Stanford's Jerod Haase channels inner Ted Lasso, tells fans to 'be curious' amid hot seat chatter

On Thursday evening, the Stanford Cardinal sealed their regular season with a victory over their Bay Area rival Cal.

However, despite the big win and the seniors being sent out the right way in front of a huge crowd, the talk of the postgame was Jerod Haase. The head coach's days appear to be numbered in Palo Alto, with former players calling for changes, and the team seemingly on their way to missing the tournament for an eighth-straight year under Haase.

While he was asked directly about being on the hot seat, to which Haase assured reporters that he wasn't focused on the outside noise which included former Stanford stars Casey Jacobsen and Josh Childress saying it was time for a change. In order to possibly make fans think of the human element or consider what he has endured as the head coach he quoted an iconic coach.

Jerod Haase

Rob Gray-USA TODAY Sports

The coach he quoted isn't a real person but nonetheless has had a major impact on sports and society over the past few years in Apple's Ted Lasso. When answering a question about being on the hot seat, and the criticism he has faced, Haase hinted at more things being an issue than people realize.  

"I do think it's great...to have a program and to build a program in today's day and age there's so many components to that," explained Haase. Nowadays it's things like NIL and transfers, was never really a thing in the past. But it's also so many things like we had a great home court advantage today, that's a big deal. How you travel, how you do things within a program there's so many things. Having former players invested and interested in the program is so great and we have the greatest group, unbelievable group of former players and to be the program that we want to be that's a wonderful thing to have interest and investment in the program."

Something that led to him quoting Lasso as he appears to be somewhat hinting at people not knowing everything that goes on within the program.

"I would say with everything, you know the Ted Lasso kind of quote of 'be curious'. I think we're at a time right now that everybody should be curious, and when your curious you ask questions, you learn, you grow you figure what are the deficiencies. You identify those and then you try and solve them. But now is a wonderful time for everyone, myself, players, fans, former players, anybody around Stanford... be curious. And when you are curious you start asking questions and you learn and you grow and that's when you get solutions."

What he means with this statement is up for interpretation, but the consensus around the country is that his time in Palo Alto is coming to a close fairly soon. The 13-17 Cardinal are still awaiting the final seeding of the Pac-12 Tournament but would need a miracle run to make it any further than the second round.