It's sometimes hard for me to believe, but I've been writing about Stanford Football in this space for more than four years now. I suppose that I started for the same reason that many bloggers do -- I love Stanford football, I love to write, and I love to share my thoughts and opinions about the Cardinal. Before I started this site, the only way I could combine all that was in massive emails to my Stanford friends after each game. They were nice enough to read them and sometimes respond, but at a certain point I realized that perhaps my audience needed to grow beyond Jack, Tim, Rett, Sly, and Erik. (I also realized that maybe those guys didn't want those weekly emails.)
And so the site was born. A year earlier, in 2009, my son and I were lucky enough to be in the stands for the "What's Your Deal?" game, as Jim Harbaugh crushed USC in the Coliseum. When Richard Sherman stepped in front of a Matt Barkley pass and returned it for a touchdown, a hush fell over the USC alumni section where we were sitting. The spirit of the moment moved me to stand, cup my hands around my mouth and yell as loud as I could, "Go Mighty Card!!!"
You could make a pretty good argument that that play was Stanford Football's tipping point, the moment when the Cardinal announced to the world that it was a force to be reckoned with. That perfect moment gave my site its perfect name, and I haven't looked back since.
I am not an insider and could never call myself a reporter, but this site has allowed me to approximate those roles. Over the past four years I have recapped 59 games, attended Pac-12 Media Day, and interviewed Damon Dunn, Darrin Nelson, Tommy Vardell, Glyn Milburn, and David Shaw. I'm proud of what this site has become, and I look forward to writing about the Cardinal for years to come.
I've made a conscious decision not to ask my readers for money, but I do want to give you a chance to help me out. In my real job I am a seventh grade English teacher, and while my three honors classes are filled with bright students with many advantages who are on their way to changing the world, the group that is closest to my heart is my reading class, 23 of the lowest performing eighth graders in the school. Almost all of them ride a city bus for an hour from the other side of town to get to our school, and most had never read a book on their own before coming into my class. I've had many of them for two years now, and their improvement has been, as David Shaw would say, phenomenal. Thanks mainly to the generosity of my readers, I've been able to fill my classroom with books, put those books into the hands of my students, and watch the magic happen. But we always need new books.
If you were a regular reader of my site this year and you'd like to say thank you, I encourage you to send my students a book or two. I've made it easy for you. All you need to do is jump over to my Amazon wish list and pick out something that catches your eye. My students and I will be eternally grateful!
