Iowa grossly overachieved. They were consensus No. 4 team in Big Ten West while Stanford preseason No. 18. Break hurts overachieving teams. Stanford had two losses: opening week to Northwestern in which Wildcats were our first Wise Guy of the season for good reason as we explained at the time. They also lost by two to Orgeon in which Stanford QB Kevin Hogan fumbled snap twice. The second was deep in Oregon territory with chance to win.

RB Christian McCaffrey got better as year went on and may be best player in nation. Stanford will travel 320 miles to Pasadena and play in state, compared to 1533 for Hawkeyes. The long layoff equals midnight for Cinderella.