[msqueri]

"Intellectual Brutality' is actually a very strong brand to have. 

The problem is when the owner of that brand displays neither smart play nor physical toughness on the field. Then it becomes an empty slogan. 

Stanford isn't one of the least penalized teams, and it doesn't stress opponents with tactics that keep them off balance and guessing. And we all know the OL and DL have been Charmin soft, unable to impose or resist anything at the LOS for a while now.

Brand is the right word. It's marketing rather than a description of optimal football strategy. The "intellectual" part of it describes something about Stanford we're proud of, not something that is important to football. Yet Shaw has fallen into the trap of believing his own hype and confusing marketing with strategy. We try to play up the intellectual demands of being a football player at Stanford. It's core to our identity and to the design of both our offense and defense.

It's not just this passing comment from Fields. Listen to all the interviews with our coaches and players over several years - despite how smart they are (presumably smarter than the average opposing player), they talk all the time about how much mental demand our coaches/system put on the players. They say it as a point of pride. This is not how other players/coaches talk, not anywhere to this extent. My point with regard to Fields was that this comment is revealing because it shows that his overriding impression of Stanford comports with my observation. The reason this works me up is that it's become clear that making "intellectual" part of the strategy rather than just marketing is actively counterproductive - it leads to an offense and defense that are too difficult for talented youngsters to learn and make an impact, an offense that plays painfully slowly and therefore bores fans to tears and gives defenses ample time to rest and anticipate plays, and a defense that plays mechanically rather that instinctually or violently.

Fields used the word "simple" to describe Oklahoma's approach. We shouldn't view that as an epithet. Football isn't rocket science. It makes us feel smart and special to pretend it is, but it doesn't help us win football games or entertain fans.

---

It is not news that our practices are less intense than most.  KJ Costello said essentially the same thing a couple years ago upon his arrival at Miss. St. and his exposure to Mike Leach's practices.   

I'm just guessing, but I don't think it's about Shaw's vanity or his academic belief that football needs to be extremely cerebral. I think it's because he actually has a conscience. In my imagination, I speculate that Shaw's paycheck and competitiveness wage war in his soul against his fundamental knowledge that today's football is not good for a young man's long-term health. 

Shaw has rationalized and stated that the inherently violent sport of football can be practiced and played more safely. This is partly true, but mostly false in practice. For example, maybe the "Oklahoma Drill" and other similarly barbarian practices actually serve a useful purpose for building a winning football team, at the expense of numerous sub-concussive head traumas? 

Shaw serves as the chair of the NCAA Rules Committee, which is mostly about health & safety. As the head of this committee, he walks the walk at Stanford.  Some of our players also wear accelerometers in their helmets to measure head impacts, for the purpose of CTE research.

Too much conscience is not necessarily a good thing for winning games as a college football coach.  (One could argue that it's not such a bad thing for a football coach at Stanford, though.  One could also argue that football is bloodsport and we're all supporting it.)

That said, Shaw has won many games as a college football coach, and I believe he can still be successful.  It may just take some more changes than he's prepared to make.

If you're right, this only applies to the intensity issue. The issue of why our offense and defense are always described as complex and mentally taxing is a different one. That's what I was referring to as a vanity project. It has nothing to do with "conscience" to make things so hard for QBs to learn, make every player treat every snap like a pop quiz on how to adjust at the line of scrimmage, and generally make "football IQ" the defining feature of your program.

[msqueri]

"Intellectual Brutality' is actually a very strong brand to have. 

The problem is when the owner of that brand displays neither smart play nor physical toughness on the field. Then it becomes an empty slogan. 

Stanford isn't one of the least penalized teams, and it doesn't stress opponents with tactics that keep them off balance and guessing. And we all know the OL and DL have been Charmin soft, unable to impose or resist anything at the LOS for a while now.

Brand is the right word. It's marketing rather than a description of optimal football strategy. The "intellectual" part of it describes something about Stanford we're proud of, not something that is important to football. Yet Shaw has fallen into the trap of believing his own hype and confusing marketing with strategy. We try to play up the intellectual demands of being a football player at Stanford. It's core to our identity and to the design of both our offense and defense.

It's not just this passing comment from Fields. Listen to all the interviews with our coaches and players over several years - despite how smart they are (presumably smarter than the average opposing player), they talk all the time about how much mental demand our coaches/system put on the players. They say it as a point of pride. This is not how other players/coaches talk, not anywhere to this extent. My point with regard to Fields was that this comment is revealing because it shows that his overriding impression of Stanford comports with my observation. The reason this works me up is that it's become clear that making "intellectual" part of the strategy rather than just marketing is actively counterproductive - it leads to an offense and defense that are too difficult for talented youngsters to learn and make an impact, an offense that plays painfully slowly and therefore bores fans to tears and gives defenses ample time to rest and anticipate plays, and a defense that plays mechanically rather that instinctually or violently.

Fields used the word "simple" to describe Oklahoma's approach. We shouldn't view that as an epithet. Football isn't rocket science. It makes us feel smart and special to pretend it is, but it doesn't help us win football games or entertain fans.

---

It is not news that our practices are less intense than most.  KJ Costello said essentially the same thing a couple years ago upon his arrival at Miss. St. and his exposure to Mike Leach's practices.   

I'm just guessing, but I don't think it's about Shaw's vanity or his academic belief that football needs to be extremely cerebral. I think it's because he actually has a conscience. In my imagination, I speculate that Shaw's paycheck and competitiveness wage war in his soul against his fundamental knowledge that today's football is not good for a young man's long-term health. 

Shaw has rationalized and stated that the inherently violent sport of football can be practiced and played more safely. This is partly true, but mostly false in practice. For example, maybe the "Oklahoma Drill" and other similarly barbarian practices actually serve a useful purpose for building a winning football team, at the expense of numerous sub-concussive head traumas? 

Shaw serves as the chair of the NCAA Rules Committee, which is mostly about health & safety. As the head of this committee, he walks the walk at Stanford.  Some of our players also wear accelerometers in their helmets to measure head impacts, for the purpose of CTE research.

Too much conscience is not necessarily a good thing for winning games as a college football coach.  (One could argue that it's not such a bad thing for a football coach at Stanford, though.  One could also argue that football is bloodsport and we're all supporting it.)

That said, Shaw has won many games as a college football coach, and I believe he can still be successful.  It may just take some more changes than he's prepared to make.

If you're right, this only applies to the intensity issue. The issue of why our offense and defense are always described as complex and mentally taxing is a different one. That's what I was referring to as a vanity project. It has nothing to do with "conscience" to make things so hard for QBs to learn, make every player treat every snap like a pop quiz on how to adjust at the line of scrimmage, and generally make "football IQ" the defining feature of your program.