I stand corrected. I should not have pronounced that I was unwilling to further engage. I should instead have the courage of my convictions and be prepared to defend what I posted. To do otherwise would be to contribute to the the declining tone of this board that I had lamented in my message. For that I apologize.
I thought long and hard about posting that first message. Emotions are running high. Many of us are in grief. This is a sports board, and those of us who come here have lost something that was deeply important to us. We enjoyed success in football for a number of years beyond our wildest "dreams," but now seem to have lost it all, as far as football is concerned. People in grief respond in different ways. Some of you are angry. I am simply sad.
Let me clarify a couple of things. I suspect that Shaw does not have what is needed to turn things around, although I hope I am wrong. As I said, I am sad--even morose--to have come to that conclusion. But others are feeling different passions now, and these passions are sometimes expressed in ways that seem less than civil. And so I am grieving not only for our lost excellence in football, but for the warmth of a community of like minded sports fans. The atmosphere that made the Cardboard so different from invective-filled sports boards may also be a casualty of the decline of Stanford football.
The endangerment of football as a sport at Stanford does not seem to have registered on people. By several accounts, ending the program was considered prior to Harbaugh's hiring. Even then, the program was not sitting well within a elite academic institution.
But think of what has happened since then. There is a growing concern over CTE, there is the professionalization of "student-athletes," the decline of attendance and interest in football in ALL the Bay Area football programs, the rise to stratospheric heights in admissions requirements, the increasing regionalization and concentration in the South of interest in high school football. Even our nation's growing ideological divide factors into declining interest: California--and especially the Bay Area--has become increasingly blue and college football doesn't fit that demographic well:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how...litically/
Could we lose football? Every time a coach is replaced, there is soul-searching about Stanford athletics, but when the most successful coach in Stanford history is replaced there will be more than soul-searching. In the minds of most of the Stanford community, David Shaw has stood against the rising tide of unfavorable conditions. His personal example and his reputation as "the conscience of college football" has held back the existential debate over whether Stanford should be in the football business at all. As the rest of college football gets increasingly slimy, at least Stanford faculty, students, Trustees and fans could rationalize to themselves, "but we are not like the rest of them. We are resisting those trends. We have David Shaw. We have a purpose and that purpose is to show the rest of the nation what college sports really SHOULD look like." Naive certainly, but charming in its way and oh-so-Stanford-like. The Camelot of college football.
But we know what happened to Camelot.
So I am quite serious when I suggest that the real choice is not between David Shaw and some collage of a coach that people imagine will have all the right characteristics. The choice could well be between David Shaw and....nothing at all.
I thought long and hard about posting that first message. Emotions are running high. Many of us are in grief. This is a sports board, and those of us who come here have lost something that was deeply important to us. We enjoyed success in football for a number of years beyond our wildest "dreams," but now seem to have lost it all, as far as football is concerned. People in grief respond in different ways. Some of you are angry. I am simply sad.
Let me clarify a couple of things. I suspect that Shaw does not have what is needed to turn things around, although I hope I am wrong. As I said, I am sad--even morose--to have come to that conclusion. But others are feeling different passions now, and these passions are sometimes expressed in ways that seem less than civil. And so I am grieving not only for our lost excellence in football, but for the warmth of a community of like minded sports fans. The atmosphere that made the Cardboard so different from invective-filled sports boards may also be a casualty of the decline of Stanford football.
The endangerment of football as a sport at Stanford does not seem to have registered on people. By several accounts, ending the program was considered prior to Harbaugh's hiring. Even then, the program was not sitting well within a elite academic institution.
But think of what has happened since then. There is a growing concern over CTE, there is the professionalization of "student-athletes," the decline of attendance and interest in football in ALL the Bay Area football programs, the rise to stratospheric heights in admissions requirements, the increasing regionalization and concentration in the South of interest in high school football. Even our nation's growing ideological divide factors into declining interest: California--and especially the Bay Area--has become increasingly blue and college football doesn't fit that demographic well:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how...litically/
Could we lose football? Every time a coach is replaced, there is soul-searching about Stanford athletics, but when the most successful coach in Stanford history is replaced there will be more than soul-searching. In the minds of most of the Stanford community, David Shaw has stood against the rising tide of unfavorable conditions. His personal example and his reputation as "the conscience of college football" has held back the existential debate over whether Stanford should be in the football business at all. As the rest of college football gets increasingly slimy, at least Stanford faculty, students, Trustees and fans could rationalize to themselves, "but we are not like the rest of them. We are resisting those trends. We have David Shaw. We have a purpose and that purpose is to show the rest of the nation what college sports really SHOULD look like." Naive certainly, but charming in its way and oh-so-Stanford-like. The Camelot of college football.
But we know what happened to Camelot.
So I am quite serious when I suggest that the real choice is not between David Shaw and some collage of a coach that people imagine will have all the right characteristics. The choice could well be between David Shaw and....nothing at all.