Any way you look at it, Stanford and Notre Dame have been two of the marquee programs in the nation over the past several years, and their annual matchup has not only been much anticipated, it also sent ripples throughout college football.
Even though Stanford has won four of the past six games in the series, those half dozen contests have been as dramatic as any the Cardinal has played. Aside from a 23-point Stanford win over an unranked Irish squad in South Bend in 2010, the past five games have been tight battles between ranked teams with the hosts winning each time.
2010: #16 Stanford over Notre Dame, 37-14
2011: #4 Stanford over #22 Notre Dame, 28-14
2012: #7 Notre Dame over #17 Stanford, 20-13 (OT)
2013: #8 Stanford over #25 Notre Dame, 27-20
2014: #9 Notre Dame over #14 Stanford, 17-14
2015: #13 Stanford over #4 Notre Dame, 38-36
These games have been high drama. There was the 2011 game at Stanford, when Manti Te'o met Lennay Kekua, the controversial overtime win for the Irish in South Bend in 2012, another late win for Notre Dame in 2014, and last year's last-second Stanford win on the strength of Conrad Ukropina's game-winning field goal. Not only were these games dramatic, they impacted the national championship picture as well. After surviving that scare in 2012, the undefeated Irish won seven more games and earned a trip to the BCS Championship game, but last season their loss to the Cardinal ended their title hopes.
The stakes aren't quite as high this time around. For the first time since 2009, both teams enter the game unranked. The Cardinal's struggles are all too familiar to Stanford fans. After allowing 44 and 42 points to the two Washington schools, Stanford has fallen to 3-2 and gone from Pac-12 favorites to the bottom half of the conference.