Superior speed is as absolute as gravity in today’s college football. The slower team can soar for awhile, but they always crash back down to Earth.

Sure enough, Stanford (1-2, 0-2 Pac-10) was resplendent against No. 13 Oregon (4-0, 1-0 Pac-10) for a quarter Saturday night, building a 31-24 halftime lead (after trailing 21-3 early) on the strength of four unanswered touchdowns and three Duck turnovers.

But the slower Cardinal hit the ground with a thud. Oregon scored 34 unanswered points to end the game in a 55-31 victory that showed how far Stanford Football has come — and how far it has to go.

“We got hit in the mouth in the first quarter, and we came back, came back swinging,” senior tailback Anthony Kimble said. “When they came out punching in the second half, we didn’t come back.”

Duck quarterback Dennis Dixon put up 382 yards and five scores, and tailback Jonathan Stewart ran for 160 yards and a touchdown on an evening when the only team stopping Oregon was Oregon. The Ducks racked up 589 total yards, averaging nearly 10 yards per pass and five per run Saturday night at Stanford Stadium.

Oregon tight end Ed Dickson reeled in a high and fast 31-yard Dixon strike to tie the contest at 31 four minutes into the third quarter. After a quick Stanford punt, Oregon drove 86 yards in 11 plays for the go-ahead score, a Jeremiah Johnson 12-yard dash up the middle on fourth-and-two.

The next series, senior tailback Anthony Kimble was stuffed on fourth-and-inches at the Stanford 39. Three Dixon passes later, Oregon led 45-31 with five minutes left in the third. A 34-yard Matt Evensen field goal in the early fourth and a 50-yard Dixon pass to Jaison Williams with five minutes left provided the final margin.

“Not to take anything away from Oregon, but most of the stuff they got, we gave it to them with mental mistakes — blown coverages or not staying in our gap,” sophomore safety Bo McNally said. “That was pretty consistent throughout the game for us. We didn’t come with the right mindset on defense.”

Three Duck fumbles in the early second quarter opened the door for the Cardinal. And unlike in past seasons, where Stanford would have checked out after falling behind 14-0 three minutes in and 21-3 after a quarter, the Cardinal capitalized.

“For us, one of the problems the last few years here has been that we haven’t reacted to adversity well,” senior quarterback T.C. Ostrander said. “The fact that we came back and took a lead is a testament to the new attitude of the team.”

One minute into the second quarter, Dixon’s fourth-and-one pitch was behind Stewart, and junior end Pannel Egboh pounced on it for the Cardinal. The next play, Oregon’s defensive line crashed too hard to its left on a draw, and Kimble cut back up the middle and sprinted 60 yards untouched to cut the deficit to 21-10.

One minute later, Oregon’s Andiel Brown dropped a Jay Ottevegio punt and Stanford sophomore linebacker Clinton Snyder fell on it at the Duck 34. Stanford took advantage, as a three-yard Kimble touchdown run tightened the score to 21-17.

Two plays later, sophomore defensive lineman Levirt Griffin stripped Oregon’s Jaison Williams and recovered at the Stanford 38. Ostrander (25-of-44, 262 yards, two touchdowns, one interception) capped the ensuing drive with 4:09 to go in the half on Stanford’s most beautiful play-call of the season. Kimble ran a play-action left, which Oregon bought, as the Card had been running well off-left tackle. Ostrander bootlegged right, and Oregon’s defense forgot about sophomore tight end Ben Ladner on the left sideline, to the tune of a 31-yard go-ahead touchdown.

Then, with under a minute left in the half, Ostrander found senior receiver Mark Bradford on a 12-yard out route in the right corner of the north end zone, where the game’s first 10 touchdowns were scored. Oregon made a 26-yard field goal with five seconds to go in the half, but Stanford led 31-24 at the break after a dominating 28-3 second quarter.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of any more exciting of a second quarter in my entire life,” Coach Jim Harbaugh said.

But the Ducks took the other three quarters convincingly. The first snap of the game, Dixon playfaked a dive to Stewart, and then lofted a pass to uncovered receiver Cameron Colvin (136 yards), who went 71 yards untouched for a score. After a quick Stanford punt, Stewart scored from 10 yards out to push Oregon ahead 14-0 less than four minutes in.

“I’m sure people in the stands were thinking when they run that first play from scrimmage for touchdown, ‘Oh, another year, whatever,’” sophomore tight end Ben Ladner said. “But we weren’t thinking that.”

Stanford responded with a 39-yard Derek Belch field goal the next drive. The teams then traded punts, and Oregon’s Brown broke a return down the left sideline to the Cardinal 5. That set up a four-yard Dixon touchdown run for a 21-3 Oregon lead with 2:40 left in the fist.

For Stanford, hanging with a top team before fading is nothing new. The Cardinal jumped to a 28-17 halftime lead over top-ranked, defending national champion USC in 2004, also in many students’ first game on campus. But Stanford’s offense could not move in the second half, USC won 31-28 and Buddy Teevens was fired at the 4-7 season’s end.

Under Walt Harris in 2005, the Cardinal led UCLA 24-3 with eight minutes left, but UCLA scored the game’s final four touchdowns in a 30-27 overtime victory. Stanford finished 5-6 that year, 1-11 the next, and Harris too was canned.

After yielding 100 points and 1,213 yards to UCLA and Oregon, Stanford’s search for a Pac-10 offense it can slow gets no easier, as explosive No. 23 Arizona State (4-0) visits this Saturday at 7 pm.

Stanford’s young defense needs to come around quickly. Nine Pac-10 teams scored 27 points this weekend, and every winning team scored at least 44.