[stupac2]

What an awful schedule. For many of us that didn't play, a big part of our love for Stanford football was sitting on the sunny side enjoying the environment and the football. The annual trek to So Cal was always a great event as well. Next year, three games before the kids are on campus and the LA trip two days after Thanksgiving. Kinda kills the road trip, doesn't it?

Maybe I'm off, but I wonder is the students will have the same kind of love for Stanford football that we all came away with, if the don't have the opportunity to have similar experiences. May slowly kill enthusiasm over time. . . .

Could be, but there are structural reasons for this. If we dropped the series with ND we'd have a lot more flexibility, including having all 3 OOC games early and not having to either play UCLA away or have a bye with the last week of the season. I've consistently thought the yearly ND game isn't worth the scheduling headaches, but the AD disagrees (and I'd guess a lot of the fanbase does too).

first day of classes next fall is 24 Sept 2018 so the David (Sept 15) game is probably still before freshman orientation

I'd bet the UC Davis game kick-off is 7pm or later

Right, but Freshman are only 1/4 of the undergrads and many of the upperclassmen stick around or can come back early, if the administration decides they want to entice them to, and I believe in the past they have for those early USC games. It doesn't take much to turn the students section from a ghost town to a respectable showing.

[stupac2]

What an awful schedule. For many of us that didn't play, a big part of our love for Stanford football was sitting on the sunny side enjoying the environment and the football. The annual trek to So Cal was always a great event as well. Next year, three games before the kids are on campus and the LA trip two days after Thanksgiving. Kinda kills the road trip, doesn't it?

Maybe I'm off, but I wonder is the students will have the same kind of love for Stanford football that we all came away with, if the don't have the opportunity to have similar experiences. May slowly kill enthusiasm over time. . . .

Could be, but there are structural reasons for this. If we dropped the series with ND we'd have a lot more flexibility, including having all 3 OOC games early and not having to either play UCLA away or have a bye with the last week of the season. I've consistently thought the yearly ND game isn't worth the scheduling headaches, but the AD disagrees (and I'd guess a lot of the fanbase does too).

first day of classes next fall is 24 Sept 2018 so the David (Sept 15) game is probably still before freshman orientation

I'd bet the UC Davis game kick-off is 7pm or later

Right, but Freshman are only 1/4 of the undergrads and many of the upperclassmen stick around or can come back early, if the administration decides they want to entice them to, and I believe in the past they have for those early USC games. It doesn't take much to turn the students section from a ghost town to a respectable showing.