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Past, Present, and Future: Stanford Running Backs

Most of the elite college football programs in America have clear identities which often include ties to a particular position on the field, even if these associations sometimes have more to do with our collective memory than recent history. USC, for example, will always be Tailback U, no matter how many quarterbacks and linebackers they send to the NFL, and Penn State remains synonymous with linebackers, not pedophiles. 

It's no different with Cardinal football. Long before this current era of excellence, the generally mediocre Stanford football program would occasionally produce a great team that might find its way to a Rose Bowl, but postseason games were not the regular events that they are today. Even so, the Farm became known as fertile ground for producing quarterbacks, with Jim Plunkett winning the Heisman Trophy in 1971, and other luminaries such as John Brodie, Guy Benjamin, and John Elway* going on to become fixtures in the NFL. The Stanford arrival of Andrew Luck** ten years ago and his subsequent All-Pro NFL career only added to this legacy.

2017 Position Report Card Running Backs: A Love Supreme

Ninety-one years ago John Coltrane was born in the small town of Hamlet, North Carolina. When his talent as a musician became apparent, he joined a band led by own of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, Miles Davis. After a few years of that collaboration, Coltrane formed a group of his own and produced such landmark titles as Giant Steps, My Favorite Things, and his signature record, A Love Supreme, one of the greatest recordings in music history.

What does any of this have to do with Stanford Football? Why does it serve as the lede for an article claiming to review the performance of the 2017 running backs? It's simple really. Seven decades after Coltrane's birth in Hamlet, a boy named Jonathan Bryce Love was born just ninety minutes up the road in Raleigh. Like Coltrane, Love rose to prominence while serving in the shadows of a legend. With Coltrane it was Miles Davis; with Love it was Christian McCaffrey. Like Coltrane, Love was doubted by some when he was elevated to the staring role in the Stanford backfield this past fall. Like Coltrane, Love wasted little time in achieving stardom of his own.