Conrad Eugene Van Gent was an American football and basketball player and coach. He served as the head football at the University of Texas at Austin in 1916, at the University Farm, now the University of California, Davis, in 1920, and at Stanford University in 1921, compiling a career college football record of 14–8–3. Van Gent was also the head basketball coach at the University of Missouri (1914–1916), Texas (1916–1917), and Stanford (1921–1922), tallying a career college basketball mark of 42–19. Van Gent played football and basketball, and ran track at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was selected to the College Basketball All-American team in 1914.

The Stanford Cardinal football program represents Stanford University in college football at the NCAA Division I FBS level and is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The team is known as the Cardinal, adopted prior to the 1982 season. Stanford was known as the "Cardinal" for its first two decades of athletic competition, then more commonly as the "Cardinals" until 1930. The name was changed to the "Indians" from 1930 to January 1972, and back to the "Cardinals" from 1972 through 1981. A student vote in December 1975 to change the nickname to "Robber Barons" was not approved by administrators.