Stanford goes out on top, but the clock is already ticking on its future

Orange Bowl: Stanford 40, Virginia Tech 12. If you've seen Stanford this year, tonight's script – the early assertion of the running game, followed by the big plays off play-action, the quiet dominance of quarterback Andrew Luck, the endless supply of interchangeable tight ends and H-backs, the merciless lunge at the jugular in the second half – was familiar one. But that doesn't make it any less impressive in context: Virginia Tech came in a confident, consistent conference champion riding an 11-game win streak, and limped out with one of the worst beatings it's ever suffered under Frank Beamer, by almost any measure.

Stanford's 512-yard outburst was the second-highest total by anyone against a Hokie defense since their move to the ACC in 2004, behind only eventual BCS champ LSU's 598-yard romp in Baton Rouge in 2007. That was also the last time Tech yielded 40 points in a game, or went down by more than ten. Luck's pass efficiency rating, 230.7, was the best number against the Hokies of any passer over the last decade. So was the Cardinal's absurd 9.8-yard-per-play average, a full five-and-a-half yards better than Virginia Tech's average (4.2) every single time the ball was snapped. Stanford broke free for nine plays covering at least 20 yards, five of them for more than forty.

The defense, seemingly outclassed by Tyrod Taylor's shiftiness in the first half, repeatedly swarmed him in the second, finishing with eight sacks. (Luck wasn't sacked, the second time in three years the Tech pass rush has been shut out.) The Hokies' 12 points on 288 total yards were both season lows by fairly wide margins, the sixth time this season the Cardinal D has held an opposing offense to its worst output of the year on the scoreboard. Any way you serve it, Virginia Tech looked more like the sixth-place team in the Pac-10 in the second half than a major conference champion.

And Stanford certainly looked more like a seasoned powerhouse than an interloper capitalizing on the exceedingly rare fortune of moving forward with one of the great coaches and great quarterbacks in school history at the sane time, backed up by an overachieving senior class. In this case, it's so rare it doesn't even seem possible for it to happen again. Watching Luck and coach Jim Harbaugh dodge questions about their immediate future in the aftermath, it was easy to sympathize with their insistence that their interrogators "respect the game": This game was the culminating win at the end of the culminating season in one of the most stunning turnarounds in sports over the last four years. At 12-1, this team, on this night in particular, was as good as Stanford has been or is likely to be again in generations. After four years, they get a night to appreciate that.

Of course, Harbaugh sounded like a guy doing everything in his power to avoid saying "It's been real, guys. Peace out." But assuming he's not signing any contracts in the next eight hours, it can wait until the morning, even if some of us are probably going to sleep better than some others.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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