[Goose]

And I do think Shaw is a much better recruiter than Willingham (and at least as good as Harbaugh) and that Shaw is riding the "Stanford is hot" wave well.  While most of us have always thought Stanford a "no-brainer" destination for college if one can get in, it's only relatively recently that the forces of Silicon Valley and Football Prominence have coalesced to make Stanford absolutely on fire.

While I would agree that there is a positive feedback loop involved, I would argue that Shaw has created a lot of the "forces" referred to above. JH started the change, but I don't think JH could really "sell" the intellectual brutality persona. He was EUTM, which is not the same thing at all. Shaw makes the idea that Stanford can be a great school and at the same time have a great football team not just plausible, but "normal and expected". History says it isn't so, but right now, the story is that it will be going forward. That is largely because David Shaw can make it so plausible, even pedestrian, that it will be so, and the "forces" buy into that image.

[Goose]

And I do think Shaw is a much better recruiter than Willingham (and at least as good as Harbaugh) and that Shaw is riding the "Stanford is hot" wave well.  While most of us have always thought Stanford a "no-brainer" destination for college if one can get in, it's only relatively recently that the forces of Silicon Valley and Football Prominence have coalesced to make Stanford absolutely on fire.

While I would agree that there is a positive feedback loop involved, I would argue that Shaw has created a lot of the "forces" referred to above. JH started the change, but I don't think JH could really "sell" the intellectual brutality persona. He was EUTM, which is not the same thing at all. Shaw makes the idea that Stanford can be a great school and at the same time have a great football team not just plausible, but "normal and expected". History says it isn't so, but right now, the story is that it will be going forward. That is largely because David Shaw can make it so plausible, even pedestrian, that it will be so, and the "forces" buy into that image.