5 Fast, Fun Facts on Cardinal-Irish

Stanford is ranked sixth in this week’s BCS polls and hosts 8-3 Notre Dame in this Saturday’s regular season finale, a game with serious BCS implications for both teams.

The Fighting Irish have lost just once since early September, are ranked 22nd by the BCS and with a victory on Saturday, could sneak into the BCS picture and hand the Cardinal a round-trip ticket to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.

Notre Dame has lost just once at Stanford in its last four games on The Farm dating back to 2003. Both teams and schools are replete with nationally known household names—Andrew Luck, Michael Floyd, coaches Brian Kelly and David Shaw, Touchdown Jesus and Hoover Tower. 

But, did you know about the following Five Fast Fun Facts about this game?

Previously, we highlighted five such facts about Stanford vs. Oregon. Keep on reading for this week’s installment of FFFF.

Prof. Condoleezza Rice's Notre Dame Connection

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has returned to Stanford, where she was provost in the 1990s.

She currently is a professor at Stanford’s famed Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

But did you know that she earned her master’s degree in political science from Notre Dame? That was in 1975.

Aloha for Both Defenses

Palo Alto, Calif., is about 2,500 miles from the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii. South Bend, Ind. is over 4,000 miles from Oahu.

Those distances haven’t kept some of Oahu’s best high school football players from matriculating at Stanford and Notre Dame. 

The Irish star junior LB, Manti Te’o, played high school football at Honolulu’s legendary Punahou School, better known to some as the alma mater of President Barack Obama.

Te’o has 4.5 sacks, 11.5 tackles for loss and over 100 total tackles in 2011. 

Not to be outdone, Stanford recruited senior DL Matthew Masifilo from Campbell HS on Oahu. Masifilo anchors the Stanford DL and has three sacks and 10 tackles for loss this season.

More Than Just Football

Besides football, both schools excel in many other sports.

Notre Dame won the 2011 NCAA fencing championship.

Stanford, meanwhile, won the 2011 NCAA titles in men’s gymnastics and women’s water polo. 

And, in a game both schools will not soon forget, the Irish women’s soccer team defeated Stanford 1-0 for the 2010 NCAA College Cup championship.

A rematch won’t occur in next month’s College Cup final, as Notre Dame was upset in the first round, while two-time national runner-up Stanford plays in the Elite Eight this weekend.

The Legends Trophy

Although the teams have met fewer than 30 times, the winner does get a spiffy trophy called the Legends Trophy. It's made of Irish crystal glass atop a California redwood base. Nice.

Stanford is riding a two-game win streak over the Irish, and the Legends Trophy has resided for the past two years in the Arrillaga athletics building on the Cardinal campus.

Offensive Fireworks

In the last 20 years, the teams have played each other 18 times, and most of those contests have been high scoring. The winning team has scored over 30 points in eight of those games and over 40 points in five others.

With the likes of Andrew Luck, Tommy Rees, Stepfan Taylor and Michael Floyd on display, history should repeat itself in Saturday’s game even though both offenses will be missing some star players due to injury.

Expect the scoreboard at Stanford Stadium to be busy.