[81alum]

[quote author=Oasis link=topic=6946.msg52971#msg52971 date=1353366955]What counts is we can go to the Rose Bowl . . . .

Let's just beat UCLA twice -- which will be tough but look at how we played Saturday -- and take the real prize, which is being the Pac-8* team in the Rose Bowl.  Of course I'd like to see us in the Rose Bowl AND national champions, but the Rose Bowl is a much bigger deal.

Could not agree more.  You play the game to win championships.  As Coach Shaw said after the game, no one is giving Stanford a trophy for beating Oregon.  Still more work to do.

Look at it this way, Stanford has won 1 outright conference championship (and two shared in 1992 and 2001) in the last 40 years!  This team has a chance to make history.  I'm pretty darn excited at the prospect of playing for a championship and a Rose Bowl berth.  Who cares what the nattering nabobs have to say about our prospects.
[/quote]
Agreed.  Frankly, I hate the whole BCS/National Championship fiasco, twisted as it is by distorted polls and arcane computer machinations that too often are beyond the control of the guys who actually play the game.

Winning our conference (although this North/South thing is an unwelcome corruption to me) and playing the representative of another big conference and beating them--the way it has generally been done for a century--that is what I want to see.  If American football has any import in our lives we should cherish and protect the traditions that have grown with it.  Without those traditions it is no better than any other game--and interest will fade as increasingly powerful video games and artificial reality take deeper and deeper root with young people over the next century.  But protect those traditions and it becomes more than a game--it is a part of Americana and our cultural community. 

A victory in a game steeped in a hundred years of rituals is infinitely more satisfying than some unconnected opponent in the stadium of the year arranged by a bunch of polls and computers. 

[81alum]

[quote author=Oasis link=topic=6946.msg52971#msg52971 date=1353366955]What counts is we can go to the Rose Bowl . . . .

Let's just beat UCLA twice -- which will be tough but look at how we played Saturday -- and take the real prize, which is being the Pac-8* team in the Rose Bowl.  Of course I'd like to see us in the Rose Bowl AND national champions, but the Rose Bowl is a much bigger deal.

Could not agree more.  You play the game to win championships.  As Coach Shaw said after the game, no one is giving Stanford a trophy for beating Oregon.  Still more work to do.

Look at it this way, Stanford has won 1 outright conference championship (and two shared in 1992 and 2001) in the last 40 years!  This team has a chance to make history.  I'm pretty darn excited at the prospect of playing for a championship and a Rose Bowl berth.  Who cares what the nattering nabobs have to say about our prospects.
[/quote]
Agreed.  Frankly, I hate the whole BCS/National Championship fiasco, twisted as it is by distorted polls and arcane computer machinations that too often are beyond the control of the guys who actually play the game.

Winning our conference (although this North/South thing is an unwelcome corruption to me) and playing the representative of another big conference and beating them--the way it has generally been done for a century--that is what I want to see.  If American football has any import in our lives we should cherish and protect the traditions that have grown with it.  Without those traditions it is no better than any other game--and interest will fade as increasingly powerful video games and artificial reality take deeper and deeper root with young people over the next century.  But protect those traditions and it becomes more than a game--it is a part of Americana and our cultural community. 

A victory in a game steeped in a hundred years of rituals is infinitely more satisfying than some unconnected opponent in the stadium of the year arranged by a bunch of polls and computers.