[Austroturf]

Here's some observations from the Cal board on Stanford Football, in a thread lamenting the Stojakovic commitment...

I don't know as much about the basketball side, but I've begun to formulate a theory on Stanford recruiting, at least as it pertains to football.

I watched their game on Saturday, and I've watched most of their games this season. And look, both Cal and Stanford are bad football teams. But Cal plays hard. Stanford does not. They have a ton more talent than we do and more than most teams in the league, but their players just do not care. They loaf, they don't run on defense. It would be very frustrating to watch if I didn't enjoy it so much.

There is the saying, made famous by Cardale Jones "I aint come to play school", but all of these Stanford kids are literally going to play school. I think Stanford has cornered the market on recruits who are academically motivated and very good at HS sports but don't actually care that much about athletics. I am no longer super concerned about Stanford having good recruiting classes because basically if a kid can choose between going to Stanford or USC or Alabama or whatever to play football and they choose Stanford, I know they don't really care about football and probably won't be that good. I think this is David Shaw being an elitist douche who went to the school I wish I had gotten into and can't smell his own shit. Harbaugh knew how to recruit tough kids. Shaw welcomes them to the country club.

This is a distant observation from an outsider and is certainly overblown.  But perhaps there are a few morsels of truth embedded in the contents.  

Recruiting has certainly suffered a decline in recent years, not so much in the overall rating of the individual classes, but in the type of player recruited and how each player fits the team as a whole.  This is not optimal, but the real problem, in my view, starts when the players enter the "country club" (as the Bear fan termed it).  Poor player development, poor S&C, lack of toughness/grittiness (read: intellectual brutality), total absence of EUTM.  And if you add to this Shaw's refusal to hold anybody on his staff accountable for results, well, this translates to a lack of accountability with respect to the players and their weekly performance.  With such standards, the result is apathy.  The result is going through the motions.  There is no fight.

To an outsider, it might appear as if Shaw is recruiting that kind of athlete.  I don't agree with that.  But if a Berkeley Bear sees it that way, future top recruits may draw the same conclusion and choose to go elsewhere even if they have the academic credentials to get into Stanford (the 22 tough, smart guys that Harbaugh was convinced he could recruit). I maintain that Austin Jones transferred to USC because he still harbors hopes of playing in the NFL someday and figured Stanford was not going to get him there.  Being a Trojan may not get him there, either, but he concluded that being a Cardinal definitely would not.  If more 4- and 5 -star recruits draw the same conclusion, then we will really only get the players who want to play a bit of football while earning an academic degree at a prestigious institution of higher education.  (Sidebar: that's actually the old ideal of the student athlete, but you can't win with that formula today.)

[Austroturf]

Here's some observations from the Cal board on Stanford Football, in a thread lamenting the Stojakovic commitment...

I don't know as much about the basketball side, but I've begun to formulate a theory on Stanford recruiting, at least as it pertains to football.

I watched their game on Saturday, and I've watched most of their games this season. And look, both Cal and Stanford are bad football teams. But Cal plays hard. Stanford does not. They have a ton more talent than we do and more than most teams in the league, but their players just do not care. They loaf, they don't run on defense. It would be very frustrating to watch if I didn't enjoy it so much.

There is the saying, made famous by Cardale Jones "I aint come to play school", but all of these Stanford kids are literally going to play school. I think Stanford has cornered the market on recruits who are academically motivated and very good at HS sports but don't actually care that much about athletics. I am no longer super concerned about Stanford having good recruiting classes because basically if a kid can choose between going to Stanford or USC or Alabama or whatever to play football and they choose Stanford, I know they don't really care about football and probably won't be that good. I think this is David Shaw being an elitist douche who went to the school I wish I had gotten into and can't smell his own shit. Harbaugh knew how to recruit tough kids. Shaw welcomes them to the country club.

This is a distant observation from an outsider and is certainly overblown.  But perhaps there are a few morsels of truth embedded in the contents.  

Recruiting has certainly suffered a decline in recent years, not so much in the overall rating of the individual classes, but in the type of player recruited and how each player fits the team as a whole.  This is not optimal, but the real problem, in my view, starts when the players enter the "country club" (as the Bear fan termed it).  Poor player development, poor S&C, lack of toughness/grittiness (read: intellectual brutality), total absence of EUTM.  And if you add to this Shaw's refusal to hold anybody on his staff accountable for results, well, this translates to a lack of accountability with respect to the players and their weekly performance.  With such standards, the result is apathy.  The result is going through the motions.  There is no fight.

To an outsider, it might appear as if Shaw is recruiting that kind of athlete.  I don't agree with that.  But if a Berkeley Bear sees it that way, future top recruits may draw the same conclusion and choose to go elsewhere even if they have the academic credentials to get into Stanford (the 22 tough, smart guys that Harbaugh was convinced he could recruit). I maintain that Austin Jones transferred to USC because he still harbors hopes of playing in the NFL someday and figured Stanford was not going to get him there.  Being a Trojan may not get him there, either, but he concluded that being a Cardinal definitely would not.  If more 4- and 5 -star recruits draw the same conclusion, then we will really only get the players who want to play a bit of football while earning an academic degree at a prestigious institution of higher education.  (Sidebar: that's actually the old ideal of the student athlete, but you can't win with that formula today.)