All good things must come to an end, and so it is that the Class of 2012 — a group that can name football quarterback Andrew Luck and women’s basketball forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike among its ranks — is finally leaving us. The world of collegiate athletics is a cruel one, and the life of a college star is almost always shorter than it is sweet. Both Luck and Ogwumike leave as number one picks in their respective drafts and with title and school records to their names, but with their ultimate college ambitions unrealized: neither managed to get their hands on a national title.
Pro sports teams can build legacies on the shoulders of key players. Manchester United, for example, has won 12 out of the 20 seasons since the inception of the Premier League and throughout that time has relied on the talents of midfielders Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes. Even now, with their youthful energies fading, they remain key members of the club.
College teams, meanwhile, must cope with losing their best players every four years, and even more frequently when athletes jump ship early to launch professional careers. With such a rapid turnover of players, it is incredibly hard to build momentum and retain sufficient experience and leadership in a team year after year.
Luck and Ogwumike are impossibly fortunate individuals. Many Stanford stars, legends in their own backyard, must wake up from the dream now. Perhaps their sport just doesn’t receive nearly the same sort of monetary support in the professional world as in the collegiate one, or perhaps, regardless of the records they may have set here or the importance they have held in their team, they just don’t have the right physique or skills to get paid to do what they love.
As each sport’s season has come to an end over the course of this last year, many graduating seniors will have been given a farewell at their final home games on the Farm. As students, though, most have stayed around finishing up classes and, perhaps, finally getting to enjoy life here without the punishing demands of being a college athlete. Now, though, the end has finally arrived. Life just got real.
Beyond the athletic department, other students will be facing the same fate. My own time on the Farm is not yet over, but The Daily itself will be a very different place come fall quarter. Hardest hit will be the sports department: the current managing editor, three out of five desk editors and the same number of regular columnists will be gone.
I try not to name-check too much in the opinions I write here, but I hope you excuse me this indulgence. Among those leaving are a host of names that should be more than familiar to regular followers of Cardinal athletics: media stars who have brought you the action in both this newspaper and on KZSU over the last few years, but who, unless ESPN comes knocking, will now have to learn how to be just fans again.
My first-ever sports managing editor, the guy who first gave me a chance writing on men’s soccer, Zach Zimmerman, and the current incumbent, Jack Blanchat. The only editor for whom I’ve completely missed a deadline and failed to turn in a story, Jacob “Jake” Jaffe — sorry! — and the as-yet-unwilling-to-move-on Caroline Caselli (she’ll be working in the business office next year).
Last but not least, I must mention Sam Svoboda — why do all good sports reporters’ first and last names begin with the same letter? — and Nate Adams. Both have since flirted with other roles at this paper — Sam technically graduated last year but hung around as vice president of sales, and Nate has floated around as “editor at large” — but will always be sportswriters in my mind.
There are more of you, too. People I should thank but I don’t have space to mention here because that’s not entirely the justification for writing this column. What I really wanted to do was draw an analogy to the very teams these folks have written about.
None of these organizations are going anywhere. There will still be a football team, basketball teams and even this newspaper on campus next year. But they will look and feel a lot different. Standards are always high at Stanford, and, for example, Luck’s position at quarterback is going to be a very big hole to fill.
Perhaps, though, this is what makes life at university so interesting. Clearing out the seasoned talent, space is left for new stars to rise and others to step out of the shadows. Teams rebuild because they must, and we fans never have enough time to get bored with the status quo. And as much as we’ll miss these seniors, by September we’ll be inspired, frustrated and thrilled by those brand new freshmen.
Tom Taylor is never, ever leaving Stanford, or The Daily for that matter. Tell him to make room for some younger guns at tom.taylor “at” stanford.edu.