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2013 college football: 17 odds and ends you might have missed

16. Stanford flexes football endowment muscle

STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Shannon Turley (l.), Stanford's strength and conditioning coach, speaks with head football coach, David Shaw, at practice.

  • By Ross Atkin Staff writer

Stanford is a leader in endowing sports coaching positions. Head football coach David Shaw is officially the Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football, and his offensive and defensive coordinators also hold endowed positions. Now, in the latest such development, Shannon Turley, a strength and conditioning expert who’s been with Stanford since 2007, is the university’s first Kissick Family Director of Football Sports Performance. His contribution to Stanford’s football transformation is not in coaching the X’s and Os, but in executing a key Stanford goal of making the team physically dominant, according to John Kissick, a school alum whose family is endowing the position.

Coach Shaw says assistant coach Turley has been a “driving force” in achieving three goals: to make the team healthier, stronger, and better able to finish and win games in the fourth quarter and overtime. The results in the latter regard are impressive: Last season while winning the Pac-12 championship and Rose Bowl, Stanford won eight games in the fourth quarter or overtime and did not allow a single point to be scored in those periods in its last six games.

Turley earned his bachelors degree from Virginia Tech in 2000 in human nutrition and foods, with a minor in chemistry. Before arriving at “The Farm” in Palo Alto, Calif., he spent time imparting his strength and conditioning lessons to baseball’s minor-league Wichita Wranglers, as well as to athletes at the University of Missouri and the University of San Diego.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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