Let us reject a six-win total for Stanford football’s bowl eligibility. Let us set a new standard for ourselves and for the nation to consider: Stanford University will send its football team to a bowl game only if it has won at least nine games of a 12-game season.

It seems to me that my personal history with college football and with Stanford football provides a vivid and valuable background and grounding for my suggested innovation.

Until my senior year as an electrical engineering student at Buffalo Technical High School in Buffalo, N.Y., I was barely aware of the existence of Stanford University. My favorite football team was Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma Sooners. It was the early 1950s.

In those days, there were virtually only four bowl games — Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton. Only the very best teams played in them. (A couple minor bowls — Sun, Gator — and a few specialty contests such as the East-West Shrine Game, which was played to benefit crippled children, completed the postseason picture.)

By the time of my senior year at “Tech,” travels to California had brought Stanford University brightly to my attention. I quickly decided it was the school for me, and it was the only one to which I applied.

In my freshman year, 1953-54, we upset No. 1 UCLA at Homecoming. We came to our last game, the Big Game. If we won, we’d go to the Rose Bowl. If we tied — games could end in ties back then — we wouldn’t. We raced to a 21-7 lead. Final score: Stanford 21, Cal 21. I’ll never forget the headline in The Stanford Daily the following Monday: NOBODY WON, BUT WE LOST. It still hurts.

I played sousaphone in the Stanford Marching Band, reveling in the rehearsals and performances of halftime shows for the football team. A music major, I was the lead composer for Big Game Gaieties of 1955 and 1956. In the summer of 1955, I was house manager at Toyon Hall for the football team’s preseason practice. I got to know legendary coach Chuck Taylor and ate at the training table with the team. Stanford football and I have a richly varied history.

On Nov. 7, 2009, when we brilliantly upset No. 8 Oregon, 51-42, I was deeply disapproving as well as ecstatic. It was a downer because we had become “bowl-eligible.” It was our sixth win of the year, and these days, all one has to do to become eligible to go to a bowl is win six games in the season. We play a 12-game schedule. Do we really want a 6-6 Stanford football team to go to a bowl? I say no.

Bowl games have multiplied and cheapened ridiculously since my student days on the Farm. There are 35 now. I remember well a cartoon of almost half a century ago that joked that a new bowl had been created for left-handed redheads from the Dakotas.

Last year, I wasn’t exactly excited when our 8-4 team went to the Sun Bowl. Most ironic for me was the 7-5 team that beat us there, 31-27: my old favorites, the Oklahoma Sooners.

I swell with pride over academically prestigious Stanford repeatedly winning the Directors’ Cup for No. 1 overall excellence in NCAA Division I collegiate athletics. That is the Stanford I prize — a Stanford of outstanding value from head to toe.

I urge President John L. Hennessy, Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby, head coach Jim Harbaugh and the whole Stanford family to come together and repudiate six-wins bowl eligibility for Stanford football, saying that a Stanford football team will go to a bowl game only if it has won at least nine games in a 12-game season.

Let us lead the way to a new realm of high standards and high quality in human endeavor.

James T. Anderson ‘57 is a composer in Palo Alto, Calif.