Bad-Ugly-Good: Taking stock of 2-2 Stanford

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Sept. 28, 2021

The Pac-12 Networks — a national feed and six regional feeds accounting for Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and the mountains of Colorado and Utah — are notoriously hard for sports fans to find. DirecTV, one of the leading satellite television providers, doesn’t carry the network; nor do a number of major cable TV providers.

For most of my 17 years in North Carolina, I did not have a TV at home. When I had Internet service, it always came from a cable television provider (TimeWarner, which became or was absorbed by Spectrum). But I never subscribed to cable television programming. Nor did I subscribe to an Internet television streaming service.

This year, the Vanderbilt game was broadcast on ESPNU, which is not available in the house where I’m staying. I listened to the game on KZSU, the Stanford radio station; it wasn’t expected to be a very competitive contest, and I didn’t feel like jeopardizing my life by going out to a bar to watch the game.

UCLA Bruins out-tough Stanford, 35-24, in the Cardinal’s return to campus

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Sept. 27, 2021

Dorian Thompson-Robinson passed for 251 yards and two touchdowns and ran for another two scores to lead UCLA to a 35-24 victory at Stanford on Saturday afternoon.

Thompson-Robinson played through pain in the second half to hand the Cardinal football team its fourth straight home loss in the hosts’ first performance in front of home fans since Nov. 30, 2019. Stanford played five of six games on the road in 2020 and was coming off of a school-record seven game road swing, including three straight to open 2021. The Cardinal, now 2-2 (1-1 in the Pac-12), has not won on campus since defeating Arizona, 41-31, on Oct. 26, 2019.

Zach Charbonnet ran for 118 yards and a touchdown and Kyle Phillips made five catches for 120 yards and a pair of scores. The Bruins (3-1, 1-0) had 340 rushing yards as UCLA’s defense limited the Cardinal to 67 yards on the ground.

Even so, a feisty Stanford squad overcame early mistakes to climb back into contention. Sophomore quarterback Tanner McKee threw for 293 yards and three touchdowns, both career highs, as he helped the Cardinal tie the score early in the fourth quarter. Unfortunately for the home fans, the defense allowed touchdowns on both of the Bruins’ next two possessions.