[Papa John]

I don't know that Stanford football 2008 was terrible. We beat Oregon State, which had a good team that year. We lost three winnable games on the road versus Notre Dame, UCLA and Oregon and then the wheels fell off versus USC in the fourth quarter and all game versus Cal, which probably contributed to the sense that the season was not salvageable.

It's a moot point if Oliver Luck was calling the shots, but from what I recall, Andrew's teammates were raving about him during his first year on campus--like with Christian McCaffrey--so I could have seen making the switch after, say, the Notre Dame game, when Stanford was only 3-3 overall but 2-1 in the conference. His first three games he would have faced UA at home (a game we actually won 24-23), a bad UCLA team on the road (we lost 20-23), and a very bad WSU team at home (we won 58-0). And by then maybe the offense is better prepared--the defense was OK but not great--for the Oregon, USC, Cal gauntlet in November.

I have to believe that Stanford would have made a bowl game in 2008 with a midseason switch to Luck. We had Toby Gerhart and Anthony Kimble in the backfield and solid receivers in Doug Baldwin and Coby Fleener. The O-line was decent.

[Papa John]

I don't know that Stanford football 2008 was terrible. We beat Oregon State, which had a good team that year. We lost three winnable games on the road versus Notre Dame, UCLA and Oregon and then the wheels fell off versus USC in the fourth quarter and all game versus Cal, which probably contributed to the sense that the season was not salvageable.

It's a moot point if Oliver Luck was calling the shots, but from what I recall, Andrew's teammates were raving about him during his first year on campus--like with Christian McCaffrey--so I could have seen making the switch after, say, the Notre Dame game, when Stanford was only 3-3 overall but 2-1 in the conference. His first three games he would have faced UA at home (a game we actually won 24-23), a bad UCLA team on the road (we lost 20-23), and a very bad WSU team at home (we won 58-0). And by then maybe the offense is better prepared--the defense was OK but not great--for the Oregon, USC, Cal gauntlet in November.

I have to believe that Stanford would have made a bowl game in 2008 with a midseason switch to Luck. We had Toby Gerhart and Anthony Kimble in the backfield and solid receivers in Doug Baldwin and Coby Fleener. The O-line was decent.