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The Demise of College Football in California May Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

David Shaw would like a word.

In fact, the Stanford football coach would like several words, with multiple media personalities, from a few different television networks. He’d like to tell them that they failed their audience, that they delivered the wrong message, that they misled everyone. He’d like to razz those who wrote sensational headlines, the ones projecting California football’s demise, predicting those in the Golden State would be left behind while the rest of the country played a fall season.

“There’s a lot of gamesmanship that happens in the college football world that is very pointed at us out here on the West Coast, that we don’t love football, that we don’t play real football, how if we don’t do what the SEC is doing in the way the SEC is doing it, then we’re wrong,” Shaw says in an interview with Sports Illustrated on Wednesday.