David Shaw has been the head coach at Stanford for two years, and I'm telling you, the guy doesn't know thing one about how to be a head coach.

Stanford coach David Shaw said the Cougars were one of the most physical team the Cardinal faced last year and he expects more of the same when they meet on Saturday. Ron Chenoy/US Presswire

Sure, he has gone 11-2 two seasons in a row, and the Cardinal won its first Pac-12 Conference championship in 13 years. OK, fine, he beat Oregon at Oregon. He turned USC into Stanford's lapdog (four in a row if you're counting at home, and trust me, every Cardinal fan is counting at home).

And yeah, Shaw switched quarterbacks at midseason and pinned Stanford's Rose Bowl hopes on a redshirt freshman, Kevin Hogan, who proceeded to beat four ranked conference opponents in four weeks.

But that has nothing to do with the art and science of being a head coach. You know, the guy who wins games and demands money. Says all the right things in public, while his agent holds the athletic director hostage. Goes to a recruiting dinner on Friday night and accepts a new job Saturday morning.

Shaw doesn't know the first thing about any of that. He's 40 years old, he's been a head coach for two years, and he somehow thought it appropriate to negotiate a new contract with Stanford by himself. Without his agent, but presumably with a "Kick me" sign taped to his back.

Does the American Football Coaches Association know about this? Are we talking reprimand?

"We were not going to be too far apart, and we didn't start too far apart," Shaw said of his negotiation with athletic director Bernard Muir. "It didn't take us too long to wrap it all up."

To quote another Stanford man, John McEnroe: "You cannot be serious!" Shaw missed the part of the coaching curriculum where the professor explained that schools no longer have loyalty, so the coach shouldn't have any, either.

Shaw coaches football from another era, a smashmouth, physical brand of football that looks like the Big Ten when Bo and Woody strode the sideline. Offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton had a motto printed on every offensive playbook: "Pound 'em and score 50."

I'm never going to hold another job over Stanford and say, 'Hey, if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to go with the place that does. I don't negotiate like that. I've been telling you since the beginning that this is where I want to be.

--Stanford coach David Shaw

Shaw negotiates from another era, too. He loves Stanford. He trusts Stanford. It nurtured him as a boy, when his dad, Willie, did two tours of duty as an assistant. It transformed him into a man, when he played football and graduated with a degree in sociology. He got married in Memorial Church on the Stanford campus.

"I'm never going to hold another job over Stanford and say, 'Hey, if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to go with the place that does,'" Shaw said. "I don't negotiate like that. I've been telling you since the beginning that this is where I want to be."

Did I say trust? That's not trust. That's fantasy land.

"I have no problem saying that, if I was any place else in America, I would completely turn it over to my agent and we would have done the whole dance that a lot of other people do," Shaw said. "But Stanford's special to me. This was going to work. We were going to make this work. Even in the back of my mind, being an alum, I couldn't imagine turning the program over to anybody else. I wouldn't want to put it in anyone else's hands."

Former athletic director Bob Bowlsby promoted Shaw two years ago when Jim Harbaugh left Stanford to become the San Francisco 49ers head coach. Bowlsby said a group of four players, including quarterback Andrew Luck and linebacker Shayne Skov, came to him and told him they wanted Shaw to be their head coach.

Skov described Shaw as "a guy who understands what we're going through. He has a keen sense of concern for the guys on the team. He knows when to push us and when to step off the gas a little. Stanford presents its own difficulties and hurdles. He just jumps over one after the other."