09-10-2021, 02:59 PM
First of all I’d like to say I’ve never met Coach Shaw but from all I’ve heard he is a fine individual and an excellent representative for Stanford. I wish him nothing but success.
I’ve never met Coach Harbaugh but from what I’ve read and heard he has many undesirable qualities and I have no interest in ever meeting him.
I started watching Stanford football in the mid seventies. I still remember the innovative offense that was memorialized by the Stanford band chant “ Run, sweep, pass”.
I don’t have the detailed knowledge of many on this board, my perspective is at the 5,000 foot level. Pre- Harbaugh it appeared to me that Stanford recruits first and foremost wanted to attend the Stanford school. And oh by the way they wanted to play college football. As a result of this we had mediocre teams that occasionally took out a top team. We couldn’t get good players for all the positions and didn’t have the depth we needed. Frequently, it looked like we only had 10 players on the filed instead of 11. I thought there were not enough recruits that could get through the academic requirements. We were doing the best we could do under the circumstances. During this time I attended all but one home game and frequently made trips to away games.
At some point the academic process was changed around the Harbaugh era. I’m not sure how this played out in the background. I was just happy to see that the year round training and excellence of football players was recognized as being equivalent to other areas of excellence that new students were evaluated on. It was at this time that I changed my opinion of how many more quality recruits were available to us. Harbaugh was able attract another type of recruit. He recruited players that wanted to play top tier football and oh by way it sure would be nice to go to Stanford. We were also able to attract top quality assistant coaches. If I remember correctly improvements to pay structures for the assistant coaches helped in this area. I’m probably wrong about some of the timing of these changes but the net results was:
1. We could recruit two types of players: Ones that wanted Stanford first and football second. Ones that wanted football first and Stanford second.
2. We could get high quality assistant coaches.
3. We won a lot of games and became known as a successful football program.
4. There was positive feedback between 1, 2, and 3 resulting in the continued quality Stanford football.
During these golden years I truly enjoyed watching Stanford football: the downfield blocking, the play away from the ball, the minimization of penalties, the team playing 60 minutes of football, playing to win (not playing not to loose), being in control, Randy Hart coaching on the side lines, consistently surprising me and the other team with the offensive play call, players in the correct position, minimal delay of game penalties/wasted time outs, a defense that was basically aggressive but adopted a scheme that complemented the offense and the state of the game, etc. Perhaps I’m looking at these years through rose colored glasses since we didn’t win an overwhelming number of games under Harbaugh but the fundamental execution of the team seemed to be very good. The team seemed to be in control of the games they played..
Following Harbaugh’s departure the momentum continued. Results 1,2 and 3 continued to reinforce each other and we continued to be very successful. However, the play on the field started to deteriorate. There were fewer enjoyable individual observations and more and more annoying observations. These observations have been covered before on this board for a long time. But let me add one that I don’t think was mentioned. I attended the 2016 Washington game in Seattle in which Stanford was thoroughly demolished from the initial kickoff. They looked like a bad high school team. What did I see? From the beginning kickoff till the end of the game I see the Washington coaches feverishly coaching on the sides and for most of the first half no coaching on the Stanford sideline. For some reason I found this terribly annoying. I’m back to thinking Stanford is playing with only 10 players again but the problem is I now know it doesn’t have to be this way.
It is my opinion we have been loosing the battle for some time but the momentum from the golden years has kept us limping along until the loses have become too much to ignore. But is has never been the loses that bothered me: it has been the multitude of little things that demonstrate we are not taking care of the details. Now the momentum is gone and results 1,2, and 3 need to be done again so the task is much much harder now than if corrective action had been taken earlier.
A coach once said this about Bear Bryant: “He can take his and beat yours then he can take yours and beat his”. I suppose this means different things to different people but to me one of the things it means is the coach designs the offense and defense to fit the players. Off and on post Harbaugh I have not had the feeling that has been the case on the offensive side of the ball.
Mntcard
I’ve never met Coach Harbaugh but from what I’ve read and heard he has many undesirable qualities and I have no interest in ever meeting him.
I started watching Stanford football in the mid seventies. I still remember the innovative offense that was memorialized by the Stanford band chant “ Run, sweep, pass”.
I don’t have the detailed knowledge of many on this board, my perspective is at the 5,000 foot level. Pre- Harbaugh it appeared to me that Stanford recruits first and foremost wanted to attend the Stanford school. And oh by the way they wanted to play college football. As a result of this we had mediocre teams that occasionally took out a top team. We couldn’t get good players for all the positions and didn’t have the depth we needed. Frequently, it looked like we only had 10 players on the filed instead of 11. I thought there were not enough recruits that could get through the academic requirements. We were doing the best we could do under the circumstances. During this time I attended all but one home game and frequently made trips to away games.
At some point the academic process was changed around the Harbaugh era. I’m not sure how this played out in the background. I was just happy to see that the year round training and excellence of football players was recognized as being equivalent to other areas of excellence that new students were evaluated on. It was at this time that I changed my opinion of how many more quality recruits were available to us. Harbaugh was able attract another type of recruit. He recruited players that wanted to play top tier football and oh by way it sure would be nice to go to Stanford. We were also able to attract top quality assistant coaches. If I remember correctly improvements to pay structures for the assistant coaches helped in this area. I’m probably wrong about some of the timing of these changes but the net results was:
1. We could recruit two types of players: Ones that wanted Stanford first and football second. Ones that wanted football first and Stanford second.
2. We could get high quality assistant coaches.
3. We won a lot of games and became known as a successful football program.
4. There was positive feedback between 1, 2, and 3 resulting in the continued quality Stanford football.
During these golden years I truly enjoyed watching Stanford football: the downfield blocking, the play away from the ball, the minimization of penalties, the team playing 60 minutes of football, playing to win (not playing not to loose), being in control, Randy Hart coaching on the side lines, consistently surprising me and the other team with the offensive play call, players in the correct position, minimal delay of game penalties/wasted time outs, a defense that was basically aggressive but adopted a scheme that complemented the offense and the state of the game, etc. Perhaps I’m looking at these years through rose colored glasses since we didn’t win an overwhelming number of games under Harbaugh but the fundamental execution of the team seemed to be very good. The team seemed to be in control of the games they played..
Following Harbaugh’s departure the momentum continued. Results 1,2 and 3 continued to reinforce each other and we continued to be very successful. However, the play on the field started to deteriorate. There were fewer enjoyable individual observations and more and more annoying observations. These observations have been covered before on this board for a long time. But let me add one that I don’t think was mentioned. I attended the 2016 Washington game in Seattle in which Stanford was thoroughly demolished from the initial kickoff. They looked like a bad high school team. What did I see? From the beginning kickoff till the end of the game I see the Washington coaches feverishly coaching on the sides and for most of the first half no coaching on the Stanford sideline. For some reason I found this terribly annoying. I’m back to thinking Stanford is playing with only 10 players again but the problem is I now know it doesn’t have to be this way.
It is my opinion we have been loosing the battle for some time but the momentum from the golden years has kept us limping along until the loses have become too much to ignore. But is has never been the loses that bothered me: it has been the multitude of little things that demonstrate we are not taking care of the details. Now the momentum is gone and results 1,2, and 3 need to be done again so the task is much much harder now than if corrective action had been taken earlier.
A coach once said this about Bear Bryant: “He can take his and beat yours then he can take yours and beat his”. I suppose this means different things to different people but to me one of the things it means is the coach designs the offense and defense to fit the players. Off and on post Harbaugh I have not had the feeling that has been the case on the offensive side of the ball.
Mntcard