05-31-2012, 02:31 PM
I know it's a wimp-out and a cliche, but I would have to go with "all of the above" and include the other seven games as well. For a variety of different reasons depending on who you're talking about, we are likely to be one of the most important games on the schedule of every team we face this season. And, in conference, with all of the new coaches, very few games may "play to form", at least as we have come to understand "form" over the past few seasons. Thus, we may be facing a whole season of either "crucial" or "trap" games, with nothing in between.
It seems to me that one of the unique characteristics of the past two seasons has been that we really didn't play "like Stanford" during either season, by which I mean the following. At the Reunion Roundtable Retrospective on the Rose Bowls, Jim Plunkett said that, when he was asked [repeatedly] how in the world Stanford could lose to Air Force and Cal and then beat one of the great Ohio State teams of all time in the next game [i.e., the Rose Bowl], he always answered: "because we're Stanford." After clinching the Rose Bowl, those last two games just weren't "critical."
These days that won't work any more. ALL games are critical...unless we're simply looking forward to taking BART to the Kraft Fight Boredom Bowl...
It seems to me that one of the unique characteristics of the past two seasons has been that we really didn't play "like Stanford" during either season, by which I mean the following. At the Reunion Roundtable Retrospective on the Rose Bowls, Jim Plunkett said that, when he was asked [repeatedly] how in the world Stanford could lose to Air Force and Cal and then beat one of the great Ohio State teams of all time in the next game [i.e., the Rose Bowl], he always answered: "because we're Stanford." After clinching the Rose Bowl, those last two games just weren't "critical."
These days that won't work any more. ALL games are critical...unless we're simply looking forward to taking BART to the Kraft Fight Boredom Bowl...