Stanford Footballers in the NFL
Quick, what do John Elway, Jim Harbaugh, Andrew Luck and Richard Sherman have in common with Sione Fua, Doug Baldwin, and Will Svitek? They are fellow Stanford alumni who played in the NFL… and were all roaming the sidelines or playing field of NFL playoff games from the 2014 divisional matches and beyond. Four of them (Elway, Fua, Baldwin and Sherman), in fact, will be in Super Bowl XLVIII in under two weeks!
Fifteen years after his retirement, John Elway remains the pride of the Mile High City, but Richard Sherman has been the talk of the Internet lately. He basically punched the ticket to the Super Bowl for the Seahawks with his athletic ball-swatting in the endzone in the final minute of the NFC championship game, but more impressive than his brilliant play was his mouth:
Before you dismiss him as a loud-mouth bozo, keep in mind that he was a 4.2 GPA-achieving high school salutarian who has done of ton of community service and graduated with a B.A. in communications from Stanford. Knowing all that makes the above video seem even more hilarious, as if the over-the-top WWF antics were not already enough.
Is Sherman the angriest athlete from Stanford to grace the world stage since John McEnroe? That is debatable, but I do appreciate his passion. (Of course, as a Coloradoan, I will still be rooting for the Broncos.)
A Sherman E-mail to his Stanford Dorm
Surfaced on Deadspin is a priceless e-mail to a Stanford dorm in February 2007, purportedly written by Sherman.
While Deadspin could not confirm the authenticity of the e-mail, I can vouch via access to the Stanford alumni database that Sherman did live in one of the dorms (Granada) of Lagunita from 2006-2007.
I took particular interest because I also lived in Lagunita Court, albeit more than a decade earlier. But I did not know of the Valentine’s tradition waking up young ladies at 6:00 a.m. to sing to them. Too bad; sounded fun.
Assuming that the e-mail is in fact authentic, it looks like Sherman had no qualms about speaking his mind back then too. The rest of the thread is pretty comical too as it reveals what happens when you try to have a discussion about something like Valentine’s Day among college-age students too smart for their own good.
John Elway
The Stanford Alumni website has an interesting article about the tribulations John Elway had to endure in the years since his 1998 Super Bowl victory, and the “comeback” he staged in the years preceding his 2014 Super Bowl run as the Broncos’ General Manager.
