[Mick]

The early start time Cal had in Oxford didn't stop them from knocking off Ole Miss in their home stadium. Complaining about start times, no matter the motivation, is a bad look. That stuff is negotiated between the schools, conferences and TV networks, and Shaw knows it. If 9am PST games are a non-starter for you, make it a negotiating chip when doing the contracts to schedule and broadcast the games.

re: early (PDT) games, I lean towards - best team wins regardless of game time.  As OF noted, Cal beat Mississippi (and North Carolina a few years before).  The key is preparation.  Practice early in the morning, get to the venue a couple days before game day, and, most importantly, take a positive/no excuses, attitude about the game. 

By complaining about the game time, Shaw has given the players a reason to lose.  At this point, he should be talking about the opportunity of playing before a national audience in a NFL venue and what that could mean.  Beating K-State would put Stanford in the spotlight and on track for a fast start to the season.

Just so I understand...you're saying that the time of day does not affect athletic performance?  I don't know that science bears that out:

https://www.insidescience.org/news/time-...mance-peak

From the article:

In the new research, Brandstaetter and a colleague, Elise Facer-Childs, asked a collection of accomplished field hockey and squash players with different chronotypes to complete general fitness tests at six different times of the day. They found that each chronotype had a different pattern of performance, with the best and worst performances coming at different times. Most strikingly, night owls performed very poorly in the early morning, on average about 26 percent worse than their peak level.

A 26 percent difference is pretty extreme. In a world-class 100-meter race, the variation between first and last place is often less than five percent.

[Mick]

The early start time Cal had in Oxford didn't stop them from knocking off Ole Miss in their home stadium. Complaining about start times, no matter the motivation, is a bad look. That stuff is negotiated between the schools, conferences and TV networks, and Shaw knows it. If 9am PST games are a non-starter for you, make it a negotiating chip when doing the contracts to schedule and broadcast the games.

re: early (PDT) games, I lean towards - best team wins regardless of game time.  As OF noted, Cal beat Mississippi (and North Carolina a few years before).  The key is preparation.  Practice early in the morning, get to the venue a couple days before game day, and, most importantly, take a positive/no excuses, attitude about the game. 

By complaining about the game time, Shaw has given the players a reason to lose.  At this point, he should be talking about the opportunity of playing before a national audience in a NFL venue and what that could mean.  Beating K-State would put Stanford in the spotlight and on track for a fast start to the season.

Just so I understand...you're saying that the time of day does not affect athletic performance?  I don't know that science bears that out:

https://www.insidescience.org/news/time-...mance-peak

From the article:

In the new research, Brandstaetter and a colleague, Elise Facer-Childs, asked a collection of accomplished field hockey and squash players with different chronotypes to complete general fitness tests at six different times of the day. They found that each chronotype had a different pattern of performance, with the best and worst performances coming at different times. Most strikingly, night owls performed very poorly in the early morning, on average about 26 percent worse than their peak level.

A 26 percent difference is pretty extreme. In a world-class 100-meter race, the variation between first and last place is often less than five percent.