[Mick]

If the only way to get enjoyment out of rooting for a football team is to watch them win, I suggest you become an Alabama fan.

Yes, all told I prefer winning over losing, and I prefer winning with a dynamic offense over winning with a butt-ugly offense.  But save for disappointment, my enjoyment of rooting for Stanford is not entirely predicated on us winning.  I first came to Stanford during Walsh' second term.  I became hooked on college football when we beat Colorado in a shootout in the fall of 1993 (before I even stepped foot on campus).  Ironically, that was the high water mark for Stanford for the next two years; we had losing seasons in Walsh' last two years.  I then got to enjoy two years of dramatic improvement under Willingham, highlighted by a 7-5 year in 1996 where we drubbed Nick Saban and WSU in the Sun Bowl, a game I enjoyed from the Great Barrier reef.  Ironically, the Sun Bowl was the bowl we went to last year after a "disappointing" season under Shaw, and a 7-5 record is what our "disappointment" this year is likely to be.  Then, back to losing, until 1999 when we started with the disaster against Texas.  We lost 69-17, and I remember the comments on TOS when that happened.  I mean, that was butt-ugly offense and, frankly, it would be hard to call it a butt ugly defense, because the defense was just not there.  And yet... we went to the Rose Bowl that year as the Pac-10 champions.  It is hard to believe, given the results of that first game, and a butt-ugly loss to San Jose friggin State.  But UW lost to UCLA giving them their second Pac-10 loss, and we backed into the Rose Bowl, and nobody was going to look at the first Rose Bowl game in almost 30 years and say we were not worthy.  And then, another losing season... before we beat #5 Oregon and #4 UCLA on consecutive weeks.  The Oregon game was something else (it featured not one, but two blocked punts as we came back from about 14 points down, if I remember).  But that turned out to be the high water mark for sometime.  We finished in a three-way tie for second in the Pac-10, got relegated to the friggin Seattle Bowl, where we played like crap against Georgia Tech in a game we should have dominated, then watched our coach bolt for the Domers, and for all our troubles were rewarded with Buddy Teevens, and later, Walt Harris.

Frankly, I don't see how anybody who survived the ensuing five years, and I know you were one of those, could think that this team is unwatchable or intolerable.

I suppose the upshot is that there is nothing like 3 Rose Bowls in 4 years to give even Stanford fans a sense of entitlement.

BC

Well said.  It's a little bit like golf.  I don't have to shoot 75 to enjoy it.  I can have great days and lousy days.  But a few really good shots...and I always have those...keep me coming back.

[Mick]

If the only way to get enjoyment out of rooting for a football team is to watch them win, I suggest you become an Alabama fan.

Yes, all told I prefer winning over losing, and I prefer winning with a dynamic offense over winning with a butt-ugly offense.  But save for disappointment, my enjoyment of rooting for Stanford is not entirely predicated on us winning.  I first came to Stanford during Walsh' second term.  I became hooked on college football when we beat Colorado in a shootout in the fall of 1993 (before I even stepped foot on campus).  Ironically, that was the high water mark for Stanford for the next two years; we had losing seasons in Walsh' last two years.  I then got to enjoy two years of dramatic improvement under Willingham, highlighted by a 7-5 year in 1996 where we drubbed Nick Saban and WSU in the Sun Bowl, a game I enjoyed from the Great Barrier reef.  Ironically, the Sun Bowl was the bowl we went to last year after a "disappointing" season under Shaw, and a 7-5 record is what our "disappointment" this year is likely to be.  Then, back to losing, until 1999 when we started with the disaster against Texas.  We lost 69-17, and I remember the comments on TOS when that happened.  I mean, that was butt-ugly offense and, frankly, it would be hard to call it a butt ugly defense, because the defense was just not there.  And yet... we went to the Rose Bowl that year as the Pac-10 champions.  It is hard to believe, given the results of that first game, and a butt-ugly loss to San Jose friggin State.  But UW lost to UCLA giving them their second Pac-10 loss, and we backed into the Rose Bowl, and nobody was going to look at the first Rose Bowl game in almost 30 years and say we were not worthy.  And then, another losing season... before we beat #5 Oregon and #4 UCLA on consecutive weeks.  The Oregon game was something else (it featured not one, but two blocked punts as we came back from about 14 points down, if I remember).  But that turned out to be the high water mark for sometime.  We finished in a three-way tie for second in the Pac-10, got relegated to the friggin Seattle Bowl, where we played like crap against Georgia Tech in a game we should have dominated, then watched our coach bolt for the Domers, and for all our troubles were rewarded with Buddy Teevens, and later, Walt Harris.

Frankly, I don't see how anybody who survived the ensuing five years, and I know you were one of those, could think that this team is unwatchable or intolerable.

I suppose the upshot is that there is nothing like 3 Rose Bowls in 4 years to give even Stanford fans a sense of entitlement.

BC

Well said.  It's a little bit like golf.  I don't have to shoot 75 to enjoy it.  I can have great days and lousy days.  But a few really good shots...and I always have those...keep me coming back.