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Is This Rock Bottom?

The First Rock Bottom

We know the idea of "rock bottom." It is the place from which nothing can get worse, and, ideally, the beginning of a return to normalcy. Perhaps a gambler spends away his child's college fund, or a family going through difficult times begins sleeping in their car.

Personal tragedies like those examples and the status of a football program are two very different subjects, but there is one thing that both have in common. We never really know where rock bottom is until we've gained enough perspective to look back from a higher perch. The gambler, for example, no doubt had several dark moments earlier on that he might've hoped were his bottom, and so it is with Stanford football.

As the Cardinal closed out the 2021 season with seven straight defeats, the 52-7 loss to Utah seemed like rock bottom, but it could also be argued that the 41-11 loss to Cal two games later was even worse. Surely the program could sink no lower. As we sat there licking our wounds after Big Game and then sat there still as the team lost to Notre Dame a week later, it was difficult to imagine things getting any worse.

But then this year began and things did just that. The 1-3 start with consecutive losses to USC, Washington, and Oregon was bad, but the devastating and wholly unexpected loss to Oregon State made things even worse. It certainly felt like the bottomest rock bottom we'd seen, and when the Cardinal rebounded with a rejuvenating upset victory over Notre Dame in South Bend and then another (less impressive) win over Arizona State it felt like things were better. We looked back at those four straight losses and knew the worst was behind us. Right?

Stanford 16, Notre Dame 14

Nothing in the world would've been easier than sleep walking through a week of practice, boarding a plane on Thursday for a long trip to South Bend, slogging through a three-hour beating at the hands of the Fighting Irish, and then crawling back to California to finish one of the most disappointing seasons in Stanford history. No one would've been surprised, and I'm not just talking about the fans. I don't think anyone connected with the Stanford program, inside or outside of the locker room, would've been surprised if that had been the path taken by the Cardinal. 

The loss would have been expected, the season would have become a death march, and David Shaw's detractors would've been waiting on the tarmac with torches and pitchforks.

Oregon 45, Stanford 27

It's difficult to know where to begin, so we'll start at the beginning. Not the beginning of this game, but the beginning of this blog. I started writing in this space almost exactly twelve years ago. Here's the first paragraph of my first post from September 26, 2012, a recap of a game between Stanford and Notre Dame.

If you're reading this, you know a few things about Stanford Football.  First, the Cardinal went to South Bend on Saturday afternoon and came away with a victory that was surprising only in the level of dominance.  They beat the Irish soundly on both sides of the ball, and the game really wasn't as close as the score would indicate.

I couldn't have known what was waiting for Stanford football in the years to come. The trip to the Orange Bowl later that season seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity, and the dominant win over Virginia Tech seemed like a fairy tale. I watched that game from a hotel room in Orlando; I had briefly entertained the idea of renting a car and leaving a family vacation for 24 hours to go to the game because I couldn't imagine that I've ever again get the chance to see the Cardinal in a BCS bowl game.

After sitting in the stands for three Rose Bowls in four years, the fantasy threatened to wear off. I was still very aware of how far the program had come, but I never lost sight of the tenuous nature of Stanford's success. We are all just guests at the table, and even though I didn't think the dinner party would ever end, I always knew there was a chance that it might.

I knew that any number of variables could collapse and push the program back down among the masses, and I wondered how I would feel if that happened. Mostly, I wondered about this blog. Would people still be interested in reading about a program that was struggling? Would I still have the motivation to write about them? I wondered.

USC 41, Stanford 28

Two weeks ago we were invited to a family function that coincided with the kickoff of Saturday evening's game between Stanford and USC. It was something that couldn't be missed, so I set the DVR, put my phone on airplane mode, and hoped for the best. We were going to a UCLA house, so I figured there was a decent chance the game wouldn't be on, so there was a decent chance I wouldn't make a fool of myself by huddling in front of a screen while everyone else made eye contact and spoke to each other like normal human beings. I could hope.

Arizona State 28, Stanford 10

After the stunning win over Oregon the week before, the Cardinal entered this road game against Arizona State with nothing but roses and possibilities ahead of them. They controlled their destiny in the Pac-12 North, and it would only take six more conference wins to clinch a trip to the Pac-12 Championship Game in Las Vegas.

When you look at things that way, you realize that it was probably a bit too early to be thinking about Pasadena during a season in which Stanford is not as dominant as they were in the Rose Bowl seasons of 2012, 2013, and 2015. This is a good team, without question, but it's an inconsistent team.

Stanford 31, Oregon 24 (OT)

It's gotten to the point where we should know better. We might've thought that the third-ranked Oregon Ducks, a team that had opened the season with a statement win over Ohio State in one of the cathedrals of college football, would stomp their way through the afternoon on their way to a Pac-12 Championship and eventually the College Football Playoffs. We might've thought that last week's loss to UCLA had told us all we needed to know about the Cardinal, and that they'd fold under the pressure of this moment on the national stage.

But we should've known better. Stanford and Oregon seem committed to producing unlikely results with miraculous finishes while destroying each other's playoff chances, and so it was on Saturday as the Cardinal rose from the dead (well, technically they were 99.9% dead) to force overtime and eventually beat the Ducks, 31-24. If all you know about the game is that final score, you don't know a damn thing. Be glad that you've come to the right place.

Stanford 41, Vanderbilt 23

When you look at the score from Stanford's comfortable 41-23 win over Vanderbilt, their sixth win in an unprecedented stretch of seven straight road games, it's easy to forget that it wasn't always comfortable. In fact, there were moments when it was downright uncomfortable.

Stanford 42, USC 28

LOS ANGELES (GMC) -- The pandemic has been hard. I don't want to trivialize the deep emotional losses suffered by millions around the world who mourn the deaths of loved ones, nor the immeasurable economic impact that will likely be felt for years to come, but there is a spectrum of loss that even the most fortunate among us have felt.

High school seniors missed their proms, young couples postponed weddings, new grandparents waited months to hold their grandchildren. All of us have experienced losses like that, inconveniences that mean the world in the correct context, small things we feel guilty about missing in comparison to all the big things.

One of the things on my spectrum of loss has been Stanford football. Sure, the games were on television last year, but as I watched Stanford's improbable comeback win over UCLA in the Rose Bowl last December just 24 miles from my house, all I could think about was this: I should've been there.

Even so, after enduring the debacle against Kansas State the Saturday before, I was hesitant about this week's game. Did I really want to drive out to the Coliseum for a 7:30 game? Did I want to sit in a sea of delirious Trojan fans for four hours and get home after midnight? And most importantly -- could I stand to watch the Cardinal get crushed by USC?

But as game day got closer, I began to feel the pull. David Shaw named Tanner McKee as the starting quarterback, and my optimism spiked. The oddsmakers might have installed the Trojans as 17-point favorites, but that only meant one thing to me -- I knew that if I stayed home and ended up watching a Stanford upset from the ignominy of my couch, I would be furious with myself. So I bought two tickets, dug my Stanford shoes out from under the bed (I have Stanford shoes!), and my son and I headed out.

Kansas State 24, Stanford 7

It isn't an accident that it's taken several days for the recap of Stanford's opening week loss to Kansas State to show up here. I needed time to digest it. To ruminate. To contemplate. To investigate. Try not to hate. All of that.

Had I opened my laptop and pounded out my thoughts in the minutes following the game, my thoughts would've been dark and without hope. If you ventured into Stanford Twitter during the game or after, you know what I'm talking about. Few were able to find any optimism in the Cardinal's effort, some called it Stanford football's lowest point since the arrival of Jim Harbaugh, and most were ready to give up on a season that was one game old.

The worst of all that? Unlike previous panics, this one seemed justified. This time it was hard for me to tell the villagers to put away their torches and pitchforks. Perhaps the emperor really had no clothes.

Stanford 48, UCLA 47

Where do you even begin? There have been some improbable Stanford wins in the past, but if we agree to put the 2007 upset over USC in a category by itself, there isn't another game in the last fifteen years that brought a more unlikely result than Saturday night's game at the Rose Bowl.