Stanford's Christian McCaffrey adjusting to his newfound stardom

Christian McCaffrey was on the go Friday, being whisked from one station to another at Pac-12 Media Days. He'd fulfilled the dozen or so scheduled meetings before wrapping up a 20-minute session with the print media set up in the main room at the Hollywood & Highland Center. Then he fielded a few more questions while doing a walk-and-talk as he was escorted down to the Pac-12 Networks set five stories below, where a TV interview waited.  

Literally three minutes before someone from Jimmy Kimmel Live approached McCaffrey and told him they hoped they could have him on the show sometime, the Stanford junior was talking about how surreal it all is that celebs from the music world that he's idolized now want to meet him. "That's been the coolest thing," he said.

More than any returning player in college football this fall, the Stanford junior running back/return man is the face of the sport for 2016. Last season, he piled up a jaw-dropping 3,864 all-purpose yards, a single-season NCAA record, and finished as the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. He also earned Academic All-American honors. The media has fawned over stories about his bloodlines, even how well he can play a harmonica (self-taught btw) after video of McCaffrey playing a spot-on version of Billy Joel's "Piano Man" surfaced last month.

In this day and age, our young stars tend to fall into two categories -- one, those who seem like they're living on the edge, talking in the third person, as if they're acting out some movie script on the excess of a rising star athlete; the other kind, is the throwback guy, almost too-good-to-be-true. The reality is almost all of these guys are probably somewhere in the middle. Still, on Friday, McCaffrey sure did hit all the right notes.

Asked about how he's been able to juggling all the attention, McCaffrey replied, "It's not hard to balance, if you don't make it hard. I remember what is most important -- God, my family and my friends and winning football games."

Later when I asked how he felt about being a role model, McCaffrey spoke about how important it is to be a positive figure and utilizing your platform to spread a positive light and to inspire people to do the right thing. 

When it comes to speaking up on issues that are much bigger than football, he said, "I think it is both an opportunity and an obligation."

Doing so, especially on social media can backfire and draw some unwanted attention at a time where so many things are so polarizing.

"I caution guys about taking up causes unless they completely understand what they're talking about, and completely understand their positions so if they do say something they can defend their positions with facts and not just, 'well, this is what I was thinking at the time,'" Stanford coach David Shaw said. "I caution them not to be reactionary. I caution them not to be emotional in the things they say publicly because they do have that platform, and that platform is powerful. I remind these guys that every kid that they shake hands with, they may forget about it but those kids remember it, sometimes for the rest of their lives. And I remind them that my daughter right now plays soccer and she wears (former Cardinal cornerback) Richard Sherman's jersey. She wears 25. Why? Because he came to my house when she was seven years old and he made an impact on her and she's never forgotten it. My son wears 33 in soccer because of (former Cardinal RB) Stepfan Taylor. Your platform is much more powerful than you can possibly imagine so use it cautiously and use is specifically. If there's something you want to say that you truly believe in, I say go ahead and do it but make sure you know what you're talking about and can defend your positions."

Shaw says when it comes to McCaffrey, Stanford doesn't worry about monitoring him too much.

"He's a such a natural," Shaw said. "All I've told him is, 'When it's enough, tell me. We'll shut it down.' If it's, 'Coach, I've got too many responsibilities  I've got a big test this week,' which has happened a few times. 'OK, we'll push these interviews back.' Or 'Let's cancel a couple of them.' 

"It doesn't burden him. He takes it all in stride. What I love about him the most is it doesn't affect anything else in his life. It doesn't affect his schoolwork. It doesn't affect how good he wants to be as a football player. It never feeds his ego so much that he feels like he's arrived. He feels like he's earned the position to be here. He's one of our team spokesmen. He takes that very seriously."

* In 2015, McCaffrey did everything for the Cardinal offense. He rushed for a school-record 2,019 yards. He had a team-best 45 receptions for 645 yards (also tops on the team). He even completed two passes for 39 yards and two TDs. And that doesn't even get into his work as a return man for Stanford. I asked Shaw how he thought the 6-0, 202-pound McCaffrey would do as a defensive back.

"With his footwork, his mentality and his toughness, his aggressiveness, he'd be phenomenal," said Shaw, the son of long-time NFL secondary coach and defensive coordinator Willie Shaw. "My dad would be drooling to make a nickel, a safety or even a corner. He could do it all."

First-round talent as a defensive back? "Yes," Shaw shot back. "No hesitation."

* Whether McCaffrey can win the Heisman this year will be one of the bigger storylines out west, the Pac-12 is trying to do its part. In 2015, seven Stanford games kicked off at 10 PM ET or later. This year, the conference had reduced the number of late starts. That said, when I asked Pac-12 commissioner Friday if that shift was a response to McCaffrey coming in second to Alabama's Derrick Henry due to those late kickoffs and thus less exposure, he didn't buy it. 

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, however, isn't convinced that late kickoffs cost McCaffrey the coveted trophy.

"No one can say for sure," he said, "but I don't think it would have made one iota of difference." Scott pointed to Oregon's Heisman winner Marcus Mariota a year earlier who he said played a similar schedule. (Technically, Mariota had five games that kicked off at 10 PM ET or later in 2014.) The commissioner, though added that there is "no doubt" in his mind that players in the Pac-12 have a "competitive disadvantage" in regards to the Heisman "just based on the zip codes of where the voters are from. Some voters didn't even have (McCaffrey) on their ballot at all (voters are asked to give a top three).

"Many of them are just not watching the games. That's the only conclusion I can come to."

* UCLA coach Jim Mora was asked several times Friday about his gifted sophomore QB Josh Rosen, who created some headlines a few times off the field for either comments he made on social media or that time he was found to have put a hot tub in his dorm.

Mora: "The hot tub I found amusing. I thought it was -- I thought it was a young college student having a little bit of fun. You know, the Donald Trump tweet and then the NCAA tweet, we had conversations about that and about the appearance, about the image that he's projecting for himself and for his University. But I'll tell you this: UCLA has a long history going back to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was Lew Alcindor at the time, and Bill Walton, of having people on their campus that are socially aware and not afraid to rattle the cage a little bit.

"I just want to make sure that Josh understands that this is a different world and that everything that he does say is being analyzed and sometimes overanalyzed, and that he's making good decisions and thinking twice before he speaks once, and more for his future than anything else. But he's a young man, and he's got his own thoughts, and we want to encourage that. But at the same time we want to be socially responsible."

* Washington State coach Mike Leach used the Pac-12 event to say, among other things, that his QB Luke Falk should've won the Heisman last year. The Cougars won nine games last season in the former walk-on quarterback's first season as a starter after they went 3-9 the previous season. His star wideout Gabe Marks made a decent case for the QB as well.

"I call (Falk) the 'Messiah of the Palouse' and 'the CEO' of WAZZU football because he runs the show... Leach gets a lot of credit (for the Cougars' stunning turnaround last season) and he should because he's Mike Leach but Luke is the reason this started working." 

* USC's Zach Banner doesn't exactly look svelte, but the Trojans' mammoth 6-9 offensive tackle told me he shed 45 pounds this off-season down to 342 after playing last year at 387. I'd heard from some Pac-12 coaches that last year Banner was one of the league's most improved players. I asked him what clicked for him and he pointed back to hip surgeries to address a structural condition that he said had limited his flexibility. The surgery he said fixed those issues and has helped make him a much better player.

* Last week on our Facebook Live show, my colleague Stew Mandel and I discussed the awkward aspect of SEC commissioner Greg Sankey being the NCAA's chairman of its Committee on Infractions. (He's set to be in that position until 2019.) My feeling is that dynamic doesn't look right, and smacks of a conflict of interest. Larry Scott was asked about that on Thursday and said "I would not be opposed to an outside group taking the place of the Committee on Infractions. It'd be cleaner."

I agree. How that would work logistically is another matter.