Did Stanford coach David Shaw take a shot at the Southeast?
By Nick Cole
Published:
The NCAA ruled against the usage of satellite camps on Friday.
It was celebrated as a win for the SEC, and a loss for coaches like Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh who hoped to use them as a way to get in front of recruits in the fertile recruiting grounds of the Southeast.
Most FBS head coaches have been asked to give their opinion on the ruling in recent days.
Some are for it, some are against it… and then there’s Stanford coach David Shaw.
He just doesn’t care.
When asked about it following Saturday’s spring game, he gave the following answer, according to RuleofTree.com:
“I have no opinion,” Shaw said. “It’s never affected us. People do them, and people don’t do them. We’ve got great attendance at the camps we have here — we get a lot of guys we want to come….But I didn’t like the way that a lot of people have put this as the SEC against Jim Harbaugh. That’s not what this has been about. Conference by conference, this has been going on for three plus years, since Jim was with the 49ers. This has been a battle. As a conference, we had a long discussion three years ago about what we were going to do about satellite camps….I’m great with whatever college football says, because it doesn’t affect us. It doesn’t make sense for us to go hold a camp some place where there might be one person in the entire state that’s eligible to get into Stanford.”
That all sounds good, until you get to that final sentence. Which, naturally, has raised some eyebrows across the college football landscape on Sunday.
David Shaw says no reason for satellite camps "where there might be one person in the entire state that's eligible to get into Stanford."
— Ted Miller (@TedMillerRK) April 10, 2016
Given Stanford’s rigorous academic standards, some are inferring that may be a shot at the education level of prospects from the Southeast.
While he doesn’t explicitly say that, it could certainly be interpreted that way.
One could also view it from the scope of a different interpretation and say that he was referring to states that simply don’t have many Power 5 level prospects in the first place.
Either way, it’s a statement that will do nothing to soften a sometimes stuffy reputation for one of the nation’s elite academic institutions.
Nick Cole is a former print journalist with several years of experience covering the SEC. Born and raised in SEC country, he has taken in the game-day experience at all 14 stadiums.
