As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, and still lives here, I'm more than familiar with Stanford. I'm also more than familiar with their football team, which is horrible beyond belief. Thus, the following move by Stanford strikes me as rather odd, because I can't see anyway this works out well for the school.

The school is offering full refunds on season ticket purchases if you think this year's team sucks. Seriously.


The thing is that Stanford recently refurbished its football stadium for $100 million, and no one ever shows up. So this hairbrained scheme should at least put some butts in the seats.

Now the question is: How much money is Stanford going to lose as a result of this? Uh, a lot.

Stanford has won TWO - yes two - home games in the past two years. Oddly enough, I actually attended one of those games. It was Stanford's opening game against San Jose St. last year and even though Stanford won by I think a score of 30-3, I wanted my money back for the seats I didn't even pay for.

Even worse, the best player on the field for Stanford was their kicker, which is never a good sign.

There's only one caveat about this money-back-guarantee. And that is that you have to turn in your tickets before the Nov. 15th game against USC. Obviously, Stanford is trying to capitalize on the fact that they stunned a bored senseless USC team last year 24-23.

Somehow, I think USC will remember last season's loss and look to hang 100 up on the scoreboard in Palo Alto this year. So if you can somehow manage to watch USC shove a football down Stanford's throat at a bar, you should be able to make out like a bandit given this deal.

Of course, one wonders why you'd ever want to attend a Stanford game in the first place, money back guarantee or not.

[HT: Deadspin via SF Gate]