It is the PAC-12 versus the Big 10 on New Year's Day in Pasadena, California as the Stanford Cardinal, winners of their conference, take on the Iowa Hawkeyes for the granddady of them all at the Rose Bowl.
Memorable seasons for both teams
For Stanford, their lone out of conference loss on the season was an opening day defeat to the Northwestern Wildcats on the road where they lost in a low scoring game, 16-6. Their only conference loss came against division rivals Oregon where their defeat to the Ducks was on the road by two points.
The Big 10 representative, Iowa, had an absolutely stellar season which no one saw coming. While they did have an easier conference schedule than some of their rivals, going a whole regular season with not one blemish is nothing to gawk at. Their biggest win of the season came in the seventh week of the season when they took on the then ranked 20th Northwestern Wildcats on the road. Iowa put up 40 points behind five rushing touchdowns, four of them coming from Akrum Wadley.
Physical brands of football
Stanford is led by the Heisman Trophy finalist, Christian McCaffrey out of the backfield. He does it all for his school, returning kick offs and punts, while also though as he accumulated over 3,000 all-purpose yards while finding the end zone eight times this season from behind the line of scrimmage. But quarterback Kevin Hogan is also a threat with his strong arm, throwing for 2,644 yards with a nearly 70% pass completion with his main target being his tailback.
Matt VandeBerg is the one to watch on offense for Iowa. He has 639 yards of receiving this season, which includes three touchdowns. Their quarterback, C.J. Bethard, likes to distribute the ball around to all of his receivers as 14 of them have recorded at least one catch this season. Iowa's defense thoguh is their bread and butter, and can hang with the most physical of them all.
History at the granddaddy
Iowa has appeared in five Rose Bowl's in years past, their last coming in 1991 when they got blown out by Washington, losing 46-34. Overall, the Hawkeyes have lost two and won three of these games with the first victory coming all the way back in 1957. Their best performance on this stage came two years after their first appearance. In this game, they wallopped California, beating them by 26 points.
David Shaw's Cardinal program has appeared in a handfull of these games. In fact, the first eleven bowl games that Stanford participated in, including the very first Rose Bowl game in 1902, were the Rose Bowl. During this stretch, only three games were won, one was tied against Alabama and the rest of them were defeats; in this game over the course of history, the Cardinal are 6-7-1.
Prediction
This is going to be a hotly contested matchup between to physical schools. They will bruise each other on both sides of the football for the full sixty minutes trying to wear each other down. The game will come down to who will be able to get a stop or two on the defensive side.