Zimmerman: An ode to Stanford athletics

This is my last hurrah of sorts before I take a five-month hiatus to fulfill my role as editor in chief. Writing a weekly sports column has become a staple of my life, and without getting too romantic, it’s gonna be missed.

Sports played a significant role in my Stanford experience long before my coast-to-coast flight touched down at SFO in 2008. Contrary to the advice of college counselors around the nation, my choice of where to attend school was based largely on the strength of the athletics program and the absurdity of the student section (this was the one time where the Tree’s arrest for public intoxication positively influenced a young person’s future).

And believe it or not, for the final question on the application of why I wanted to attend Stanford, I answered, in slightly more eloquent terms, that, “I fully support any school that wipes the smug look off the face of the USC football program.”

It was truly a match made in heaven. I could attend one of the most illustrious academic institutions in the world while studying in the presence of first-round draft picks, Olympic gold medalists and Hall of Fame coaches. I mean, at what other school can you legitimately say that a Heisman Trophy runner-up sat in front of you in lecture for a complicated computer science course? Toby Gerhart may not be getting too many touches on the Vikings behind All-Pro Adrian Peterson, but I guarantee you he’s more familiar with Java than any of his teammates.

What’s more beautiful is that Cardinal athletes aren’t placed on a glorified pedestal for us average folk to ogle at. No. We live, eat, socialize and learn together. On the first day of New Student Orientation, I walked into my two-room triple in Branner to find a mom putting the final touches on her son’s setup. Seeing a few ribbons and other running memorabilia, I asked if her son was a runner. She said yes, and that he was currently at cross country practice.

What happened next is something I will never forget. I made some sort of smartass remark like, “he must be fast!” That was before I Googled Chris Derrick.

I’ve always been a sports fan and I can’t even begin to recount all of the ways that I’ve been impacted, both positively and negatively, by Stanford athletics. However, sometimes it’s difficult to understand the value of sports on a campus that is brimming with intellectual power and technological innovation. Why should we invest our time and money into games that don’t provide any clear long-term benefits for the world? It’s a question that, at times, I’ve struggled to answer and one that resonates throughout the school.

But if you’ve been to any sporting event and seen your classmates working their tails off on the field, you know why. This university may not be Harvard in terms of tear-producing, heart-wrenching competition, but Stanford is no field of daisies. It’s a cutthroat environment. We are constantly challenging one another for job opportunities and academic recognition, sometimes to the extent that we aren’t proud of our actions. It’s a tough reality to deal with.

That’s where sports come in. At football games, the Red Zone takes the Saturday off and forgets about the 4.0s and the problem sets. For supernerds, we get a little wild. Bodies are painted, flasks are snuck in and camaraderie is everywhere. Bottom line, kids are genuinely happy.

Happiness is all it comes down to, and it’s what I believe justifies the huge presence of sports on this campus. Sure, you can point to the financial benefits, community interaction and dozens of other reasons, but at the end of the day, this whole “college experience” would absolutely stink if we were miserable people.

Sports are, have been and will forever be my release. Embrace Stanford athletics, and Stanford athletics will embrace you.

Zach is going to miss seeing his photo in the paper every week. Wish him luck on his upcoming role at zachz “at” stanford.edu.