Stanford Football: The Pac-12’s steady giant
When it comes to the Pac-12 Conference, the Stanford Cardinal have been a steady giant among the football landscape.
Parity and perhaps a lack of consistency have plagued the Pac-12 for some time. Like a roller coaster with no brakes, the “conference of champions” as Bill Walton so eloquently puts it has been a revolving door. Teams step into the national spotlight and leave quicker than their arrival. While teams have gone through peaks and valleys over the last decade in the conference, one team has dared to be the steady force the conference needed, the Stanford Cardinal.
With eight straight winning seasons and six 10-win seasons in the last seven years, the Cardinal have been the most consistent program in the Pac-12. Their path to being the most consistent program wasn’t an overnight thing. It had to last through nearly a decade of ineptitude and bad decisions.
With the program having zero bowl wins since 1996, the Cardinal found themselves needing to make a change after the failures of Buddy Teevens and Walt Harris. Following Tyrone Willingham’s 44-win tenure wasn’t going to be easy, but the way things fell apart was unforgiving.
After the team hit their lowest point as a program in the mid-2000’s, including a paltry 1-11 season, Jim Harbaugh inherited a program that needed more work than perhaps any other program in a major conference. The team that is now full of physical maulers up front and dynamic athletes on the outside was a team that was scraping the bottom of the barrel hoping for wins.
Harbaugh’s fierce commitment to excellence and his unbridled passion for the game put the team back in their first bowl game in eight years in the 2009 season. The team made their biggest statement when they went on the road and defeated USC in blowout fashion by a score of 55-21. They made defense a priority and their ability to take from the opposition built a foundation for following seasons.
At Harbaugh’s right, David Shaw, an unbelievably resourceful coach played a major part in their turnaround. By the next year, they were playing in the Orange Bowl with an 11-1 record. Had it not been for a road loss at Oregon, it would have been Harbaugh’s crew competing for a National Championship. Dispatching the Virginia Tech Hokies and finishing with a 12-1 record was enough to land Harbaugh with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.
Perhaps the smartest decision Harbaugh and the program made was bringing Shaw on the staff when he arrived. A man with a wealth of knowledge in the NFL and coaching experience that proved to be invaluable made for one of the most intuitive coaching staffs in the conference. A school that dedicates themselves on academics thrived on coaches with knowledge of their own.
Harbaugh’s departure led to the natural rise of Shaw. A succession plan that has worked to perfection for the school. In Shaw’s first year as head coach, the team found themselves in a major bowl game with the incomparable Andrew Luck under center. They would drop a tough game in overtime to the Oklahoma State Cowboys in one of the most classic Fiesta Bowls in memory.
Shaw’s demeanor and ability to handle the moment would prove to be key in his toughest task yet, showing he can win with his own recruits and not living off only what Harbaugh had left him. If consistency hadn’t already become the focus of the Stanford brand through their two coaches, the team would make it to three Rose Bowl appearances in four years, winning two of them.
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Players like Luck and Christian McCaffrey proved the school that was once fighting for one to two wins a season could land the superstar talent necessary to compete in college football. Shaw proved he was more than ready to lead the Cardinal after Harbaugh left. He was the steady hand to the steady giant in the conference.
While there may come a day when Shaw makes that decision to jump somewhere else, the program is more than capable enough of being ready to handle that moment. There’s still goals to be reached for this program and Shaw knows it. A College Football Playoff berth has eluded the team thus far, but a strong 2017 recruiting class will only add to the depth of talent they have.
Stanford has all the tools a program needs in order to be a championship-caliber one. They have the recruiting base, the commitment to excellence and most importantly, the consistency of a college football giant.