Stanford has the best combo of top academics and sports in the country. And it ain't even close. Stanford wins the trophy each year awarded to the school with the combined best performance by its men's and women's teams. They've won 20+ years in a row.
It's unbelievable that this has to be described to anyone. Demonstrates how clueless East Coast types can be, and generally are. Stanford is dominant or near dominant in one sport after another. Katie Ledecky is a freshman on the swimming team, joining fellow gold medalist Simone Manuel. Stanford, Texas and Georgia are expected to have a close battle for the national title. The Stanford women's volleyball team just won another national championship a few weeks ago, their seventh title in that sport. The women's golf team won the title two years ago. Stanford and USC have been monopolizing the water polo title for the past 6 or 7 years, with Stanford winning most of them.
Palo Alto is relaxing and amazing. And when you go to school on the West Coast all of those sports are high profile and popular. Volleyball was easily my favorite sport to attend while at USC in the early '80s, since it was obvious what an awesome era it was. USC had future Olympic greats Steve Timmons and Dusty Dvorak while UCLA had the incomparable Karch Kiraly. I was a sportswriter for the Daily Trojan and used to interview Karch after every big match. He was extremely high class and always volunteered to answer more and more questions along with providing his number in case I needed to ask something else, just like Ronnie Lott would do in football interviews.
Naturally a SAM rebuttal is to scoff at sports like that. Football...growl....football...spit...football...scowl. If it isn't football we don't care and it doesn't matter. Maybe basketball and baseball once in a while.
Of course, if Miami were dominating the so-called minor sports we'd be bragging about it. Those shirts would be different.
Stanford started winning the major offensive line battles several years ago. Swiped many elite guys from USC at the last minute. On USC boards there was some dismissal, with conventional wisdom types dismissing it as a blip. But the sharpest guys on those boards warned that it was logical and would likely continue. It has. As others have mentioned in this thread, Stanford targets a very narrow group of guys so they don't spread resources and have an amazing connect rate. Harbaugh followed Schembechler's insistence to feature a fullback and tight end. David Shaw has continued it. So Stanford has become a premier destination for those positions also.
Defensive line will likely become the next area Stanford makes a dent. Solomon Thomas is as smart and well spoken as they come. He had arguably the best bowl game of any pro prospect this season and is a favorite to excel at the combine and shoot up the draft boards. He is already forecast to first round and I've seen him mocked as high as number 3 on a Seahawks blog.
The Seahawks writers are always several steps ahead of the standard sources because they are aware of SPARQ numbers and vital aspects like arm length and hand size, things Pete Carroll and John Schneider prioritize.
Granted, there are far fewer defensive line prospects who check all the smarts and grades and test score boxes like the offensive tackle types. Solomon Thomas immediately stood out as a cut above during his signing day interview three years ago. He donned Nerd Nation glasses and playfully mocked the Stanford image.
BTW, I've never heard that image associated with bags of under the table cash. Nice desperation.
