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Women's Basketball Recap: #4 Stanford WBB takes care of business against #8 Utah

Read that here. I added a bit more on Utah than I normally do for opposing teams since I'm gonna share my article on the Utah site and also my family who are big Utah fans.

A little help please . . .

I'm always interested in finding a unifying principle to govern our society's rules/regulations/protocols, etc. . . .

So, the Stanford women hoopsters opt against standing on the court for the anthem, and it's universally accepted that's their right.
No one even comments on it, as far as I can tell.

A hockey player opts not to participate in Rainbow pre-game activities and that's somehow questioned, or at least deemed worthy of an ESPN article.


What am I missing here? [And seriously, I very well could be, but am interested in knowing what that is].

P.S. FTR, I'm fine with dispensing with anthem pre-sporting events.
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Coaching carousel hot seats

ESPN just updated their accounting of college football coaching carousel hot seats. Another spin around the sun, another safe year for David Shaw. Herm Edwards is mentioned as on one of the four hottest of hot seats nationally, Karl Dorrell and Chip Kelly are viewed as worth mentioning, and Kyle Whittingham is mentioned as a Hall of Famer who could return whenever he wants. No mention of David Shaw.

AD annual report

I have been nagging them to do this for a while.

They kept saying "you're right and we're going to do it -eventually" Eventually has finally come but not at a good time. I can't find the report anywhere on gostanford. I think this link gets you there, though : https://info2.stanford.edu/index.php/email/emailWebview?md_id=41557

Edit- That doesn't work. Unfortunately, I can't figure how to link to the report. As mentioned, no where to be found on gostanford.

As MIT pointed out, a huge deficit. This is despite the fact that the department has enormous endowments. All those silly names (The Biff and Buffy Jones Fund to offset the golf team's lost ball expense) represent an enormous amount of bucks.

Can we at least give up this notion that college athletes make a lot of money for their schools and deserve compensation? For the 1% for whom compensation is an issue, maybe they ought not pretend to be amateurs. Or, for that matter, students?

I don't think this level of deficit is feasible. Not sure what changes will be made to deal with it. Dropping 11 sports didn't work out well the first time but might be the only option.

NIL and Team Culture

A thought came to mind over the weekend that I want to type out and see if it can stand up outside of my own mind. We've spent a lot of time on this forum discussing, and often worrying, about recruiting transfers and how we can compete. I think that a lot of attention has been on what the big spenders are doing and that it's intimidating from our perspective.

Talk of promising starting positions to transfers is what really raised my eyebrows this weekend. We're seeing college programs trying to pull off a long-term plan of developing underclassmen and recruiting free agents using tactics that include such promises. I'm curious to see what problems arise in some programs along the lines of culture and camaraderie. If you're consistently bringing in large numbers of one- or two-year free agents, I think you're setting yourself up to eventually have a situation where a season crumbles against pressure that guys aren't willing to face together.

Maybe I'm being too romantic about the game and importance of locker room togetherness, but I don't think we should take it as a given that we should be worried about teams bringing in massive numbers of transfers.

I trust some coaching staffs more than others to effectively integrate the right transfers into their program and keep the core of the team intact: Utah, Washington, Oregon State, and USC — mostly because the roster will always be so talented that guys band together out of mutual respect and ambitious goals.

I'm not sure I need to worry yet about how much transfer recruiting is going to help everyone else. Until they prove otherwise, I expect Oregon and UCLA to shoot themselves in the foot and maybe a kneecap every year. It just seems to be what they do more often than not. We beat No. 3 Oregon in 2021 ... .

Stanford could have been one of the programs that was set up really well to combat transfer armies with a group of talented players who had trained and played together for two to four years. If the program hadn't been allowed to rot, I think that's exactly what we'd have right now — a roster of mostly good/some great HS recruits we developed. But we did fall apart, and now we have to build that type of program and move up in the Pac-12 against teams that from time to time will get it right with which transfers they bring in and will suddenly be a lot better.

I guess all of this is to say: I'm not going to assume that more transfers is a good thing or that all of our opponents are getting this right and we're being left far behind as a result. I have to think that it's going to be challenging for some staffs to maintain the culture they want if they're making promises to free agents and bringing in 15 upperclassmen a year. Or I'm hilariously wrong. We'll all find out eventually.

Not to beat a dead horse…

but he deserves another written beating after what he did to our program.

Many of you read the Athletic. People like AMV and I who get the Eagles feed were sent two articles this week that demonstrate Shaw’s low level of offensive acumen.

A few days ago, there was an article featuring the Eagles QB draw plays that have a league-leading 92% success rate. The author explained the many variations on the jumbo package that lead to success. This, of course, included deception, motion, and having players who could play different roles in the formation.

Today’s article was about the Eagles’ OC who is a Norv Turner disciple.

“I thought Norv just had an unbelievable feel for the game, calling the game, when to call shots,” Steichen said. “He always said, ‘Shoot, the best games I’ve ever called is when I really am not looking down at the call sheet.’”

Early enrollees?

Did I miss something regarding early enrollees? I recall hearing that Tiger Bachmeier was enrolling in winter quarter, but I don't know if I've seen anything else. After all of Shaw's excited talk all throughout 2022 that we would be expanding the early enrollee program.....did we in actuality cut in half the early enrollee program?

A Tale of Two Takes

I feel pretty strongly that Schultz will play through two contracts.

I have always supported your opinion Schultz technically is a good blocker, but his upper body simply lacks the mass to effectively compete at the next level. His shoulders are too narrow, which means he doesn't fill space. (Compare him to his TE compatriots in the photo in the linked article below, especially to Smith on his left.) The lack of girth means he's easy to cover, too, because he creates no space when a LB or safety is leaning on him on those routes over the middle. Unlike Smith, who is "open" even when he is not, Schultz looks blanketed to his quarterback. He's easy to reach around and deflect balls. If you watch Smith run, he is not very quick or fast, but he's a legitimate target on virtually every play.Schultz is probably more athletic, but he is not the same target.

There's gotta be a reason Schultz is one of the least productive receiving TEs we've put out there in years...and I think the issue is structural, no matter how excellent he is at the fundamentals.
Schultz’s shoulders are getting up there with Brook’s hips.

Nil insanity (sec! Florida!)

If true, this is insane on so many levels. First, a hs qb gets a $13m NIL offer from a Florida collective? So he flips because NIL $ >>>>> any semblance of the academic or other fit with a school.

Then the collective fails to come up with the $$ (no surprise- this kind of spending seems totally unsustainable - this is NFL $).

So now the kid is a literal free agent I guess? Highest offer wins!

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