The Rose Bowl likes its own time slot, but even their committee had to be wishing they could move the Sugar Bowl up in starting time just so they had something interesting to watch.

Stanford dismantled Iowa from the very beginning (like, literally, a 75-yard touchdown pass to Christian McCaffrey on the first play of the game) to end, which arrived sometime in the second quarter, one that saw the Cardinal take a 35-0 lead into halftime and never look back en route to a 45-16 win.

Iowa came in with the 13th best scoring defense in college football and by the half, Stanford had eclipsed what any team had done against them all season. It was unfettered disaster.

Stanford set themselves up for big things in 2016, at least in terms of what people will expect from them. Christian McCaffrey will be back, and he looked like Barry Sanders today in rolling up a Rose Bowl record for total yards.

First, let’s put Iowa to bed.

Iowa deserved this football game, the stage, the opportunity, all of it. College football is unique in the sense that it truly forces the regular season to matter. You think about it, probably about 90 percent of what a team is occurs during the regular season, 100 percent for those that make no post season.

Yet we worry so damn much about the 10 percent, we completely render the 90 percent as useless too often. Iowa played like crap, but they earned the right to play like crap by going 12-1 in a very difficult Big Ten, albeit on the weaker side of it. Don’t give the revisionist history line.

The Hawkeyes are in a good place so long as Kirk Ferentz is there. No, 12-0 regular seasons aren’t going to become a staple of Iowa football annually, but who, other than the die hards and the guys in the locker room, thought this was a 12-2 football team back in August? They’ll be just fine.

Stanford, on the other hand, can look forward to some outrageous expectations next season. The runoff of a bowl game victory, no matter how impressive, is completely overrated. By Spring practice, probably earlier, this result won’t matter.

What will matter is how they replace four seniors along the offensive line, notoriously one of the most salty in the nation annually, and how they account for replacing the steady, veteran hand of Hogan. The Cardinal will be in that small discussion of who should be a preseason top 5 team.

As for the relative outrage on how the Cardinal should have gotten a shot in the playoff, go home. The regular season in college football means something, which means that losing to Northwestern the first weekend of the season sometimes ends up being the reason you don’t enter into a playoff. These are the breaks.

It was a Rose Bowl forgettable in its competitiveness but memorable in its effect on McCaffrey, an overlooked player all season due to his name and easily the best dual threat player in the sport. Without question, if he wasn’t on an academic school on the left coast, he’d be your Heisman Trophy winner.

Yes, David Shaw has things rolling in Palo Alto, and if you want to bet the farm on The Farm next year to start, who could blame you?