[Mick]

That's exactly what I'm saying. I may be overly sensitive to the elitist vibe, but I've gotten that in spades since showing up on campus. I'll never forget two 'first couple of days' experiences:

1. Going to the Middle Avenue Safeway in Menlo to buy some food, wearing a Stanford T-shirt. I caught so much, 'oh you think you're better than me do you, asshole' flack from the young woman running the register that I vowed never to wear Stanford-identifying merch again when doing mundane things in public.

2. My first day teaching the E21 lab and I introduced who I was and where I'm from to the class. Two clowns started humming dueling banjos. My outside voice said 'that's pretty funny (it kinda was), especially when I think your grade in lab is worth a third and your grade on homework, that I also grade by the way, is another third, so while I ain't no Bert Reynolds, I am directly responsible for two thirds of your grade in this class and Professor Hsu is retiring after this quarter, so I don't know if he will care enough to save you. Anyway, let's put names to faces.'  My inside voice said, 'you assholes are lucky I have a sense of humor and ethics. Where do you get off dissing a peer institution like that. What do you think Georgia Tech is, exactly.'

I've long thought Stanford should consider a 'let us be your number 2 (team)' marketing campaign with small discounts on individual siseason tickets if you identify your first team. Stanford has a brobdingnagian graduate school alumni base. Larger than the undergraduate alumni base, and most graduate students received their undergraduate degrees elsewhere. When I was a student, I went to games with a bunch of wayward ACC engineering people -- Duke, UVA. Maryland and that one rabid fan who wasn't ACC but Houston. He hated UT with the heat of a thousand burning suns. Stanford started the season at home with SJSU and Texas. That dude was a fun hang at the Texas game.

I like your #2 idea. My cousin is a diehard Stanford fan (he was Marquess' team manager) and has been since he was a kid. He got his MBA at Notre Dame and while he is proud of it, he doesn't generally root for Notre Dame...but if they pushed him a bit, they would sway him.

Georgia Tech is terrific. My sister-in-law is a Stanford ME/Harvard MBA and did engineering work at GaTech (not sure if she graduated). She sits on the boards of two of the 50 largest companies in the USA, so I'd say Ga Tech has some pretty accomplished alumni.

[Mick]

That's exactly what I'm saying. I may be overly sensitive to the elitist vibe, but I've gotten that in spades since showing up on campus. I'll never forget two 'first couple of days' experiences:

1. Going to the Middle Avenue Safeway in Menlo to buy some food, wearing a Stanford T-shirt. I caught so much, 'oh you think you're better than me do you, asshole' flack from the young woman running the register that I vowed never to wear Stanford-identifying merch again when doing mundane things in public.

2. My first day teaching the E21 lab and I introduced who I was and where I'm from to the class. Two clowns started humming dueling banjos. My outside voice said 'that's pretty funny (it kinda was), especially when I think your grade in lab is worth a third and your grade on homework, that I also grade by the way, is another third, so while I ain't no Bert Reynolds, I am directly responsible for two thirds of your grade in this class and Professor Hsu is retiring after this quarter, so I don't know if he will care enough to save you. Anyway, let's put names to faces.'  My inside voice said, 'you assholes are lucky I have a sense of humor and ethics. Where do you get off dissing a peer institution like that. What do you think Georgia Tech is, exactly.'

I've long thought Stanford should consider a 'let us be your number 2 (team)' marketing campaign with small discounts on individual siseason tickets if you identify your first team. Stanford has a brobdingnagian graduate school alumni base. Larger than the undergraduate alumni base, and most graduate students received their undergraduate degrees elsewhere. When I was a student, I went to games with a bunch of wayward ACC engineering people -- Duke, UVA. Maryland and that one rabid fan who wasn't ACC but Houston. He hated UT with the heat of a thousand burning suns. Stanford started the season at home with SJSU and Texas. That dude was a fun hang at the Texas game.

I like your #2 idea. My cousin is a diehard Stanford fan (he was Marquess' team manager) and has been since he was a kid. He got his MBA at Notre Dame and while he is proud of it, he doesn't generally root for Notre Dame...but if they pushed him a bit, they would sway him.

Georgia Tech is terrific. My sister-in-law is a Stanford ME/Harvard MBA and did engineering work at GaTech (not sure if she graduated). She sits on the boards of two of the 50 largest companies in the USA, so I'd say Ga Tech has some pretty accomplished alumni.