Stanford Stories IV – College Football

I guess almost all of you know that for many years already I am a pretty big fan of American football. So, obviously, seeing a college football game of the Stanford Cardinals was ranked pretty high on my bucket list. Fortunately, this Saturday, the college football season started again and, I could get tickets for the game against Colgate University. For all you that might think: “Colgate? Isn’t that a pretty big company selling dental hygiene products?” You are completely right. William Colgate – the founder of the Colgate Company – and his son James were heavily involved when Colgate University was started.

The football game itself was not super spectacular, because Colgate is a very small University and not famous for football. But if was fun to be in Stanford’s prestigious stadium and to see my first “real American” football game. Another personal highlight for was to see and hear the Stanford marching / brass band supporting their team and the crowd with almost three hours of live music. They also had the brilliant and hilarious idea of dressing up their conductor (a young student) as the tooth fairy – what a nice message to their opponents.

Stanford University itself is pretty good at college sport, but the focus here is still clearly on research and education. For me, this fact is nicely represented in the “unofficial” mascot called the “Stanford Tree“. By far, the happiest and ridiculous mascot I have ever seen, and an important reminder that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.