Pac-12 football: Stanford’s David Shaw looks back and ahead

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With Jim Harbaugh having moved on to the San Francisco 49ers, new Stanford Coach David Shaw has some big shoes to fill, but based on the coaches he said have influenced his career, he looks to be up to the challenge.

Shaw’s list of coaching influences began with his father, Willie Shaw, and extended to Jon Gruden and Bill Callahan.

‘Since I’ve been coaching, I’d say 10 to 50 times a year I find people who tell me, ‘Hey, tell your dad I said hi,’’ Shaw said of his father, a coach for more than 30 years.

‘Jon Gruden, I spent five years with Jon Gruden,” Shaw continued. “He beat me up. He threw me in a dark room with mountains of tape to educate me.’

The biggest influence, Shaw said, may have come from his playing days at Stanford under Bill Walsh.

‘Just playing for Bill Walsh for three years was an unbelievable experience,’ he said. ‘Any room he was in, he was the smartest person in the room.’

Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck joined Shaw at Pac-12 Football Media Days, sporting a full beard, perhaps as a sign he is already thinking of the future.

‘I have a feeling it’s my last college football season, and I’m approaching it as such,’ Luck said.

-- Douglas Farmer