Euphoria. Hard-earned, can't-stop-feeling-good, unified euphoria.
That's what a trip to the Orange Bowl meant to the Stanford football team, which made the kind of triumphant history in 2010 that was inconceivable five seasons ago, when the win-loss record was 1-11. Then Jim Harbaugh was hired as coach, and he promised the players everything that was preposterous to consider, if they would show enough faith, and also block and tackle like annihilators.
Promise fulfilled: After three seasons of turnaround groundwork, the Cardinal reeled off the first 11-victory campaign in school history, losing only to top-ranked Oregon. They stormed to No. 4 nationally in the Bowl Championship Series standings and earned a January 3 matchup against Virginia Tech in one of college football's most venerable games, the Orange Bowl.
With trademark exuberance, Harbaugh described his players' ascent as incomparable by any modern yardstick. "This is the best job of playing by a group of youngsters in the last 50 years," he declared.
The offense was led by a spectacular quarterback, Heisman Trophy finalist Andrew Luck, a red-shirt sophomore. The defense was sparked by a two-way iron man, senior linebacker and fullback Owen Marecic. But to many, it was the coaching that stood out as pivotal, hence the online petition that sprang from Stanford fans, beseeching University administrators to extend a new contract to Harbaugh and perhaps derail the attempts of other miracle-seeking colleges or pro franchises to make him theirs.
All season long, the players to a man said that they believed in the future as soon as Harbaugh described it to them. After all, he did promise.
