If I told you the Stanford Cardinal were going to be bad this college football season (and I did), you would have blindly believed me, as it’s already been an ugly truth for several years now. However, even I, as someone who has extensively studied their recent struggles, seem to have underestimated their odds of getting worse before getting better.
This was evident in their “Week 0” loss to the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors, as not only did I have the Cardinal winning, but I failed to brace myself for just how sorry they’d look in losing. And what does Hawaii do right after that? Get absolutely decimated by Arizona, who finished 2024 as one of the nation’s most disappointing teams.
Those two outcomes were the bells alerting us to the fact that Stanford football had decayed beyond the point of literally any salvageability. As a result, my since-educated mind has to wonder: How much lower can the Cardinal realistically stoop? My answer—they’ll lose to Boston College.
That reveal may have been somewhat of a bummer, because I think just about everyone would take BC to pull off the win at this point, but my stance has little to do with that directly. It instead has more to do with that loss potentially setting the stage for yet another scene in Stanford’s perpetual tragedy.
Boston College’s place in the ACC says a lot about the Cardinal
No offense to the Eagles, but they’re not exactly known as a powerhouse in the Atlantic Coast Conference (especially nowadays). So, with them having to go across the country for both parties’ conference-openers, they would have to be one of Stanford’s “easier” obstacles in league play, at least when compared to the others that the Cardinal have in their way (at Virginia, at SMU, Florida State, at Miami, Pittsburgh, at North Carolina, and California).
With all of them being either on par with or tougher than a home game versus Boston College, suffering a convincing defeat against the Eagles would logically strengthen Stanford’s chances of suffering similar against everyone else, and that's what catches my eye.
Stanford going 0-8 in the ACC would be shockingly noteworthy
Believe it or not, going winless in the ACC has proven to be a much rarer act in recent memory than one might assume. Not only that, but the Cardinal have been a pleasant surprise in this department on their own, having not gone winless in any conference they’ve been a member of since 1960!
It’s facts like those that put Stanford’s collapse into perspective, and in a good way, as it reminds us that things haven’t quite hit rock bottom. Therefore, if falling to Boston College could foreshadow otherwise, I’d say the Eagles are a fight the Cardinal can’t afford to lose.
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