Hello, Stanford fans. My name is Jake and, as the title of this post says, I am a brand new Stanford Cardinal fan. I wanted to post here and introduce myself, and explain how I came to become a Cardinal fan.

Let me start off by saying that I am a diehard 49ers football fan and have been since as far back as I can remember. It's in my blood. Seriously.,.,I'm that fan that loses my mind when watching the games. I pace, I yell, I talk to the tv like they can hear me. I can't be any more of a fan than I already am. I'll get back to the 49ers later, as they have a lot to do with my posting this.

With that said, I never used to care for college football for many reasons. First of all, I didn't go to college, so I never really understood the pageantry and the sense of pride many college fans would feel. I didn't get it. The marching band, the mascots, the whole shabang. Didn't get it. Secondly, being a pro football fan. I always looked at college ball as small time. It wasn't pro, and pro teams would only take the best of college players and bring them to the big leagues. That's how I thought and I don't deny it. Bottom line, I spent years not caring about college football in the slightest. It wasn't until I began to pay more attention the the NFL draft and where these kids were coming from that I began to watch the games.

Initially, it was incredibly confusing to me. There were too many teams, too many conferences, too many championship games, and then this insane thing where a computer would spit out what it considered the two best teams and they got to play in college footballs version of the super bowl. It was nuts to me. But then, as I began to watch, I noticed something. These kids played their hearts out. Absolutely left it all on the field. They weren't playing for money or endorsements...they were playing for the love of the game. And that struck me hard. I won't lie, I still watched mainly to scout players that would be in the NFL, but I was becoming more and more intrigued by college football.

A friend told me that an easy way to enjoy the game without getting too caught up in rankings was to pick a conference and a team and root for them. Being as I'm from Sacramento, CA, I settled on the Pac-12 as my chosen conference. It seemed only logical. Now came the hard part, which team? I knew it couldn't be USC or UCLA. Being a 49ers fan, LA teams were the enemy and that wasn't about to change. I won't lie...initially I chose Cal. I did. I liked their uniforms and the fact that their helmets said Cal. It was that simple. But as time passed I realized that I never really felt connected to Cal. The team didn't do anything for me. I'm not a huge fan of the area in genera and it's a little too close to the Raiders for my taste. So I stopped watching.

It wasn't until I watched a documentary on the 49ers legendary head coach, Bill Walsh, that my allegiance truly began to shift. I knew that Walsh had coached at Stanford prior to joining the 49ers, but I had never really paid attention to it until that point. If that wasn't enough, Jim Harbaugh also coached the Cardinal, and I'm a BIG Harbaugh fan. That, coupled with the fact that the team is located a hop skip and a jump away from my beloved 49ers, made the decision absolutely clear. I was to be a Stanford Cardinal fan!

So here we are, the season is upon us and I can't wait. I haven't been this excited for football in a least 3 years (the niners kind of suck right now). As a new fan, what can some of you vets teach me? I want to know it all. Sure I can, and have, googled the teams history, read at lengths about their rivalries and what it means to win those games, and how they haven't won a national championship since 1940. But I want to hear it from a fellow fan. What's the best part about being a Cardinal fan? What's the worst part? What's the most important game of the season for you? I can't wait to talk some ball.