Since I started passionately following Stanford University football last season, I've always felt the team is continually underappreciated and underecognized. While I admit I'm somewhat biased, I still think there's a lot of truth here; I look around the country and size up the SEC or Big Ten or Big XII schools that are considered among the best in the nation, and can't help but think that the Cardinal could defeat the majority of them. This season, where 8-1 (5-1 in the PAC-10) Stanford is currently ranked #13 in the BCS (and likely to rise when the new rankings come out tonight), will the Cardinal go to a BCS bowl game? If not, the Stanford fans can blame themselves.
The Cardinal resume is pretty solid -- they've defeated #15 Arizona and USC at home (the former quite convincingly last night), beat Notre Dame badly on the road (the Irish haven't been good this year, but you always get some style points for beating up on Notre Dame in South Bend), and have two road shutouts in the conference (at UCLA and at Washington). They're among the highest scoring teams in the country (they've topped 35 points in every game but one), their defense has been strong and their only loss came on the road against the #1 team in the country, Oregon (and that game was close, despite the fairly-lopsided final score). Despite the impressive credentials, Stanford may be on the outside looking in when BCS bowl bids are awarded.
At the game versus Arizona last night, I was very disappointed by the crowd. While there was a lot of buzz about the game floating around campus and while the tailgating atmosphere before the contest was, as usual, lively and fun, the stadium was at least 40% empty when I found my seat just prior to kickoff. As the first quarter started the fans did continue to file in from their tailgates, but there were still parts of entire sections in the upper deck that were completely empty the entire game. Not only was the crowd somewhat sparse, but the fans who were there weren't very loud; at times, the small Arizona fan section in the quarter of the stadium overpowered the Stanford fans with their passionate chants. And this isn't exactly a national football powerhouse we're talking about - the Cardinal fans were outclassed by a bunch of laid-back retirees from Tucson. I expected a lot more from the home crowd -- it was a nationally televised night game matching the #13 and #15 ranked teams in the nation, after all -- and came away disappointed by the fans, despite being ecstatic about the 42-17 final score.
Undoubtedly, a lot of NCAA polsters who don't get to see PAC-10 football every week were watching the Stanford-Arizona game on ABC last night. When they look back on the game this week in filling out their rankings, what will they remember more: the dominating Stanford victory or the underwhelming Stanford crowd? While the big win will earn Stanford some respect, concerns about their fans and their ability to "travel well" could drastically hurt their BCS hopes. Let's just hope that Stanford plays well in their next two games at Arizona State and at Cal, and then urge the fans to come out in droves for the last home game of the year versus Oregon State. Assuming Stanford wins their last three games, the performance of the fans may impact the odds of a BCS bid more than the performance of the team.
NOTE: Found some interesting commentary on the underwhelming turnout here, via ESPN's PAC-10 blog.
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