Not sure why I'm having trouble coming up with the Pregame Guesses for Stanford.

I thought about going with a joke:

How many Stanford professors does it take to change a light bulb?

Eleven. One to change the light bulb and ten to co-author the paper.

But it's not really that funny.

I thought about doing a "Stanford band" thing or a "Stanford Dollies" thing or maybe a "How tough can Stanford be when the school is named after a guy named Leland" thing but none of it was really working.

via www.sfmuseum.org (As noted in the comments, this picture is of Leland Stanford, who endowed the school in honor of his late son, Leland Stanford, Jr.)

For me, the "Stanford band is crazy" thing is sort of old. It's a cliche.

It's been done.

And Leland Stanford was actually a pretty tough guy -- a governor and a senator from California who would have been worth over a billion in today's dollars.

The fact of the matter is, my focus is more on the game than on the guesses.

As Nestor's been saying all week, it's a big one.

I agree.

I went on record last week by writing that 3-0 is great but since we really hadn't beaten a team worth anything, we still had a lot to prove.

The proving starts Saturday.

You know, Nestor gets mad at me when I look past the next game, but I always remind him that I'm not on the team and that it's okay if Iook past Stanford. And when I look past Stanford, I see the Cal-Oregon home stand looming. Point is: we're staring down the barrel of three tough games against three tough teams. While it's on the road, the Stanford game might be the most winnable of the trio.

It's a drag that we head north without our starting quarterback. No excuses, mind you, but it would have been nice to have a full clip when we face the Cardinal. My main concern so far is that the offense has looked very vanilla, a lot of the plays that SC used to run under Norm Chow are not in our arsenal yet and it's not clear to me if that's because we're once again playing with a back up quarterback or because we're relatively young or what. But the biggest advantage I see for UCLA over Stanford is speed. But if we don't find ways to get guys like Randall Carroll and Damien Thigpen involved then that advantage is negated.

Without further ado, here are the Stanford Pregame Guesses:

1. Which team on Saturday will rush for more yards?
2. True or False: UCLA will score a touchdown on either special teams or defense?
3. Which team will lead at halftime (or will it be tied at halftime)?