Football team needs adjustments

Three years. Three losing seasons. Three losses in Big Game, each one worse than its predecessor. Three seasons of finishing worse than they started. Three years of poor discipline. Three years of poor halftime adjustments. Three years of inconsistent, uninspiring football. Three years of some of the worst college football coaching Stanford has seen in at least a quarter-century.

I feel genuinely sorry for the student-athletes who have played under the Buddy Teevens regime.

The lack of discipline is what bothers me most. Stanford football showed little class in Saturday’s loss at Cal — and it wasn’t the only time in the Teevens era. Coach Teevens did not bench any of the three players who committed dead-ball personal fouls in Big Game, even though two of them were in the final five minutes when the game’s outcome was already decided. I doubt whether Teevens would have benched Leigh Torrence had he not been ejected after his second personal foul.

This is losing without class, and apparently Teevens tolerates it. By sharp contrast, Cal Coach Tedford was in the face of his player who committed a personal foul late in the game, and Tedford benched him.

Ted Leland, can you hear me? You should be able to at least hear the echo of my voice in the emptiness that was Stanford Stadium this fall.

You want to fill it back up? Fire Buddy Teevens and bring in a head football coach with a record of success, progress, discipline, class and achievement in Division I-A.

Win Reis

Class of 1988

Poor sportsmanship is worse than poor Big Game performance

While I am disappointed at the loss to Berkeley, I am more disappointed at the conduct on the field.

Heretofore the cheap shots and the hooliganism were pretty much the purview of “them,” not us.

As an adjunct, a lot of the errors were pure coaching errors. The entire coaching staff is not without blame — not only for the loss but also for the conduct.

I hope as the members of the football varsity team start to grow up, they will outgrow the antics and act like true representatives of the University.

Art Samuel

Class of 1946

Palestinian Authority does not need to include terrorists

A quote from Thursday’s article (“Students React To Arafat’s Death,” Nov. 18) summed up the whole problem with the revisionist version of “Arafat the statesman.” Marwan Hanania states that “If the person who’s elected is able to bring in Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Palestinian groups within the leadership, then there might be some hope, some reason for optimism.”

I think that an inclusive Palestinian constituency is a good idea in principle. But why on earth should Hamas or Islamic Jihad, groups chiefly associated with murdering civilians, be included? Terrorism, besides killing people, means giving up on legitimate political processes. To legitimize terrorists as “leadership” can do nothing but doom the peace process.

Did Arafat’s own reign teach us anything, if not that?

Gabe Rosen

Graduate student, English

Wartime Presidents need support

Will Nelson’s opinion in Friday’s Daily is superb (“Does the world still believe in Democracy?” Nov. 19). He has described expertly a major problem of perspective present both in the American and foreign media’s coverage of the Iraqi insurgency. What’s even more harrowing to me is a growing political association between the U.S. military and President George W. Bush.

Coming from a military family, this reminds me all too much of the associations drawn by the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. Up to this point, critics of the Bush administration have been careful to toe the patriotic line in public, but I suspect that as it becomes evident that Bush’s political credibility is tied to the success of Iraqi liberation, there will be a growing trend among the left to exaggerate U.S. failure for their own political gain.

This is a dangerous slippery slope, and I fear that soon we’ll have an opposition party holding no punches — aimed at discrediting both the present administration and the United States itself in foreign affairs.

This is where I hope Democratic leadership will step up to the challenge of supporting a wartime president, despite his political affiliations. In short, I’m asking Democrats to ask not what their country is doing wrong, but what wrong is being done to their country.

Milton Solorzano

Class of 2007