The Florida Gators, Texas Longhorns and the Alabama Crimson Tide seem to get all the attention in college football these days, but the Stanford Cardinals have dominated the headlines the past couple of weeks after pulling off two huge upsets in a row to their PAC-10 conference rivals in the Oregon Ducks and the USC Trojans.

Not only did Stanford beat Oregon and put up 51 points against the Ducks a week ago, but they topped their impressive performance this week against the once BCS bowl bound USC Trojans by pulling off the biggest upset of the season 55-21 on the Trojans home field at the Coliseum.

This loss to the Cardinals ended quite a few of USC’s streaks like seven straight 11 win seasons and BCS bowls and top four finishes in the AP polls. The loss to the Ducks was huge for USC, but their second straight loss to the Stanford Cardianls basically ended their season and any hopes for a BCS bowl game.

As a result of Stanford’s new found success the Cardinals have jumped up the Top 25 rankings reaching number 17 before heading into their matchup with the #25 California Golden Bears.

Even though the Golden Bears have been tough to beat this season, this week should be relatively easy for the Cardinals as Cal will be without their Heisman trophy candidate running back Jahvid Best who will be sitting out this game with a concussion.

Best sitting out for Cal in this PAC-10 battle with Stanford will be huge for the Cardinals as Best have basically been the entire offense for the Golden Bears this season and will be sorely missed this weekend by Cal. This has the potential to be a competitive game, like any PAC-10 matchup, but the Cardinals should run away with the victory in this one as they have had no problem putting up 50+ points in the last two weeks against two top ranked college football teams in USC and Oregon.

Despite beating the Ducks by nine and absolutely destroying the Trojans this last Saturday by 34 points, the Cardinals are only favored to beat the Golden Bears by -6.5 points. I believe without Best coming out of the backfield Stanford will dominate the Bears and beat Cal by a convincing margin this week.