Stanford RB Love worth staying up late to watch
Sadie Speight and Ethel Young empathize with East Coast Heisman voters.
They, too, want to stay awake to watch Bryce Love, the sensational junior running back from Stanford. They, too, live on the East Coast — Speight in Wilson, N.C., and Young in Columbus, Miss. — and struggle with so many late start times. The Cardinal have kicked off at 10 p.m. ET or later in five of their seven games this season — this week it’s Thursday, 9 ET at Oregon State — and, well, that’s just too late if you’re 94 (Speight) or 92 (Young).
But Love — who is not 100% and is a game-time decision for Thursday — forgives his greatgrandmothers. He knows they need their beauty sleep and have to get up for church in the morning. He’s OK with them DVR’ing his games.
He also understands that Heisman voters, many of them located in the Eastern time zone, need shuteye, too. Love tries to get eight hours of sleep a night himself. That’s how much rest you need after you’ve darted through, around and over defenses to the tune of 10 yards per carry. Exhausting, that work. Love has
1,387 rushing yards this season, which means he’s outgained 91 FBS teams by himself.
Me, I’m not in a forgiving mood. I’m still irked about 2015, when Christian McCaffrey, hands down the best player in college football that season, finished as Heisman runner-up. McCaffrey compiled an NCAA-record 3,864 all-purpose yards that year, Stanford’s own lethal weapon who could hurt teams running, catching and returning. During the
2015 Pac-12 title game between Stanford and Southern California, Trojans defensive coaches could be heard through the press box walls screaming, cursing and pounding tables every time McCaffrey took off for the end zone. Everyone knew where the ball was going, and no one could stop him. Still, it wasn’t good enough to win the most prestigious award in college football, presumably because no one was willing to stay awake and watch it happen in real time. If you don’t think East Coast bias is real, come take up residence on the West Coast for a while.
So to Heisman voters and college football fans across the country, and specifically those located in the Eastern time zone, I say this: Love is worth staying up for. Don’t take my word for it — just ask Stanford offensive coordinator Mike Bloomgren.
If he’d wanted, Love probably could have trained to be an Olympic sprinter. His father Chris, who ran track and played football at South Carolina, coached both his boys in football and track growing up. (Chris Jr. is a senior defensive back at East Carolina.) Both were crazy competitive, but Chris knew he had something special on his hands when Bryce looked up the national youth sprint records and set goals of breaking them, all on his own. Almost a decade later, Bryce is still the USATF recordholder in the 100and 400-meter sprints in two age groups.
During games, Love shows tremendous patience waiting behind his line for holes to open, a skill he learned from McCaffrey. He laughs when thinking back to early in his Stanford career, when he was in such a hurry — partially because 300-pound defenders running full speed to flatten you can make a person panic — “I was just running into people left and right.”
“Your freshman year, you hear all the time that the game is faster, so you think you have to be faster, too,” Love explained. “Well, it doesn’t work. Christian taught me how to wait things out, take what’s there and then break a big run … Patience is about having a really good understanding and feel for other people out there. Once you get that vibe, it’s almost peaceful back there.”
A couple of weeks ago in Salt Lake City, Utah did a tremendous job limiting Love by stacking the box. And yet, on his 18th carry, Love made two defenders miss, then sprinted 68 yards for a score that put the Cardinal up 23-13.
But is anyone seeing it in real time?
Bloomgren jokes that he’s OK with late starts so long as Love does most of his damage early, like two weeks ago against Oregon. The Cardinal kicked off at
8:09 p.m., and within five minutes Love already had 116 rushing yards and two touchdowns.
Back in Wake Forest, N.C., Love’s parents give each other halftime pep talks to stay awake. Accidental sleepovers happen often. It’s not uncommon for Chris and Angela Love to wake up Sunday mornings and find family members sprawled on the couch or snoozing in the guest room, too tired to go back to their own homes after Stanford finishes — provided they stayed awake to see the whole game in the first place.
So what has Chris Love learned living on the most populated coast and sending his boy almost
3,000 miles across the country to play college football?
“Sometimes if you live on the East Coast, you miss the greatest shows on earth,” he says.
To avoid missing anything, let’s all — including the great grandmas — commit to napping during the day. Because bottom line: Love is worth staying up for.