Let’s face it:

This year sucked.

The three biggest sports for Stanford athletics — baseball, men’s basketball and football — combined had the worst Stanford sports season in history.

Baseball, a national powerhouse and annual mainstay in the top-25 rankings, had its worst season in decades.

Men’s basketball didn’t have a horrible year, as director Trent Johnson’s young team even showed signs of brilliance at times. But the season ended on a sour note with an utterly embarrassing loss to Louisville in the tournament’s first round.

And as for football . . . it’s impossible for this writer to express how horrible this year’s season was. I’ll leave it at that.

Even in other sports where the Cardinal usually dominates, things often fell short.

Women’s water polo lost in the national championship game to UCLA. Women’s tennis, after having won 89 straight matches coming into the year, had its monumental streak snapped in a loss to Georgia Tech. Later, the squad fell short of winning its fourth straight title, losing to UCLA in the NCAA Semifinals. Even women’s basketball, with Final Four expectations abound, couldn’t make it past the NCAA second round.

All told, it was a year to forget.

But despite all the embarrassment, all the losses, all the things that went wrong, things are changing. Before you know it, everything will be back to the way it used to be.

Baseball won nine of its last 10 games, sweeping Southern California to end the season. As bad as the team’s season was, it still finished at .500 — better than a wealth of other collegiate teams.

Men’s basketball’s future couldn’t be brighter as the team returns all of its key players. Freshmen twin powers Brook and Robin Lopez, both given the decision to declare for this month’s NBA Draft, stayed put. With the shooting of sophomores Anthony Goods and Lawrence Hill backed by the Lopez twins, there’s no doubt that bright things are in the Cardinal’s on-court future. And people are taking notice: Stanford was recently listed as one of the top 15 teams for the upcoming season by ESPN.com.

And football might be more rejuvenated than any sport on this campus. With new director Jim Harbaugh at the helm, a once-dead program has been injected with life. Harbaugh, bold and brazen, even challenged the authority of USC demigod Pete Carroll in a story that made national headlines.

“Perhaps the reason it’s been up and down here [at Stanford] is that no one has stayed here 20 years,” Harbaugh told CBS Sportsline. “Charlie Weis is going to do that at Notre Dame. [Jim] Tressel at Ohio State. Pete’s doing it. He’s only got one more year, though. He’ll be there one more year. That’s what I’ve heard. I heard it inside the staff.”

After an understandably rash response from Carroll, Harbaugh, who apparently is a fan of “300” and “Gladiator,” said, “We bow to no man. We bow to no program here at Stanford University.”

It might not have been the wisest move for the new Cardinal coach, but it brought a certain enthusiasm to the Stanford program that has been missing since the days of Willlingham. And you gotta love it.

And even as we speak, things are looking up.

Men’s golf, coming into the NCAA Championships as a significant underdog, stunned the competition and won a national title in the process.

And as “bad” as this year may have been, you’ve got to remember the context we’re working with: Stanford athletics has won the Directors’ Cup, awarded to the nation’s best athletic program, year after year. Only one school — UCLA — has more national titles.

It really is hard to live up to the reputation of Stanford’s athletics year after year. This may have been the worst year in the history of Stanford sports in many eyes, yet the University is still on target to win the Directors’ Cup. So maybe it wasn’t all that bad.

And you know what? Things are only going to get better.

Reflecting near the end of my first year in college, I think I’ve finally come to the realization: It’s great to be a Tree.

At least we at The Daily didn’t catch Azia Kim playing football. Or did we? Contact Jack Salisbury at jack24@stanford.edu.