OK, let’s get this out of the way first...
Brain Bowl. Gridiron Geeks. Nerd Football. NCS: Nerd Championship Series. And, my personal favorite from Twitter: “both should schedule Duke & Vandy for annual nerd round robin”.
Alright. Everybody feel better now? Good. We’ll continue...
Fresh on the heels of their announcement of a home-and-home series with Notre Dame, Northwestern has added another “name” school to their future slates.
In a press release, NU announced that they have scheduled a four-game series with their fellow brainiacs at Stanford. The two schools will play in Evanston on Sept. 14, 2019, and Sept. 18, 2021, while they’ll meet in Palo Alto on Sept. 19, 2020, and Sept. 17, 2022.
“We’re thrilled to add another tremendous institution like Stanford to our future nonconference schedules,” said Phillips. “Having Stanford on our future schedules, along with Notre Dame, Boston College, California, Syracuse and Vanderbilt, makes this an exciting time to be a fan of Chicago’s Big Ten football team.”
Northwestern and Stanford have played six times previously, with the last meeting coming in 1994. The two schools played their first football game in 1933, and the Cardinal leads the all-time series 3-1-2.
UPDATED 4:46 p.m. ET: Stanford has issued their own release regarding the future series.
“We are very excited to be commencing a football series with Northwestern,” said athletic director Bob Bowlsby. “Like Stanford, Northwestern is an elite academic institution, from a great conference with a major football program. Pat Fitzgerald and Jim Phillips also reprint the best values in intercollegiate athletics so they are the kind of people with whom we like to compete.”