[Brickcity]

Hey everyone, it's been a while.  (Apologies/salute to Nan3cy since I stole her best posting name idea ever to honor Tom Lehrer, but I had to resort to something to dislodge a sticky Catch22 IT thing apparently going on, and it is all I could think of doing.  But mostly a salute to Nan3cy. And Tom.)

During my time of fandom (since the '85 season), Stanford has seen three positive sea changes in performance.  See, there is a theme here:  

1.  Denny Green takes over from Elway.  Emphasizes the OL and basically Big 10 (Iowa) run-first football with West Coast offense layered in there. At first the OL was sort of big and slow (SJSU danced around them in one game), but they started with some (wow!) upsets (ND the day of my wedding), and by the time the Vikings called to crown his ass, they were bludgeoning people. Not everyone, but enough. 

2. Tyrone Willingham takes over from Walsh. Emphasized discipline from what I recall and a solid staff. Improvements over the prior regime that had run out of Green fumes. Player development. I think Coach Walsh had sort of let go of the rope and the new energy was needed. The offense was a little more vertical than West Coast, but was dynamic and won games, mostly, and the defense was capable of occasionally rising to the occasion, like in the Rose Bowl.  (A bad defense lets Ron Daaaaaayne run wild and gives up 42 points.  When we got back up north, I read in the paper comments from Wisconsin players to the effect that Stanford hit like a Big 10 team.) That '01 team was really close to doing something special.

3. Jim Harbaugh takes over from Harris.  Emphasized physicality and stopped any pretense about not recruiting football-first (or football-equal) players. This is Schembechler Big10 football with Bill Walsh sprinkled in and plenty of fireworks. Maniacally held on to all the ropes. Yeah man, what is your deal?  Harbaugh-Shaw from 2009 - 2015 is in my opinion the best stretch of Stanford football I recall or read about. (If Pop Warner threw 35-0 down in a Rose Bowl in less than a half, I'll give it up to him.) What made it the best, however, was not just the brutality on offense or running Power, or watching from the stands as Harbaugh greased Marinelli's eyes with someone's blood, but the equal brutality on defense. Shane effing Skov. Monsters that were fundamentally sound and pretty close to unbeatable. And could do calculus if they had to. Great football teams are built from the center and nose tackle out, and then back. Period. Throw some speed on the edges, Andrew Luck, Kevin Hogan, Gerhart, Taylor, Gaffney, McCaffery, Love, et al on top of that and you spin gold.

Playing Big 10 football when no one in the Big 10 outside of Madison plays Big 10 football, is a winning formula. (Wisconsin runs go routes too; it's not boring.) A winning formula if you want to make Oregon cry on national TV, that is. THAT WASN'T THAT LONG AGO......

The scheme isn't as important as the line of scrimmage.  Find the players that really enjoy the combat it is, can face a Top 5 schedule year in and year out and relish that, and appreciate the educational opportunity. In that order. Then worry about the playbook.

It's not good when you bail on Stanford and find Loudermilk on Prime after the Warriors game because Stanford gives you two options: go on blood thinners or stop caring. An angry call from my now Stateside son woke me up Saturday for our Gameday ritual. He's stationed in Virginia and stayed up late to watch that freak show. He's done with Shaw, but in fairness he played college football for a combat Marine who flew helo missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major Lake was intense when he needed to be intense. He also walked on for Bobby Bowden at FSU.

I feel like Shaw has let go of the rope. Coaching must be absolutely exhausting and getting this train back on track is going to take extreme effort and some really uncomfortable conversations and decisions.  But I have those all the time and I don't pull in $6 million per annum with $3 million considered loose deferment change.  Either jump into the task, or let someone else willing to do it, do it.

I've been to exactly one game in Palo Alto (Oregon) and exactly one game in Berkeley (Colorado) this year. Someone somewhere needs to do a monumentally futile and stupid gesture to paddle Bay Area college football back to life before it dies forever. (With apologies to the dude down at Sparta.)

And remember that someone always has it better (sorry Jim, it's better in Athens and that makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little), and someone always has it worse.  My son and I follow three teams on a weekly basis: Stanford, Georgia Tech, and Navy. Even when he was deployed to places we can't disclose, he figured out how to follow games and shoot me an off-hour text or two during the season. His first text this season put the O/U on combined winds at ten. We both took the under.  Looking good sitting at 8 with another win from anybody really iffy at this point..... Can you imagine having all three of your teams lose to Notre Dame in the same season?

Great post. One correction: Stanford gave up 17 points to Wisconsin in the 2000 Rose Bowl (not 42.) Ron Dayne did run wild though that wasn't Stanford's main problem that day. The bigger issue was only scoring 9 points, though much of that had to do with Troy Walters having a broken hand and our all-conference center playing very gimpy that day.

[Brickcity]

Hey everyone, it's been a while.  (Apologies/salute to Nan3cy since I stole her best posting name idea ever to honor Tom Lehrer, but I had to resort to something to dislodge a sticky Catch22 IT thing apparently going on, and it is all I could think of doing.  But mostly a salute to Nan3cy. And Tom.)

During my time of fandom (since the '85 season), Stanford has seen three positive sea changes in performance.  See, there is a theme here:  

1.  Denny Green takes over from Elway.  Emphasizes the OL and basically Big 10 (Iowa) run-first football with West Coast offense layered in there. At first the OL was sort of big and slow (SJSU danced around them in one game), but they started with some (wow!) upsets (ND the day of my wedding), and by the time the Vikings called to crown his ass, they were bludgeoning people. Not everyone, but enough. 

2. Tyrone Willingham takes over from Walsh. Emphasized discipline from what I recall and a solid staff. Improvements over the prior regime that had run out of Green fumes. Player development. I think Coach Walsh had sort of let go of the rope and the new energy was needed. The offense was a little more vertical than West Coast, but was dynamic and won games, mostly, and the defense was capable of occasionally rising to the occasion, like in the Rose Bowl.  (A bad defense lets Ron Daaaaaayne run wild and gives up 42 points.  When we got back up north, I read in the paper comments from Wisconsin players to the effect that Stanford hit like a Big 10 team.) That '01 team was really close to doing something special.

3. Jim Harbaugh takes over from Harris.  Emphasized physicality and stopped any pretense about not recruiting football-first (or football-equal) players. This is Schembechler Big10 football with Bill Walsh sprinkled in and plenty of fireworks. Maniacally held on to all the ropes. Yeah man, what is your deal?  Harbaugh-Shaw from 2009 - 2015 is in my opinion the best stretch of Stanford football I recall or read about. (If Pop Warner threw 35-0 down in a Rose Bowl in less than a half, I'll give it up to him.) What made it the best, however, was not just the brutality on offense or running Power, or watching from the stands as Harbaugh greased Marinelli's eyes with someone's blood, but the equal brutality on defense. Shane effing Skov. Monsters that were fundamentally sound and pretty close to unbeatable. And could do calculus if they had to. Great football teams are built from the center and nose tackle out, and then back. Period. Throw some speed on the edges, Andrew Luck, Kevin Hogan, Gerhart, Taylor, Gaffney, McCaffery, Love, et al on top of that and you spin gold.

Playing Big 10 football when no one in the Big 10 outside of Madison plays Big 10 football, is a winning formula. (Wisconsin runs go routes too; it's not boring.) A winning formula if you want to make Oregon cry on national TV, that is. THAT WASN'T THAT LONG AGO......

The scheme isn't as important as the line of scrimmage.  Find the players that really enjoy the combat it is, can face a Top 5 schedule year in and year out and relish that, and appreciate the educational opportunity. In that order. Then worry about the playbook.

It's not good when you bail on Stanford and find Loudermilk on Prime after the Warriors game because Stanford gives you two options: go on blood thinners or stop caring. An angry call from my now Stateside son woke me up Saturday for our Gameday ritual. He's stationed in Virginia and stayed up late to watch that freak show. He's done with Shaw, but in fairness he played college football for a combat Marine who flew helo missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major Lake was intense when he needed to be intense. He also walked on for Bobby Bowden at FSU.

I feel like Shaw has let go of the rope. Coaching must be absolutely exhausting and getting this train back on track is going to take extreme effort and some really uncomfortable conversations and decisions.  But I have those all the time and I don't pull in $6 million per annum with $3 million considered loose deferment change.  Either jump into the task, or let someone else willing to do it, do it.

I've been to exactly one game in Palo Alto (Oregon) and exactly one game in Berkeley (Colorado) this year. Someone somewhere needs to do a monumentally futile and stupid gesture to paddle Bay Area college football back to life before it dies forever. (With apologies to the dude down at Sparta.)

And remember that someone always has it better (sorry Jim, it's better in Athens and that makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little), and someone always has it worse.  My son and I follow three teams on a weekly basis: Stanford, Georgia Tech, and Navy. Even when he was deployed to places we can't disclose, he figured out how to follow games and shoot me an off-hour text or two during the season. His first text this season put the O/U on combined winds at ten. We both took the under.  Looking good sitting at 8 with another win from anybody really iffy at this point..... Can you imagine having all three of your teams lose to Notre Dame in the same season?

Great post. One correction: Stanford gave up 17 points to Wisconsin in the 2000 Rose Bowl (not 42.) Ron Dayne did run wild though that wasn't Stanford's main problem that day. The bigger issue was only scoring 9 points, though much of that had to do with Troy Walters having a broken hand and our all-conference center playing very gimpy that day.