It's Over

Although this blog has been de facto dead for the past two weeks or so, I'll make it official.

There's a couple of reasons. First, the bright flowering of hope that bloomed in September withered into a cold, gray bramble of ennui as the Cardinal went into a November tailspin. Second, too many 12 hour days at work left with me no time to devote to the blog, and the quality wasn't what I had aspired to. Third, no one was actually reading this thing.

Things are looking up for the Cardinal next year. Harbaugh has put together a top twenty recruiting class (assuming no decommits), plus Andrew Luck coming off of his redshirt. We're losing some talented seniors - Fletcher, McNally, Snyder, Kimble, Osaisai, to name a few - but the defense and the passing game has nowhere to go but up. Plus, the schedule next year is much easier - 7 home games! I'd be very surprised if Stanford doesn't go bowling in 2009.

A few final random thoughtsI'd like to get off my chest before signing off: Anthony Morelli was underrated. Larry Fitzgerald was robbed out of the 2003 Heisman Trophy. More teams, especially in minor conferences, should adopt Paul Johnson-style option offenses. The 40-second play clock hasn't had as much of an effect as I thought. Never, ever punt on fourth and one.

Dateline: The Farm

As usual, the Big Game week brings lots of extra media coverage.

The Chronicle has twin articles on running backs Anthony Kimble and Jahvid Best



Darren Sabedra at the Merc has an article on the benefits of a bowl bid, and makes some good points. Coaches lust after bowl bids largely because it allows an extra month or so of practice. Teams that don't get bowl bids have to pack it up for the year; teams that go can go on practicing through December. Plus, being on ESPN never hurts.

College Football News thinks Gerhardt won't get untracked and picks Cal by 2 scores.

How Big is the Big Game? It even made the International Herald Tribune. Even Europeans hate Cal.

And Stanford beat Cal in the all-important pregame Blood Drive, 234 pints(or whatevers) to 171.

Gameday!

Mark Bradford for the win

Of all the Saturdays mornings to be stuck at work, this isn't so bad. No great games today - the consensus seems to be that Oregon State v. Cal is the "marquee" game of the week, as OSU controls its destiny for the Rose Bowl. Unless Penn State gets knocked off today, it's likely that the Beavers and the Nittany Lions will have rematch on New Year's Day. Considering that Penn State blew out the Beavs 45-14 in Happy Valley, this is not a rematch anyone cares to watch.

Otherwise, it's a lovely day in Palo Alto to watch IRL football. Despite a 4:00 kickoff, this will be primarily a night game, and I'm hoping for a rowdy crowd.

Sizing Up the Trojans

The Southern Cal defense bears down on another victim

Stanford v. Southern Cal
Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008, 4 pm

The Southern Cal Trojans are coming to town, and they will be bringing what is possibly the best defense in America along with them. Brian Cushing, Taylor Mays, Rey Maluaga - all ferocious, fast, sure tacklers. The stats are almost unreal.

The Trojans are #1 in the country in scoring defense, total defense, passing defense, and pass efficiency defense. To the extent they have a weakness, it's against the run, I guess - they only have the third best run defense in the country. They've shut out Arizona State, Washington, and Wazzu, and only gave up 3 points to Ohio State and Cal. At one point they went over 9 quarters without giving up a single point.

The ESPN talking point is that Southern Cal is great on D but weak on offense. The statistics tell a different story. Mark Sanchez is the highest rated passer in the PAC 10, and USC leads the conference in total offense with over 450 yards per game. It's a balanced run/pass attack, averaging over 200 yards a game rushing and 250 passing. Although none of the Trojan tailbacks have stepped up to be "the guy," Joe McKnight, Stefon Johnson, and CJ Gable all average over 50 rushing yards a game.

Even taking into account that the stats have been inflated in easy wins over UW and WSU, this is still a very good offense that's coming to Palo Alto on Saturday.

And intangibles? Oh Lord. The Cardinal cost USC a likely national championship last year - you think they'll be out for revenge? This won't be like the Oregon State game, where the Trojans overlook what they perceive to be an overmatched opponent. USC will come to play.

In case you can't tell, I'm not overly optimistic about the Cardinal's chances this weekend. On the bright side, the spread for this game reflects how much Stanford has improved over the past year. Going into the Rose Bowl, the Cardinal were a 40 point dog before pulling off their famous upset. This year, I've seen 23 and 24 point spreads. Even taking into account home field advantage, that's a two touchdown improvement in one year.

Even more heartening (at least from my perspective), the game is a sellout. It boggles my mind why people who haven't been to a game all year will come to the one game that the Cardinal are all but guaranteed to lose; but there you have it.

Week In Review

Toby being Toby

Stanford 58, Washington State 0
Saturday, November 1, 2008

In miserable weather and in front of a tiny cadre of fans, the Stanford Cardinal had the opportunity to name their score against the Washington State Cougars. They picked 58-0, which is just as good a number as 69-0, or 66-3, or any of the other results from Wazzu's nightmare season. At the risk of piling on, I'd like to note that WSU has already given up the most points ever in PAC-10 play. In other words, the Cougars could pitch three straight shutouts and still have the worst defense in history. Paul Wulff has his work cut out for him.

A lopsided game like this doesn't tell us much about the Stanford team. Toby Gerhardt and Anthony Kimble probably could have had 200 yards apiece, but neither played in the fourth quarter. Gerhardt barely even played in the third. Even so, Stanford amassed over 330 rushing yards with Delano Howell and Blaise Johnson running out the string. Keep an eye on Owen Marecic - he went out in the first half and did not return. The Stanford run game relies heavily on his ferocious lead blocking, and it could spell trouble in the future if he's out.

As for the passing game, Stanford barely put the ball in the air at all. It looks like Harbaugh is devoted to a two-quarterback system, as Pritchard and Loukas shuffled in and out with regularity. Both spent the majority of the game handing off to the Cardinal backs. I'm a little irked that the bye week wasn't spent installing a full offense for Loukas to run. But if the coaches feel this gives us the best chance to win, so be it. Against the Cougars, neither QB was called on to pass, and there was no sense of urgency. That won't be true against Oregon, USCw, or Cal.

Defensively, the Cardinal did a great job in forcing turnovers, and absolutely stonewalled the Cougar offense in the second half, allowing less than 50 yards total offense after the break.

I'm really struggling to find things to say, other than that I haven't seen a Stanford opponent look this overmatched in ... a long time. Stanford-WSU wasn't exactly Texas-Texas Tech in terms of excitement or importance, and the best that can be said is that it's a win. The Cardinal head to Eugene next week to take on the Ducks in a game that should be a lot more interesting and lot more meaningful.

Wazzu - A Pretty Terrible Football Team

This is pretty much the story of WSU's season

Washington State at Stanford

I often find myself editing posts to take out some of my harsher criticisms. After all, I am writing about amateur athletes, most of whom aren't even 21 years old. But there really is no polite way to say this - the Washington State Cougars are a bad team.

I'm not exactly breaking new ground with a startling revelation here. This is a team that was forced to hold an open tryout among its studentry to find a backup quarterback, and at Coug Center they've pretty much given the football team up for dead and moved on to basketball. The Cougar's results against I-A competition speak for themselves:

Oklahoma State L 39-13
California L 66-3
@ Baylor L 45-17
Oregon L 63-14
@ UCLA L 28-3
@ Oregon State L 66-13
USC L 69-0

Any season that involves a 45-17 thrasing by Baylor is, by definition, a bad season. A season where that 45-17 loss to Baylor is actually one of your most competitive efforts is nearing historically inept levels.

Wazzu can't pass -- they've shuffled in 3 quarterbacks, none of whom average 6 yards per attempt. As a team, they have 6 touchdowns to twelve picks. They can't run -- the leading rusher has only 300 yards and one touchdown, and they average 2.7 yards as a team. They sure as hell can't defend, as they've managed to give up 63+ points four times. They're last in the PAC-10 in scoring offense; last in scoring defense, last in total offense, ninth in total defense. Remember what the Cardinal looked like in 2006? That's a pretty fair approximation.

Enough of this negativity. What does this game mean for Stanford? Well, it's a must-win to get to bowl eligibility, which will bring the program some street cred, as well as those extra bowl practices that coaches crave. It's a great chance to get Alex Loukas involved in the offense, hopefully as a starter. And it presents Toby Gerhardt with the very real opportunity to reach 1,000 yards and become the first Cardinal back to do so since 1991. He needs 221 yards to do it, but it's within reach considering that Wazzu gives up 266 per game on the ground. Gerhardt, more than anyone else, needed this bye week, and I look forward to seeing him run with fresh legs.

Strangely enough, the Cardinal's biggest challenge may be not to get too cocky. Stanford is clearly a better team than Wazzu, but we aren't some USC-like juggernaut that can roll out of bed and put up 50 on these guys without breaking a sweat. The line is at -30 (!) with an over/under of 52. So Vegas expects us to win by the unlikely score of 41-11. I think it'll be a little closer than that, but only because Stanford will try run the clock and control the game with Gerhardt and Kimble.

The weather forecast for Palo Alto is ugly tomorrow, and I am very concerned that Stanford Stadium will be even more empty than usual. Luckily I'm the kind of contrarian s.o.b. who likes to watch football in the cold and rain. Let's hope the Cardinal can make it worth my while.

Do NOT Listen to Mike McLaughlin

So this is a couple of days late, but on Monday night I was driving home from work, listening to the Jim Harbaugh show. Todd Husak left early because he had an intramural basketball game (seriously, wtf?), leaving Mike McLaughlin to finish the show by himself.

After finishing up a couple of "if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" questions with Clinton Snyder and Toby Gerhardt, McLaughlin starts talking with some representative from the athletic department (I didn't catch his name).

This guy is apparently involved in football recruiting, and starts talking about how difficult it is for Stanford to find kids who are both great athletes and great students. The usual stuff. Then
McLaughlin drops something like this:

McLaughlin: "So if any of you listeners know about any great young football players with good grades, be sure to send them over to [so and so] at the Stanford athletic department."
4.oPS: *drives off the road*

In case you don't know this, any attempt by any booster ("athletics representative" in NCAA doublespeak) to contact or influence a high school athlete is EXTREMELY FORBIDDEN by the NCAA.* Seriously, this is like rule #1. If you're unsure who exactly qualifies as a "booster" in the NCAA's view, a good rule of thumb is: "everybody." Under the NCAA rules, if you ever make any donation, no matter how small, to a university, you considered a booster of that university until the day you die. Safe to say, 95% of the people listening to the Jim Harbaugh show (or reading this blog) are boosters.

What really enraged me was that the athletic department representative did not even correct McLaughlin. It absolutely boggles my mind that we would have an athletic department employee, who works in football recruiting, yet doesn't know one of the most basic rules of recruiting. Anyway, please don't contact any high school athletes and tell them to go to Stanford. Or, if you do, at least give them a free car or something. If you're going to run afoul of the NCAA, might as well do it right, SMU-style.



*The exception is if you are related to the kid or have a preexisting relationship with him. So if, for instance, you are a former Stanford All-American quarterback, and your son is a four star quarterback recruit, you're allowed to nudge him towards the Farm and away from Arizona freaking State, for God's sake.