[Goose]

You shouldn't be scared of a generic replacement. Generic replacement would have a fair shot of doing better than Shaw and, if not, we'd get another bite at the apple in a few years as we did after Teevens and then again after Harris, striking gold on the third try. But the more we wait the less initiative we have to respond to changes in college football and, eventually, as an institution we may lose spirit for it or it may become too late.

The obvious problem with you argument for a "generic" replacement is one you use all the time (correctly IMHO). Things have changed in college football. These changes are almost entirely to Stanford's disadvantage. The "numbers" from past history no longer apply. The numbers for the PAC-12 or college football in general never did because Stanford isn't a "generic" school. Neither is Cal, neither is Oregon etc. The differences are not small either. Picking a coach is not a random variable with known distribution. Even if it was, the apparent assumption that one gets a Harbaugh with 33% probability is demonstrably wrong. Maybe every 40 years you get somebody in that general vicinity, looking at history. Given the many changes that are to Stanford's disadvantage, it would undoubtedly be less frequent going forward.

I think there are plenty of reasonable arguments that have been made on this board that replacing Shaw is a good idea, but the idea that a "generic" random choice would "probably" be better isn't one of those, IMHO.

[Goose]

You shouldn't be scared of a generic replacement. Generic replacement would have a fair shot of doing better than Shaw and, if not, we'd get another bite at the apple in a few years as we did after Teevens and then again after Harris, striking gold on the third try. But the more we wait the less initiative we have to respond to changes in college football and, eventually, as an institution we may lose spirit for it or it may become too late.

The obvious problem with you argument for a "generic" replacement is one you use all the time (correctly IMHO). Things have changed in college football. These changes are almost entirely to Stanford's disadvantage. The "numbers" from past history no longer apply. The numbers for the PAC-12 or college football in general never did because Stanford isn't a "generic" school. Neither is Cal, neither is Oregon etc. The differences are not small either. Picking a coach is not a random variable with known distribution. Even if it was, the apparent assumption that one gets a Harbaugh with 33% probability is demonstrably wrong. Maybe every 40 years you get somebody in that general vicinity, looking at history. Given the many changes that are to Stanford's disadvantage, it would undoubtedly be less frequent going forward.

I think there are plenty of reasonable arguments that have been made on this board that replacing Shaw is a good idea, but the idea that a "generic" random choice would "probably" be better isn't one of those, IMHO.