College football’s 5 biggest disappointing teams of 2019
By John Buhler
(4-7)*. 3. player. Scouting Report. Pick Analysis. Pac-12 North. Stanford Cardinal. 871
The Stanford Cardinal is the first of two Pac-12 teams to make this list of 2019 college football disappointment. After starting the year as a top-25 team, the Cardinal won three times since eking out a 10-point win over the Northwestern Wildcats. While all three of those wins were in Pac-12 play, Stanford will not be going bowling for the first time under head coach David Shaw.
Stanford is poised to be 4-8 this year, assuming the Cardinal will inevitably lose to the rival Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday. This will be the first time Stanford won’t be going to a bowl game since Jim Harbaugh‘s second year in Palo Alto back in 2008. It had been quite the bowl run for academic power Stanford, but it sadly came to an end by losing to the archrival Cal Golden Bears.
In year’s past, Stanford could go 4-8 and it was no big deal. It is a very hard university to get elite athletes to qualify for enrollment there, but the Cardinal had managed to overcome that for the last decade-plus under Harbaugh initially and now under Shaw. However, not even remotely contending for a division title in the Pac-12 North can’t sit well with the Stanford faithful.
In short, this could be one of those years where everything goes wrong, much like how the 2016 NCAA season went for Mark Dantonio’s Michigan State Spartans when they went 3-9 after reaching the College Football Playoff in 2015. That being said, Michigan State hasn’t been the same since getting waxed in the Cotton Bowl Classic. Is Stanford trending down now? We’ll see.