[Mick]

[quote author=OutsiderFan link=topic=14026.msg147581#msg147581 date=1449874554]
It will be CMac's to lose in 2016

And lose it he will.  Not because he'll deserve to lose it, mind you, but because some SEC team (it honestly doesn't matter which) will have a good running back, or one of the playoff teams will have had a QB that had a great year.  Or something else will happen.
[/quote]


I tend to agree.  And I think it's because a pretty good-sized chunk of the those voting don't buy into, or necessarily want Stanford to succeed.

Let me explain.  I have a good friend of Hispanic descent.  She has a Master's in Library Science, she runs a research organization and she's very successful.  She comes from a large family, she's one of eight kids.  When she and her siblings visit her parents' house on the holidays, her parents are...polite.  Nice, but polite.  Her seven brother and sisters have blue-collar jobs that her parents consider to be more traditional...and they are greeted very warmly, and the parents socialize with them...not so much with my friend.  And she understands, she doesn't fit what her parents consider to be a traditional mold.

Same with the Voldemort voters, I suspect.  it seems to me that there is a degree of comfort in voting for candidates from traditional programs.  There are Voldemort "clusters" at schools like U$C (6), Oklahoma (5), Ohio State (7) and Noter Dame (7), the traditional powers; and Michigan, Nebraska, Auburn, Army, Florida and Florida State have three each.  Western schools other than USC have no more than one...Stanford, Colorado, Oregon, Oregon State each have one, and the Washington, Utah and Arizona schools have none..

The Pac 12 is foreign and remote for most of them.  No one east of the Rockies really see their games, and when they do, their natural preference is the local state school, the local football factory, etc.  Stanford is an anomaly for them.  Great team that never gets the benefit of the doubt, not with referees, not with Voldemort voters.  Yes, they have incredible player after incredible player, and they'll finish in the top two or three, but at the end of the day, it will go to someone from a football factory.  Oregon, Florida State, Texas A&M, Baylor, Oklahoma, Auburn, Alabama.  And if the candidate is a little bit greasy, we'll just look the other way.  Even better if he or his fan base is limited to a monosyllabic vocabulary.

[Mick]

[quote author=OutsiderFan link=topic=14026.msg147581#msg147581 date=1449874554]
It will be CMac's to lose in 2016

And lose it he will.  Not because he'll deserve to lose it, mind you, but because some SEC team (it honestly doesn't matter which) will have a good running back, or one of the playoff teams will have had a QB that had a great year.  Or something else will happen.
[/quote]


I tend to agree.  And I think it's because a pretty good-sized chunk of the those voting don't buy into, or necessarily want Stanford to succeed.

Let me explain.  I have a good friend of Hispanic descent.  She has a Master's in Library Science, she runs a research organization and she's very successful.  She comes from a large family, she's one of eight kids.  When she and her siblings visit her parents' house on the holidays, her parents are...polite.  Nice, but polite.  Her seven brother and sisters have blue-collar jobs that her parents consider to be more traditional...and they are greeted very warmly, and the parents socialize with them...not so much with my friend.  And she understands, she doesn't fit what her parents consider to be a traditional mold.

Same with the Voldemort voters, I suspect.  it seems to me that there is a degree of comfort in voting for candidates from traditional programs.  There are Voldemort "clusters" at schools like U$C (6), Oklahoma (5), Ohio State (7) and Noter Dame (7), the traditional powers; and Michigan, Nebraska, Auburn, Army, Florida and Florida State have three each.  Western schools other than USC have no more than one...Stanford, Colorado, Oregon, Oregon State each have one, and the Washington, Utah and Arizona schools have none..

The Pac 12 is foreign and remote for most of them.  No one east of the Rockies really see their games, and when they do, their natural preference is the local state school, the local football factory, etc.  Stanford is an anomaly for them.  Great team that never gets the benefit of the doubt, not with referees, not with Voldemort voters.  Yes, they have incredible player after incredible player, and they'll finish in the top two or three, but at the end of the day, it will go to someone from a football factory.  Oregon, Florida State, Texas A&M, Baylor, Oklahoma, Auburn, Alabama.  And if the candidate is a little bit greasy, we'll just look the other way.  Even better if he or his fan base is limited to a monosyllabic vocabulary.