College Football: Stanford Preview

New Stanford coach David Shaw

As part of this becoming the all-sports blog for are three San Gabriel Valley Newspapers, and part of our college football coverage, I will post a capsule of all Pac-12 teams for the upcoming season. We continue our trip in the Pac-12 North, and today we take a brief look at Stanford

STANFORD CARDINAL
Coach: David Shaw
Years at school: First
Record: 0-0
2010 Record: 12-1 (Beat Va. Tech 40-12 in Orange Bowl); 8-1 in conference.
Division: North
2011 prediction: First
Outlook: The Cardinal returns most of the key ingredients that helped Stanford to arguably its best season in school history. The missing link is coach David Shaw, who has replaced the vocal Jim Harbaugh. But the change at the top should not keep the Cardinal from their appointed rounds. The focal point will be Heisman Trophy favorite Andrew Luck, who is expected to be even better in 2011. The redshirt junior who threw for 3,338 yards and 32 TDs last year, will get help in RB Stepfan Taylor, who rushed 1,137 yards and defense keyed by DBs Delano Howell and Michael Thomas. The Cardinal will have two battle of the unbeatens: An Oct. 29 meeting at USC and Nov. 26 title at home against Oregon. Pick Stanford in both as this team looks headed toward the BCS title game in January.
Quotable: "Coach Harbaugh came in (four years ago) and fought a lot of battles that I don't have to fight," Stanford coach David Shaw said. "My job is to maintain a competitive spirit. Like I said before, that is one of the things that (Harbaugh) and I had in common. We were going to compete. We're going to fight. There is a standard of play that we'll play up to (here), and it's my job that we'll do that."