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Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - Printable Version

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RE: Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - slide - 12-23-2025

(12-22-2025, 05:22 PM)jacket3ree Wrote:  That's exactly what I'm saying. I may be overly sensitive to the elitist vibe, but I've gotten that in spades since showing up on campus. I'll never forget two 'first couple of days' experiences:

1. Going to the Middle Avenue Safeway in Menlo to buy some food, wearing a Stanford T-shirt. I caught so much, 'oh you think you're better than me do you, asshole' flack from the young woman running the register that I vowed never to wear Stanford-identifying merch again when doing mundane things in public.

before going too soft on long-time bard/poster jacket3ree, note that he left off some key elements from his attire on that first Safeway visit. he still wore his NATS-issued pocket protector and retained his Ladies Night at the Slime Light bouncer stamp on the back of his lefthand. along with his Stanford t-shirt, he looked just like an average Joe off the street.  :)

on a more serious note, I agree with him 100% on the desperate need to broaden the Stanford football support base and enliven the Library.  

I also agree with him about the renewal of the Tech football program.  it has been great to see the crowds back (even with the tight, on-campus space for tailgating).  the beers are tasty and cheap in game ($8 for a cold tallboy).  no redcoats to harass you.  Key & Faulkner (along with Haynes King) have had entertaining, creative offenses, and hopefully they'll find a QB with Philo off to UF supposedly for $3M.  games are still not as festive as when Atlanta United played at Bobby Dodd but that is a high bar.

RE: Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - jacket3ree - 12-23-2025

Slide, that might be the first reference to the Limelight on the Cardboard, so kudos for that. I think I went to the Limelight once chasing after someone or another, but our hangouts were more along the lines of Grumpy's and One Eyed Jacks, 688 Club (right on the other side of the tunnel), Zesto (for the Chubby Decker), Northside Tavern, Blues Harbor, and the Agora or Fox when money was available, usually at the beginning of quarters before finances went to hell and we lived on Pop Tarts and bologna with a side of ramen, sometimes for the same meal.  

I swear that I showed up to that Safeway in a generic red Stanford T-shirt with white lettering (not even White Punks on Dope or anything cool and offensive) giving that attire zero thoughts when throwing it on. It wasn't like I wore a To Hell With Georgia in a dozen languages T-shirt when landing at Hartsfield after they lost to Penn State or anything like that. (That may or may not have happened.) Or one of our obscene Shipwreck T-shirts, which I probably still had in the wardrobe when at Stanford. Would have been discharged from campus wearing that. Nope, just a poor graduate student buying some chicken. She went off - maybe a bad day. Nowadays, I can get that attitude at the self-check....

Can't believe UF would pay Philo $3m or that Faulkner already has so much sway with Sumrall. It wasn't guaranteed Philo would beat out all the other guys without much experience next year, so I get it. Tech sites are all but ignoring the game against BYU to debate whether we are partially or fully effed by the current state of college football.  Coordinators position coaches move around all the time so I'm not sure this is really anything new. Oregon is losing both of their coordinators and I doubt they are in panic mode. Look forward to watching King leave it all out there against the Cougars. Maybe Weinke has some surprises.

RE: Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - slide - 12-23-2025

Northside Tavern is still going strong -- I probably stop in there every other month.  there still are a few Zesto's around Atlanta but none downtown.  the rest of the list is gone.  I miss the 688 club, along with the Great SE Beer Hall and a few other Atlanta spots.  same with classics like the Uptown Lounge, the OC and Allens in Athens, or the 930 Club in DC.  bygone era.

RE: Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - qwerty49 - 12-23-2025

(12-23-2025, 01:03 PM)StanUSwagU Wrote:  
(12-23-2025, 12:16 PM)Mick Wrote:  
(12-22-2025, 05:22 PM)jacket3ree Wrote:  That's exactly what I'm saying. I may be overly sensitive to the elitist vibe, but I've gotten that in spades since showing up on campus. I'll never forget two 'first couple of days' experiences:

1. Going to the Middle Avenue Safeway in Menlo to buy some food, wearing a Stanford T-shirt. I caught so much, 'oh you think you're better than me do you, asshole' flack from the young woman running the register that I vowed never to wear Stanford-identifying merch again when doing mundane things in public.

2. My first day teaching the E21 lab and I introduced who I was and where I'm from to the class. Two clowns started humming dueling banjos. My outside voice said 'that's pretty funny (it kinda was), especially when I think your grade in lab is worth a third and your grade on homework, that I also grade by the way, is another third, so while I ain't no Bert Reynolds, I am directly responsible for two thirds of your grade in this class and Professor Hsu is retiring after this quarter, so I don't know if he will care enough to save you. Anyway, let's put names to faces.'  My inside voice said, 'you assholes are lucky I have a sense of humor and ethics. Where do you get off dissing a peer institution like that. What do you think Georgia Tech is, exactly.'

I've long thought Stanford should consider a 'let us be your number 2 (team)' marketing campaign with small discounts on individual siseason tickets if you identify your first team. Stanford has a brobdingnagian graduate school alumni base. Larger than the undergraduate alumni base, and most graduate students received their undergraduate degrees elsewhere. When I was a student, I went to games with a bunch of wayward ACC engineering people -- Duke, UVA. Maryland and that one rabid fan who wasn't ACC but Houston. He hated UT with the heat of a thousand burning suns. Stanford started the season at home with SJSU and Texas. That dude was a fun hang at the Texas game.

I like your #2 idea. My cousin is a diehard Stanford fan (he was Marquess' team manager) and has been since he was a kid. He got his MBA at Notre Dame and while he is proud of it, he doesn't generally root for Notre Dame...but if they pushed him a bit, they would sway him.

Georgia Tech is terrific. My sister-in-law is a Stanford ME/Harvard MBA and did engineering work at GaTech (not sure if she graduated). She sits on the boards of two of the 50 largest companies in the USA, so I'd say Ga Tech has some pretty accomplished alumni.



I agree,

Not the majority, but I have heard a few Stanford People, look down their nose, say or insinuate things like:

We shouldnt lower our Standards, and become like:

Duke
NotreDame
GeorgiaTech

Just my opinion:
I have worked on teams with alums from those Universities, as well as my fellow StanU alums,  and have always been impressed with the intellect & critical thinking skills of the former, and in some cases the alums from NotreDame, Duke, GeorgiaTech seem to be more 'well-rounded & better able to relate & roll up their sleeves & work side by side with 'more average-intellect working-class people' at the office'. 

Again this is just to say 'I think the notion that if we were to emulate some of what Duke, NotreDame, or GeorgiaTech do with their Admissions and Athletics, I dont think that would be 'lowering our standards' ; In my opinion it would be modifying/broadening/improving our standards to allow us to get some really great 'well rounded humans' into what perhaps has become a skewed 'overly nerdy micro-focussed' undergraduate student-body, who tend to not come from blue collar working class backgrounds, at least relative to the 'undergraduate study body of NotreDame, GeorgiaTech, and Duke'.

Re jacket3ree’s Safeway anecdote I have plenty of Stanford friends from both undergrad and grad years, but  — I never volunteer to “outsiders” that I went here. That sort of thing always seems to bring a feeling on their part that I’m wealthier or more entitled or somehow more privileged— and that’s the last thing I want to project, even now, almost 50 years later. And I don’t think I’m projecting a guilt complex either — the vibe is palpable.

RE: Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - 82lsju - 12-23-2025

(12-23-2025, 08:16 PM)qwerty49 Wrote:  Re jacket3ree’s Safeway anecdote I have plenty of Stanford friends from both undergrad and grad years, but  — I never volunteer to “outsiders” that I went here. That sort of thing always seems to bring a feeling on their part that I’m wealthier or more entitled or somehow more privileged— and that’s the last thing I want to project, even now, almost 50 years later. And I don’t think I’m projecting a guilt complex either — the vibe is palpable.

I'm probably an outlier but I generally don't wear Stanford gear unless I'm going to a Stanford event.  I also have never really worn logo clothing from employers, and working in Silicon Valley there was lots of company logo gear up for grabs (often for free).  And yes to be totally inconsistent I do have Stanford related license plates on two cars, although not all that many non-Stanford people seem to notice (82LSJU and LSJU)....I have gotten more questions about them being related to LSU than Stanford....

RE: Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - 2006alum - 12-23-2025

I think there's a lot of overthinking and naval gazing going on here. The same reason why everyone seems to clutch their pearls at the thought of associating with Stanford in public is the same reason why we're never going to have 100,000 yocals descend on Stanford stadium for football games. Think about it: no one working the College Station Krogers checkout would give a flying flip if someone wore a Texas A&M shirt - if anything, they'd experience allegiance. Yet here we are cautioning against any kind of public affiliation with our alma mater for fear of coming off as "too good for the masses elites."

And that's fundamentally why trying to be A&M will never work: Stanford is known for, excels at, and probably attracted all of us to it precisely because it is prestigious, selective, and elite. We aren't a public land grant, and let's be honest, most (all?) of us wouldn't have gone here if we were (especially at non-land-grant prices!). Most folks in the state of Oregon root for Oregon (I know, I grew up there). Most (non-UCLA) LA-area folks root for USC (I know, I lived there). The entire state of Louisiana is behind LSU (res ipsa loquitur). Yet Stanford can't even find hometown allegiance across the Dumbarton Bridge (Cal), 20 miles south in San Jose (SJS), or up the 280 in San Francisco (USF). Freebies, pandering, and relationship building aren't going to do it either - most Stanford fans are too rich for the former and too busy to engage with the latter.

Ultimately, I think we win the same way we won during the Luck/Ledecky/Ogwumikex2 era: the Nerd Nation combination of excellence in the classroom and on the field/court/pool, which optimally attracts those who aspire to and achieve greatness. Maybe sometimes we need to shill out to buy that, other times we strike gold and find it, and over time, institutional memory continues to support it. By definition, that's never going to be the largest number, but we don't need the largest number to be great - we just need to be great to be great. So let's focus on that, and stop worrying about how to be somebody else.

RE: Example for StanU to look at (CFP at Texas A&M):What CollegeFootball should look like - fullmetal - 12-23-2025

Yeah, marketing isn't really going to do it.  The majority of fans that fill Kyle Stadium are there because A&M football is a core part of their identity.  No amount of swag will really flip that switch for someone who doesn't feel Stanford as part of their identity.  

There is a solution though: win a lot of games.  Then people will come to see good games from a dominant team as neutral/interested observers.  Some of them might be converted into the faithful.