David Shaw and Summer Sanders, one of the hosts of the female centric show We Need to Talk, attended Stanford as students at the same time so when it came time for the show to pick the Stanford head coach's brain a bit, Sanders was the perfect choice for a sit down conversation on camera.
In the interview, Sanders and Shaw spent some time walking around campus and reminiscing, and Shaw also provided some unique insight into how he fought the push to follow his father's footsteps into the coaching profession, how he and his coaching staff handle a talent like Christian McCaffrey, and how he handled interest from NFL teams this past off season after leading the Cardinal to a 12-2 mark.
On if he knew he was going to get into coaching upon graduating from Stanford:
"Absolutely not. Not only did I not know, but I was actively telling people, 'I am not going to coach football.'"
"It was just one of those things, where you choose to go to a place like Stanford, and you have all of these opportunities, and I had two summer internships in asset allocation and financial world where I was having a great time, and really enjoyed that. It wasn't until I graduated and had a few opportunities to do different things, and one of them was to take a year and try this coaching thing out, at the lower level at Western Washington. The first day on the job I realized, "Oh my God. This is for me."
On how he and his staff handle coaching a unique talent like Heisman runner-up ChristianMcCaffrey:
"I hate to use the word coaching. I like to use the word 'tinkering' because there were a lot of things that Christian came in with, that we weren't going to mess with."
"There are certain people that come in at age 17, that are emotionally 40. Christian came in with an absolute workman's mentality. He is tough, he is aggressive, he is physical, he is driven, every single day. So we don't mess with any of that."
On how close he was to taking an NFL job and he approaches those opportunities:
"I never gave it a thought. It was not even an option."
"Before the season started, I said that when those calls start happening later in the year, don't even tell me. Just tell everyone thank you, but no thank you."
"I think that what we're building here is so special, that I want to be a part of it. I want to be here, and I want everyone to know that I want to be here."
Check out the full video for the full interview with Sanders.
https://youtu.be/1AbQi1nmd30