school at any time is 19 years in a row by Southern California.
• Stanford athletes have combined to win 554 individual national championships.
• Including the 39 medals this year, Stanford athletes have won a combined 336 Olympic medals.
• Stanford alums are some of the most famous athletes or former athletes in the world. The list includes John Elway (football), Katie Ledecky (swimming), Andrew Luck (football), John McEnroe (tennis), Tom Watson (golf) and Tiger Woods (golf).
The Stanford football program has also had its share of rich history, in yesteryear and recent years. A look to the seven-year era from 2010-16 shows that Stanford had a 76-18 record, similar to Clemson’s 78-20 mark.
Stanford has not made the College Football Playoff, but it probably would have been under the new 2024 rules in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015. It was in the top 11 of the final AP poll all four of those seasons.
David Shaw was the Stanford head coach for most of those outstanding seasons. He took Stanford to three Rose Bowls, winning two, and six top-20 seasons in a seven-year period. When he was at Stanford, Shaw and Head Coach Dabo Swinney were good friends and visited each others’ campuses and homes.
Stanford’s football heritage of success dates to the 1920s, when Pop Warner became the head coach in 1924. He led Stanford to the Rose Bowl in his first year, when the Cardinal lost to Notre Dame and Head Coach Knute Rockne in one of the most publicized coaching matchups of that era.
The roster of Cardinal coaches also includes Bill Walsh and Jim Harbaugh.
Stanford has had one Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback Jim Plunkett, who won the award in 1970 over Notre Dame quarterback Joe Theismann.
Stanford’s Heisman Trophy tradition is one of the nation’s richest, because a Stanford player has been the runner-up in the voting six times (five different players). The list of second-place finishers includes Elway (1982), Toby Gerhart (2009), Luck (2010,11), Christian McCaffrey (2015) and Bryce Love (2017).
Today, we welcome Stanford and its heritage of excellence in all areas of athletics and academics to Clemson and the ACC.
