[stupac2]

Lets's not diminish expectations.  In a hyper competitive college football landscape it doesn't take much to be subsumed by other programs.  Stanford at worst should be 7-2 right now, and I'm not so sure Stanford shouldn't  be 8-1.  No Stanford fans should in any way claim a 10 win season was unrealistic in 2014.  Anyone think David Shaw thought that, or he wants lower expectations?

No one ever said that having another 10-win season was unrealistic. What I said was that expecting a 10-win season was delusional. And you're right, Stanford could easily be 8-1 right now. The problem with this thinking, of course, is that Stanford could just as easily have been 8-4 in 2012 or 2013. In fact, in 2012 we went 8-2 in close games, when you expect an average of 50% (because close games tend to be effectively random), so really our record "ought" to have been 9-5 (I'm counting the bowl game there). This year we're 1-2 so far, below average but not by a lot! Our luck just ran out.

That's my whole problem with your analysis, you're diagnosing a problem where we don't know one exists. The sample size is just too small to have confidently determined that there's a problem here or what the problem is. In fact, I am completely baffled by your confidence in your assertion about the problem, because it's entirely unwarranted.

[stupac2]

Lets's not diminish expectations.  In a hyper competitive college football landscape it doesn't take much to be subsumed by other programs.  Stanford at worst should be 7-2 right now, and I'm not so sure Stanford shouldn't  be 8-1.  No Stanford fans should in any way claim a 10 win season was unrealistic in 2014.  Anyone think David Shaw thought that, or he wants lower expectations?

No one ever said that having another 10-win season was unrealistic. What I said was that expecting a 10-win season was delusional. And you're right, Stanford could easily be 8-1 right now. The problem with this thinking, of course, is that Stanford could just as easily have been 8-4 in 2012 or 2013. In fact, in 2012 we went 8-2 in close games, when you expect an average of 50% (because close games tend to be effectively random), so really our record "ought" to have been 9-5 (I'm counting the bowl game there). This year we're 1-2 so far, below average but not by a lot! Our luck just ran out.

That's my whole problem with your analysis, you're diagnosing a problem where we don't know one exists. The sample size is just too small to have confidently determined that there's a problem here or what the problem is. In fact, I am completely baffled by your confidence in your assertion about the problem, because it's entirely unwarranted.