Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Little bit of football history

Boosters have been having some fun with the benefits of being able to name things they contribute toward at Stanford. Hence the coaching positions for the football team now have names as though they were endowed chairs. The head coach is officially the “Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football” after some real-estate mogul, the funnier names are the coordinators: the “Andrew Luck Director of Offense” and the “Willie Shaw Director of Defense” (named after the current head coach’s father who was briefly the defensive coordinator there a couple of decades ago.

It reminds me of when Al Davis started putting clauses in player’s contracts that referenced former Raider greats.
Charles Woodson had a Willie Brown clause for example. To me it was a little neat.

Speaking of underachieving former AFL teams I recently learned that Marv Levy is the only coach of the history of the Buffalo Bills who won his first game (he took over midyear). The other fifteen all lost. Another fun stat? The Bills spent Week 1 of the NFL season at home in Rich Stadium every season from 1974-1988. Didn’t seem to help – they made the playoffs just four times in that 15 year span (although they did win a postseason game in two of those seasons). Maybe angling to have their LAST game at home once winter set in might have helped them more.

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