Coming off an emotionally rough Stanford loss last week to Oregon, pissing away the chance at a PAC-12 and national championship, Stanford football fans are shell-shocked like a ninja turtle. But if there is one thing we know about ninja turtles, it is that they are resilient – they came from the gutter, became a force to be reckoned under the tutelage of Master Splinter, and bounce back after eating a little pizza. Do you see the parallels here to the Stanford football team, rising from an embarrassment to a national powerhouse under Master Harbaugh?

I thought it would be fun to take a closer look at the Stanford and Cal football teams in recent years considering the 114th Big Game is this weekend. Even though Cal has taken home the Axe 7 of the last 9 meetings, this hardly tells the story. The Cal and Stanford programs have flip flopped in recent years – Stanford going from horrible to great, Cal going from great to mediocre.

Here is an interactive chart you can use to examine the last 6 seasons for the Stanford and Cal football teams. You can play around with it, but these settings are my favorite to show the trend: y-axis = Point Differential, x-axis = Win Percentage, Colors = Unique, Size = Wins, check all the boxes, and hit play (sadly Google doesn’t allow me to set the default values and it wasn’t worth the effort to explore other charting packages).

I’m no statistician, but it looks like Cal is trending nowhere and Stanford has the up and to the right trajectory that follows the group of overachievers everywhere in life. Tough break Cal, at least you’ll always have The Play to cheer you up. Go Card!