Notre Dame-Stanford preview: Pac-12 expert talks Cardinal
You don’t have to flip the pages of your scrapbook back all that far to find a time that Notre Dame’s annual clash with Stanford was significant in the major college football landscape.
The Cardinal went to a bowl game each year from 2009, which was Jim Harbaugh’s third year on campus, to 2018, which was David Shaw’s eighth as head coach. Since then things haven’t gone as desired for the Cardinal as they’re just 1-4 overall this year and just 13-25 since the start of the 2019 season.
So what has gone wrong with Stanford, is there any hope in Palo Alto that they’ll be turning things around anytime soon, and would they really force Shaw, a coach who NFL teams were said to be kicking the tires on a few years back, out after what he’s accomplished?
Matt Zemek is the managing editor of our sister-site Trojans Wire where they cover all things USC. He also follows the Pac 12 incredibly closely and has insights to the rest of the league, not just USC.
Zemek was kind enough to take a few minutes away from his currently unbeaten football team to discuss how Stanford has fallen like they have and what to expect this Saturday.
What the heck has happened to Stanford football?
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MZ: A few forces and trends are combining to make life difficult for Shaw. Start with California parents steering their sons away from football due to increased awareness of concussions and CTE. Fewer linemen are coming from California compared to other states where football is more culturally entrenched or ascendant. The talent pool in California is smaller. Second, the pandemic really hit the Bay Area schools hard. Players obviously wouldn’t want to go to Stanford or California (Berkeley) under strict local constraints and regulations. Third, the emergence of the transfer portal as a significant tool for restocking rosters just doesn’t fit well with Stanford’s high academic standards, so Shaw can’t realistically make a killing in the portal the way Lincoln Riley has at USC. Combine those forces, and Shaw can’t recapture the magic of 2011-2017, when he was regularly winning Pac-12 North Division titles and making Stanford a nationally relevant program.
How hot is Shaw's seat right now?
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MZ: He’s not on the hot seat.
I know you follow college basketball as well, Nick, and that you thoroughly enjoyed Notre Dame’s surprising run to the NCAA Tournament Round of 32 last season. Stanford hoops coach Jerod Haase has been at the school since 2016. He hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament in any of his six seasons. Stanford Athletic Director Bernard Muir has not fired him. What does that tell you? Shaw has a lot of goodwill at Stanford. The people there love him and go to bat for him. He very publicly and pointedly upholds the school’s high academic standards and embraces them. The locals eat that stuff up. Anyone saying he’s on the hot seat is an outsider who judges Stanford the way one judges Arizona State or dozens of other “normal” programs. Stanford isn’t normal. Muir isn’t normal. I’m not saying it’s good or smart, but it’s not how they roll in Palo Alto. This is a different culture. Shaw can coach at Stanford for a few more years without any pressure. I’m not going to say “as long as he wants,” because five more years of this would probably be too much, but three years for sure. He will not be fired at any point before December 2024, period.
What are 1-4 Stanford's biggest flaws?
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MZ: Tanner McKee is a quarterback NFL draft analysts love, so the fact that Stanford can’t score much tells you that the Cardinal no longer have the mashers and road-graders on the offensive line they had under Jim Harbaugh and early-period David Shaw (2011-2015, when the program made BCS/New Year’s Six bowls regularly). It’s the same on the defensive line. Shaw just isn’t getting those big, bad wrecking-ball monsters in the trenches. The Cardinal love to punch opponents in the mouth, but they’re no longer getting the linemen who can make it possible on either side of the ball.
I assume they have to have a strength, right?
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MZ: McKee is a strength, but he doesn’t have much of any help anywhere on the roster. With the lines being depleted, there’s no running back who will finish second in the Heisman Trophy voting anymore (Toby Gerhart, Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love). Stanford has been thrown around like a rag doll this year. Look at the Washington result in particular. At the time, it seemed like an indication that Washington was flexing its muscles and was a really strong, complete, two-way team with few weaknesses. Then Washington got bullied and flattened by UCLA’s and Arizona State’s offensive lines. Washington is a paper tiger. It still hammered Stanford. What does that tell you?
Stanford can upset Notre Dame if _________
Andrew Luck evades Manti Te’o in 2011. Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
MZ: We turned back the clock to 2011.
On a 1-5 scale what number upset alert should Notre Dame be on?
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MZ: 1.
Stanford is a bad football team with deficient line play. If you ranked Pac-12 teams 1-12 right now, Stanford is a consensus choice for No. 11. Colorado is the only Pac-12 team better than the Trees. It’s pretty clear that Cal, whom you got to see in South Bend in Week 3 of this season, is a lot better than Stanford. Arizona State is better than Stanford based on how the two teams have played against Washington. Arizona is better than Stanford. The Wildcats have some decent wins this season and can at least threaten opponents with their offense because their O-line isn’t a total disaster. Stanford is terrible. Let’s not make it any more complicated than that.
How do Stanford fans view Notre Dame 'rivalry'?
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MZ: I am not intimately familiar with the nuances of how the Stanford fan base thinks, but I will say that while Stanford has a tough time filling its home stadium in Palo Alto for an Oregon State or other non-California home game, the bigger national games are destination trips for Stanford fans when the team is doing well. Stanford’s national alumni base and its well-connected network of alumni show up for top-tier (New Year’s Six) bowl games. We obviously haven’t seen Stanford reach such a bowl in recent years, but when the program is rocking and rolling, there’s a definite awareness of what the Notre Dame game and other big games mean.
What conference will Stanford be in when all the dust settles?
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MZ: It’s a really hard question to answer, because in five or six years — 2027 or 2028 — you are going to see more realignment moves. Grants of rights penalties and exit fees will be much smaller. It’s hard to deny the idea that Clemson and Florida State will move to the SEC. How that will affect the Big Ten and Fox Sports is hard to know right now. What we also don’t know is exactly how ESPN and Fox and NBC and CBS will split up College Football Playoff TV rights, revenue, and game assignments under the 12-team playoff plan. All of this will help shape the new landscape in college football in 2026. This isn’t a cop-out, it’s just a reflection of the reality that in four years, a lot will be different, and then we can better discern what might happen.
Again, check out Matt Zemek‘s work at Trojans Wire as USC has one of their biggest games of the season this weekend when they travel Utah.
