The fact that I love sports is well-documented, but I love football the most. I know this because, despite being an avid baseball fan, I only watch San Francisco Giants games with any regularity. Baseball is exciting, unpredictable, and emotional but I just don’t get invested in games played by other teams.
I love football, though.
#StanUReDo: The Cure for the Stanford Football Off-Season
I will watch football games played by teams in any conference and at any level — NFL, all divisions of college, the Canadian Football League (CFL) and even, on occasion, high school ball. I’m talking preseason games and spring practices. The game doesn’t even have to be live and it doesn’t matter if I know the outcome, I can’t get enough. I’ve been known to attend a Stanford game and then watch it on DVR immediately after arriving home, and sometimes again the next day. I might have a sickness. No joke, though, I feel out of sorts in the offseason.
Two years ago, in the midst of a particularly long and treacherous off-season, I sent out the following tweet from a bar in Vancouver, where I was vacationing:
With a few minutes, I received some empathetic responses from the Twitter community, who identified with my plight:
I hope you read Donald’s tweet. See, a few weeks earlier, in a similarly football-starved state, a group of us spontaneously decided to tweet the 2011 Orange Bowl after the following exchange.
And it was glorious. After those two experiences, it was obvious that I wasn’t alone in my off-season blues. Moreover, I realized that it’s not just football that I long for, it’s the sense of community that football season brings. It’s easy to watch a game in the offseason, but this impromptu event allowed me to relive a great game with a group of like-minded friends. It was as close to a real game experience as we’d all felt in a while.
Back to Vancouver. I quickly organized our next watch party, the 2013 Rose Bowl, for shortly after I returned from vacation. And with one tweet, #StanUReDo was born:
So what is this #StanUReDo I keep mentioning? #StanUReDo is a planned Twitter watch party of an old Stanford Football game. We watch the same game footage, start the game at the same time, and tweet our analysis, observations, and color commentary with the hashtag #StanUReDo. To break down the hashtag: “StanU” is for Stanford University; “ReDo” is because we’re essentially “redoing” a game. And, well, it rhymes. [Disclaimer: StanUReDo is not affiliated with Stanford University or the athletic department.]
#StanUReDo started with four or five participants, but gradually built a following over time. Depending on the time of year, 20+ people participate, and I hope that it continues to grow. The secret sauce is not just the game, but the engagement of like-minded fans.
#StanUReDo is the cure for the offseason.
To date, I’ve hosted eight #StanUReDo events, and two more are planned before the beginning of the season. It’s a lot of fun and I am so grateful to my fellow Stanford Twitter Coaches (term coined by @GregCrawford) for making both the football season and offseason a lot more fun.
The next #StanUReDo is scheduled for Saturday, August 20 at 11 AM PDT, and we’ll watch 2013 Stanford v. Notre Dame. For the first time, we will be joined by a special guest tweeter, former Stanford cornerback Wayne Lyons. I am beyond grateful for his involvement, and we’re all looking forward to hearing about the game from his vantage point.
The final #StanUReDo of the season will be Saturday, September 10 at 6:30 PM PDT (Stanford’s bye week). Game is to be determined. Additional details are available on the StanUReDo website if you’d like to join us for August 20, September 10, or any future event. We’re not experts, we’re just passionate fans, and we’d love to have you.
Hang in there football fans. The season is just around the corner. You’ve survived the worst part of this offseason, and real football will be here before you know it. I know that I’ll be fine; I have Giants baseball and #StanUReDo to look forward to.
