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And So It Begins

I'll admit that I'm still mourning the Pac-12.

If you've ever suffered a loss in your life, like the passing of someone close to you, you surely recognized the five stages of grief. The final stage is acceptance, but there's a fallacy there. The word acceptance implies that the process is over; you've completely recovered, and your life has returned to normal. But when the loss is significant enough, there are constant reminders of what once was, constant reminders that your life will never be the same.

Usually the moments arrive at the most unexpected times. Maybe you'll put on a coat that you haven't worn since last winter and discover a receipt or a ticket stub that takes you back to a treasured memory. Maybe you'll be standing on the subway and see a stranger whose eye brows somehow bring to mind a person you've lost. You never know what will remind you of the weight you carry or when that weight will make your path too difficult to walk. This is the nature of grieving.

A Half Full Look at the 2024 Stanford Football Schedule

Because I'm doing my best to look at the bright side of college football's new reality, I'll present this schedule overview without sadness, sarcasm, or cynicism. Just the facts as they're laid out before us.

The Atlantic Coast Conference -- that's Stanford's new football conference now, for those who aren't aware -- announced its schedule rotation through the year 2030. (That's rather optimistic considering Clemson and Florida State are already house shopping in the SEC, but no cynicism, remember?)

Stanford 46, Colorado 43 (2OT)

To fully understand what happened in Boulder, Colorado, on Friday night, you must have experienced the first half, a half of football that felt all too familiar for Stanford fans.

Things didn't go well for the Cardinal. The offense was struggling. Coach Troy Taylor's quarterback carousel continued, with Justin Lamson getting the start but doing nothing to inspire much hope -- or gain much yardage. All three of Lamson's passes on the opening possession fell incomplete, leading to a punt, and though he did complete a pass on the next drive (those would be his total passing stats for the night), the Cardinal punted again after seven plays. If the offense couldn't get going against Colorado's porous defense, it seemed, it might never get going.

USC 56, Stanford 10

To be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to go to the game last Saturday night. I wasn't sure that I wanted to try to find tickets, fight through L.A. traffic, find parking, and then sit in a Coliseum full of delirious Trojan fans for what I expected to be a three-hour beating. 

But when a friend offered two seats on the forty-yard line along with a parking pass and an invitation to their tailgate party, I couldn't say no. After all, this 101st matchup between these two teams just might end up being the last. Regardless of the outlook, I had to be there. (It should be noted that not everyone shared my nostalgia; I invited three devoted Stanford fans and then two dedicated college football fans to accompany me, but all declined. My son agreed to go as my last resort.)

Stanford 37, Hawai'i 24

I'll have to admit that after spending eight months desperately looking forward to the 2023 version of Stanford Football, I felt surprisingly disconnected as I sat down to watch the Cardinal take on Hawai'i in their season opener last Friday night.

Pac-12 Media Day Recap

To give you an idea of how long I've been doing this, the first Pac-12 Media Day that I attended was David Shaw's first and Andrew Luck's last.  There were only ten conference teams back then, and that season would mark the first conference championship game. 

Everything is different now. Troy Taylor is Stanford's head coach, no one knows who will be the starting quarterback, and there are twelve conference teams -- for now. USC and UCLA will move to the Big Ten next season, and this week we've learned that Colorado will follow them out the door to the Big 12, meaning that there are big changes coming. Will the conference act quickly (when has this conference ever acted quickly?) to add a team or three? Or will things completely dissolve? Only time will tell.

An Interview with Troy Taylor

Towards the tail end of a long morning and afternoon at Media Day, I was able to talk with Stanford's new head coach, Troy Taylor. We only had about ten minutes, so I've transcribed the entire conversation here. My main takeaway from our short chat is that Coach Taylor is confident and excited about what lies ahead, and he's also incredibly nice. I could've happily talked with him for an hour or more on any number of subjects, but we hit on a few interesting things -- his theories on love as it relates to team building; his expectations about how he'll balance his three responsibilities as head coach, offensive coordinator, and quarterbacks coach; and how he'll approach the quarterback competition this summer and fall. Oh, and how nice is Coach Taylor? At the end of our conversation he thanked me for my time. So yeah, he's a nice guy. Read on...

Stanford Football Lays a New Foundation

When Jim Harbaugh was hired as Stanford's newest head coach in December of 2006, he famously announced that he'd be approaching the job "with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind." While that statement caused eyes to roll up and down the Pac-10 and even, I'd imagine, within the halls of Stanford's athletic department, Harbaugh had no choice. He was taking over a team that had finished 1-11 in 2006, one of the worst performances in the history of a program without much positive history. Before his hire there were many observers -- and even some Stanford decision makers, if we're to believe the lore -- who no longer thought Stanford could field a competitive Division I football team.

But Harbaugh believed.

Stanford's newest head coach is Troy Taylor, and while no one will ever confuse his personality with Harbaugh's, Taylor's opening press conference had one thing in common with Harbaugh's -- hope. Following Stanford's recent slide to the bottom of the PAC-12 during an era of unprecedented change across the college football landscape, once again there have been voices calling for change. It was no longer realistic, some argued, for Stanford to compete at this level in this era. (A Stanford professor even used an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times to lament what he saw as the folly of Stanford Football.)

But Troy Taylor believes.

Troy Taylor and the Road Not Taken

There are certain givens for every new coach's introductory press conference. There are obligatory well wishes for the people left behind at the previous stop and the proper genuflection towards those who have just made the hire. Regardless of whether or not the position is seen as a destination job, on this day it is. Head coaches will almost always express gratitude that they've finally reached their dream job, even if the people listening know that they haven't. There are smiles, handshakes, and jabs at the rival and enough optimism to make Charlie Brown blush.

Troy Taylor certainly hit all those marks when he met the media last month for the first time as Stanford's new head football coach, but there was something that marked him different than most ball coaches who stand at the podium.

David Shaw Resigns

David Shaw typically steps into the press conference room fifteen or twenty minutes after leaving the field at the end of a game, talks to the assembled media for another fifteen or twenty minutes, and then leaves. After the Cardinal's season-ending 35-26 loss to BYU on Saturday night, however, there was a delay.