06-22-2013, 01:38 PM
I had no intention of going to Stanford all the way through my junior year of high school. I had free tuition at a small college where my father taught, and I just assumed I would go there. My high school orchestra (we were located in Idaho) visited Stanford on a field trip at the end of my junior year, and I had about a one hour stroll around campus. That next fall, remembering the beautiful campus and having heard about first-class academics, I decided to include Stanford on a short list of schools to which I applied (liberal arts colleges like Pomona and Lewis&Clark being the primary competitors.)Â
In the late 1970s Stanford had a need-blind admission policy, and middle-class financial aid was more widely available than it is now. I was accepted, and by the time financial aid was figured in Stanford was the least expensive university for me other than my father's (free) college. I doubt that I would have chosen to attend today, given the brobdingnagian debt I would have been expected to take on. When I graduated in 1981 I had 0 debt and had paid little more than my work study earnings for four years.
Seeing the campus and hearing more about academics were what prompted me to apply. Athletics were not an attraction. In fact, had I known that Stanford had a major football program I might actually have been dissuaded. I was thoroughly anti-athletics at the time, and wanted to go somewhere where it was possible and respectable to be an intellectual first and foremost. Universities that emphasized athletics seemed to me to be exhibiting the wrong values. I was sick and tired of being the star student at my school and getting less respect than the lowliest football players. Or so I thought.
During my freshman year I was introduced to Stanford football by a couple of dorm mates who became managers for the football team. That was Bill Walsh's first year. I began to see the "intellectual" side of football. By the end of the season I was attending every game and trying to call the plays from the stands before Walsh did, seeing how close I could come to the actual calls. "Flare pass to Francis to the wide side! Sweep left to Nelson! Stop and go to Lofton!" Etc. I absolutely loved the idea that Walsh, through innovative and creative strategies, could get his team to win games against much better athletes. It taught me that football is just as strategic and tactical as it is physical, and that was the side of the game that hooked me. If Stanford had been winning through superior physicality and using boring and uncreative plays I would never have become a convert. That is just who I was at the time.
That is how I came to Stanford, and how I came to Stanford athletics.Â
In the late 1970s Stanford had a need-blind admission policy, and middle-class financial aid was more widely available than it is now. I was accepted, and by the time financial aid was figured in Stanford was the least expensive university for me other than my father's (free) college. I doubt that I would have chosen to attend today, given the brobdingnagian debt I would have been expected to take on. When I graduated in 1981 I had 0 debt and had paid little more than my work study earnings for four years.
Seeing the campus and hearing more about academics were what prompted me to apply. Athletics were not an attraction. In fact, had I known that Stanford had a major football program I might actually have been dissuaded. I was thoroughly anti-athletics at the time, and wanted to go somewhere where it was possible and respectable to be an intellectual first and foremost. Universities that emphasized athletics seemed to me to be exhibiting the wrong values. I was sick and tired of being the star student at my school and getting less respect than the lowliest football players. Or so I thought.
During my freshman year I was introduced to Stanford football by a couple of dorm mates who became managers for the football team. That was Bill Walsh's first year. I began to see the "intellectual" side of football. By the end of the season I was attending every game and trying to call the plays from the stands before Walsh did, seeing how close I could come to the actual calls. "Flare pass to Francis to the wide side! Sweep left to Nelson! Stop and go to Lofton!" Etc. I absolutely loved the idea that Walsh, through innovative and creative strategies, could get his team to win games against much better athletes. It taught me that football is just as strategic and tactical as it is physical, and that was the side of the game that hooked me. If Stanford had been winning through superior physicality and using boring and uncreative plays I would never have become a convert. That is just who I was at the time.
That is how I came to Stanford, and how I came to Stanford athletics.Â