Search committee left out important presidential candidate

Provost John Hennessey’s recent appointment as Stanford’s 10th president has been remarkable only in that students and faculty alike seem to have overlooked another, more viable candidate. While Hennessey’s contributions as provost and as a professor in the Electrical Engineering Department are indisputable, I feel that a university such as Stanford deserves, and in fact requires, the "total package" in its president.
First of all, few have addressed the importance of having an alumnus as president. Henessey is not a Stanford alumnus, and therefore has no idea what it’s really like to be a student, graduate or undergraduate, at Stanford. He doesn’t know the student traditions, like Full Moon on the Quad, and as a techie, he doesn’t understand the importance that athletics plays on this campus.
Perhaps most astonishing is the fact that there exists a candidate with all the above qualifications, and yet he has received practically zero consideration for the job. I speak, of course, of John Elway.
Elway holds several clear advantages over Hennessey as a presidential candidate. As an alumnus ( Class of 1983) he is certainly familiar with the Stanford undergraduate experience, and his bachelor’s degree in Economics (3.0 GPA) provides a greater link between Stanford’s rival techie and fuzzie factions than the former head of the School of Engineering.
All of this is rendered meaningless, of course, when you consider the huge disparities in arm strength and quick release between the two. Quite simply, Hennessey has never been able to spread the field to beat a man press. He cannot throw the long ball, so his receivers see nothing but tight bump-n-run defense, which leads to a steady diet of safety blitzes. He gets nervous in the pocket and before you know it he has thrown two interceptions, been sacked three times and signed off on a disastrous hospital merger with UCSF.
I know what you’re thinking, "Hennessey can read defenses so well, right? Shouldn’t this, combined with his high-ranking position at Microsoft, give him an edge over Elway?" Well, in a word, no.
Ask any scout, Hennessey is simply too short to see over the lineman. Hennessey may know the game, and he may be able to recognize the blitz well, but he just doesn’t have the physical tools to exploit it like Elway does, and in the end, he lacks the mental toughness of the Comeback Kid. In 16 years, Elway engineered 48 come-from-behind fourth-quarter drives, and we’re going to go with a guy who came from Villanova? They’re not even Division 1!
I do hope it’s not too late to consider another candidate for our University’s tenth president: a legend in his own time, the man of the century, the future of Stanford University – Hall of Famer John Albert Elway.