[81alum]

College sports were my escapist source of entertainment.  There was a certain nobility about the fact that the entertainers were doing it for fun or for education.  Once that ideal became broken, my enthusiasm waned.  WBB seemed less corrupt, for a time, than football, so my attention turned there.  There was something amazing about a final four team when 15/15 of the players on the roster had at least 4.0 averages in high school and most went on after graduation to be doctors, lawyers, college professors, etc.  Perhaps it was the one and only time when the "amateur ideal" actually worked so well.

I am still digesting all the recent developments. I thought very very hard about whether I should renew my season tickets.  I elected to do so simply to give Kate Paye and Stanford a chance, but judging from the fact that this is my first post here in months, it is clear that my psyche has moved on from college sports for now.  I'm giving it a year to see how I feel after watching 1) transfer players starting for WBB, 2) the team jetting all over the country to play unfamiliar opponents, 3) Kate doing her best to continue Tara's legacy but in a very un-Tara like era.

We have different reasons for being Stanford sports fans.  There were those who were Stanford fans who turned to sports, and those who were sports fans who turned to Stanford.  Stanford values are just more important to me than sports, although I desperately wish--and still hold out a bit of forlorn hope--that they can be reconciled.

[81alum]

College sports were my escapist source of entertainment.  There was a certain nobility about the fact that the entertainers were doing it for fun or for education.  Once that ideal became broken, my enthusiasm waned.  WBB seemed less corrupt, for a time, than football, so my attention turned there.  There was something amazing about a final four team when 15/15 of the players on the roster had at least 4.0 averages in high school and most went on after graduation to be doctors, lawyers, college professors, etc.  Perhaps it was the one and only time when the "amateur ideal" actually worked so well.

I am still digesting all the recent developments. I thought very very hard about whether I should renew my season tickets.  I elected to do so simply to give Kate Paye and Stanford a chance, but judging from the fact that this is my first post here in months, it is clear that my psyche has moved on from college sports for now.  I'm giving it a year to see how I feel after watching 1) transfer players starting for WBB, 2) the team jetting all over the country to play unfamiliar opponents, 3) Kate doing her best to continue Tara's legacy but in a very un-Tara like era.

We have different reasons for being Stanford sports fans.  There were those who were Stanford fans who turned to sports, and those who were sports fans who turned to Stanford.  Stanford values are just more important to me than sports, although I desperately wish--and still hold out a bit of forlorn hope--that they can be reconciled.