[French Rage]

Part of my joy during the Shaw era was directly linked to who David Shaw is--a fellow alum who completely understood the Stanford experience and who embraced Stanford's unique athletics situation rather than chaffing under it.  When we were winning and at our best, the high was so much higher than it would have been had I felt we had sold-out our academic and ethical values in order to win.  In fact, it was his and Stanford's example that solely kept me interested in college football, as the sport became (in my own mind) increasingly corrupt and distant from any connection to the underlying educational mission of univerities.  His example convinced me that--at least for a time--it was somehow possible for an elite academic university to field a high level football program without all the hypocrisy, cheating, scandal, corruption, and cheapening of values that has spread like a cancer over much of college football.  

This is a great way to put it.  From a lot of his public speaking, you could tell he wanted the Stanford mindset of doing things the right way to be the way it would become for the rest of college football.  Unfortunately, recent changes - with NIL and the transfer portal - have violently gone in the other direction.  It would not surprise me if part of his decision is that the sport as it is becoming is not the sport he started coaching 12 years ago, and that this was the right time to step aside and leave it for people who care to still be involved in what the sport is becoming.  And if that is the case I don't blame him one bit.

[French Rage]

Part of my joy during the Shaw era was directly linked to who David Shaw is--a fellow alum who completely understood the Stanford experience and who embraced Stanford's unique athletics situation rather than chaffing under it.  When we were winning and at our best, the high was so much higher than it would have been had I felt we had sold-out our academic and ethical values in order to win.  In fact, it was his and Stanford's example that solely kept me interested in college football, as the sport became (in my own mind) increasingly corrupt and distant from any connection to the underlying educational mission of univerities.  His example convinced me that--at least for a time--it was somehow possible for an elite academic university to field a high level football program without all the hypocrisy, cheating, scandal, corruption, and cheapening of values that has spread like a cancer over much of college football.  

This is a great way to put it.  From a lot of his public speaking, you could tell he wanted the Stanford mindset of doing things the right way to be the way it would become for the rest of college football.  Unfortunately, recent changes - with NIL and the transfer portal - have violently gone in the other direction.  It would not surprise me if part of his decision is that the sport as it is becoming is not the sport he started coaching 12 years ago, and that this was the right time to step aside and leave it for people who care to still be involved in what the sport is becoming.  And if that is the case I don't blame him one bit.