Jim Harbaugh is the greatest salesman since the Apostle Paul. He convinced the Stanford Cardinal football team, playing for what Ted Miller described as “the most elite academic institution in the nation playing football at the FBS level,” located in an area where the median home is 1.4 million dollars and the provost of the school is former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, that they were a blue-collar football team. He dressed them in gas station shirts with name badges stitched on the chest, got them to play with a chip on their shoulder and a smashmouth, underdog mentality. Amazing, because you can’t get any more overdog than Stanford. The average mid-career salary for a Stanford alum is $119,00 a year. Yet the Cardinal bought it, and played with an attitude and a physical intensity to match Captain Comeback’s, a jut-jawed determination that led to a 12-1 record in 2011.
Just a year before Harbaugh arrived, the once-proud Cardinal were 1-11. Playing for new head coach David Shaw and two new coordinators this year, the results are likely to be somewhere in between.
Luck is tremendous, the best college quarterback in the country and a certain number one draft pick. But there are serious holes in his supporting cast. He’s breaking in three new receivers. The Cardinal have to replace three starters on the offensive line. The Cardinal lost an all-league center, and Harbaugh toughness poster boy Owen Marecic, who played fullback and linebacker last season.
With linebacker Shayne Skov and quarterback Andrew Luck setting the standard, this team will still have a tough, disciplined attitude. Shaw’s a capable football man, a former Stanford player and the son of long-time NFL assistant coach Willie Shaw. But there’s a break-in period for any new coach, particularly with new coordinators on both sides of the ball. Stanford will lose at least three games in 2011, possibly four.
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