Yays, Nays and OKs for 1-2 Stanford football

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Sept. 19, 2023

Sacramento State 30, Stanford 23. That was a tough outcome for Cardinal boosters.

Yes, Sac State is a good team — but they’re a Football Championship Subdivision team. FCS squads are supposed to lose when they go up against Football Bowl Subdivision teams such as the Cardinal.

Bottom line: We may be in for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, looong, loooooooooooooooooong season.

Yays

• Elic Ayomanor, wide receiver. The sophomore from Medicine Hat in Alberta, Canada, had a career night and paced the Cardinal with four catches for 89 yards and a 51-yard touchdown. Those were all personal bests and team highs in Saturday’s game. Over the first two games, Ayomanor had four catches for 38 yards.

Sacramento State Hornets sting Stanford, 30-23

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Sept. 18, 2023

Kaiden Bennett racked up 379 total yards and two touchdowns Saturday night to lift Football Championship Subdivision power Sacramento State (3-0) to a 30-23 upset victory over Stanford.

In falling to 1-2 against a lower-division team, the Cardinal instantly sparked debate on the social-media platform X about whether this was the team’s worst loss of the 21st century and whether this is the worst Stanford team of fans’ lifetimes. The only comparable defeat in recent times was a 20-17 home loss to UC Davis, a new member of Division I-AA (now FCS). That outcome denied then-new Stanford coach Walt Harris bowl eligibility in his first season, when the team recorded a 5-6 record.

The better question may be whether new coach Troy Taylor, now guiding Stanford in his second stint as a head coach after helping lead Sac State to prominence, will be able to exceed the 1-11 record that Harris’s second and final Stanford club recorded in 2006. All of Stanford’s opponents in the remaining nine games, which include potent clubs such as Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Oregon State and Notre Dame, will have more talented rosters than the Hornets.