 |
|
Cardinal football keeping up with lofty school standards.
Dec. 29, 1999
STANFORD, Calif. - The basketball team is ranked No. 1. The school hasproduced Tiger Woods, John McEnroe, John Elway and dozens of Olympic champions.No college has won more sports titles the past five years.
So, for a Stanford football team making its first Rose Bowl appearance in 28years, it's simply a matter of keeping up school standards.
And not just on the playing field. Stanford boasts four of the current nineSupreme Court justices and five U.S. senators, as well as alums ranging fromSigourney Weaver to Ted Koppel. Chelsea Clinton is a Stanford student.
"We have one of the finest overall sports programs in the country, andeveryone feels excited that football is joining the school's other champions,"coach Tyrone Willingham said. "I think that feeling is heightened by the factthat we are fortunate enough to have alumni across the country in everysector."
Stanford has won 59 NCAA team championships in the past two decades, most inthe nation. The Cardinal have won national titles in sports ranging frombaseball to volleyball to women's basketball in recent years.
At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Cardinal athletes won 19 medals - 10 of themgold. Only eight countries had more gold medals. And at the 1996 AtlantaOlympics, Stanford athletes won 16 gold medals.
The school has won five straight Sears Directors' Cup titles, awarded to thenation's top overall athletic program. This fall, the water polo and women'svolleyball teams made it to the national championship game.
Until recently, the football and men's basketball teams did not share inthat success.
The football team, which had not won an outright Pac-10 title before thisseason, struggled for years against conference rivals such as UCLA, Washingtonand Arizona State - public schools with much larger enrollments.
And when Stanford began this season with a 69-17 loss at Texas and then lostfour games later at home to lowly San Jose State, a Rose Bowl bid seemlyludicrous. But the Cardinal went 7-1 in conference play, and made it toPasadena - something Elway never did during his tenure as Stanford quarterbackin 1979-82.
The basketball team's rise to No. 1 has been just as stunning. It graduatedfour starters last season and the only returning starter - power forward MarkMadsen - missed eight of the team's first nine games this season.
"Everyone thought Stanford would be down a bit this year, losing all thoseseniors," said Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury, whose Bulldogs lost76-56 to the Cardinal last week.
While the entrance to the idyllic Stanford campus has a billboardcelebrating the Rose Bowl appearance, there is little of the hoopla thatnormally would accompany such football and basketball success at mostuniversities.
Instead, the university's focus is on its laboratories that have served asincubators for technology-driven Silicon Valley and where many of the school's15 current Nobel laureates work.
A perfect example of the mix of athletics and academics at Stanford occurredNov. 21 at a women's basketball game against Iowa State. During halftime, 1996Nobel prize winner Doug Osheroff was awarded a basketball signed by the team.
Osheroff is a physicist whose calculus-based entry-level physics class hasincluded some Stanford women's basketball players over the years. He wasawarded the Nobel prize for his discovery of three superfluid phases of liquidhelium - a key find in the field of superconductivity.
Standing at center court, he eyed the basketball with the same kind ofbemusement most people would reserve for a container of liquid helium.
"Of course, I like to see Stanford win, but sometimes I get concernedthere's too great an emphasis on athletics and it's a distraction for thestudents," he said. "But I will be completely honest with you: If I had moretime I would love to go to more of those basketball games."
By ROB GLOSTER
AP Sports Writer