Benedict Umeh and Davis Warren both have faced blood cancer diagnoses already in their young lives. Umeh has even been through a recurrence of Hodgkin's lymphoma. In this video, they talk about their respective journeys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et-2BUoI52g
1. We needed that. Morale among players and fans (and donors?) was low coming off back-to-back blowouts. There needs to be progress or else we will remain mired in the death spiral. Any program needs some wins if it has any hope of keeping the faith. As bad as we've been, we've somehow managed to win seven of the last ten home games. Hopefully this is healing some scar tissue and building some habits of community among the faithful. Beating Georgia Tech was assisted by Stanford being far healthier than Georgia Tech in terms of key player availability, the late kickoff and attendant customary second half doldrums for the visitors, and Georgia Tech's joke of a line holding all over the place (key calls against both teams....wish refs could have seen clear that this wasn't 49ers vs. Falcons and not called the game so tightly). But a win is a win and we deserved this one. Are we an improved team? Too soon to tell. Sagarin (#78) and SP+ (#102) view it more like repeating last year's modest improvement from the subterranean baseline. Our scoreboard outcomes a third of the way in are consistent with the rest of this era. The offense and defense look like 90-100 kind of units nationally, though offense is hopefully trending up with the shot in the arm from Nico Brown and Prongos. The hope that this is actual bona fide progress rests in the coaching staff progressing on a learning curve, health being better the remainder than the first third (uncertain but plausible), and some underlying fundamentals being better than the scoreboard has shown.
2. That last point could go either way. I'm not sold we're better than we've looked. We may be though. The yards per play margin on the season so far is looking like it might be a leading indicator of fundamental underlying improvement in our quality (right now over a half yard per play better margin than last year, which itself was our most competitive team of the 5+ year era). As of now, yesterday's scoreboard was befitting the #55 team, which is our best performance of the year and would have been third or fourth last year. If this is the start of a post-Brown and Prongos return upswing, the team may be improved. If this was a relative high point, no bueno. Within the specific structure of yesterday's game, the basic story was neither defense being capable of stopping the opponent but Stanford clearly being more dominant. Second half sleepiness probably contributed, but it's what happened. We scored 3.4 points per drive, elite offense kind of scoring against a sub-par defense (similar to Cal but possibly the worst we face going forward outside of Elon). We looked more like Tennessee than Colorado. It was our biggest points per drive scoring explosion against a power team in over half a decade, going back to the 2021 USC game. Even if one quibbles that the double overtime Colorado game should count since one drive was three plays to end a half, that's remarkable to be in that conversation considering 2026 Georgia Tech's defense may or may not be as bad as those USC and Colorado defenses and considering that we were bad in the red zone last night and still scored so much. We got to the 29 and got no points, the 7 and got 3 points, the 13 and no points, and the 6 and 3 points....and still had one of our most scoring at will games of the decade. That's something to build on. We gave up 2.7 points per drive, quite a lot to give up to a thoroughly mediocre offense. That that's the least we've given up against the last four power opponents going back to last year's finale is a testament to how much the defense is reeling. These guys are really struggling to stop people.
3. The defensive struggles have to fall squarely on Richard. There is no way this collection of players should produce such a permissive environment. The seven years removed from playcalling/mostly out of football the last three years coordinator is not covering himself in glory. We looked better with Andy Thompson calling the shots. I can't say the scheme looks coherent in terms of what we're trying to accomplish or that the players look like they embody the ruthless and relentless mantra we heard ad nauseum. Richard has a lot to prove the rest of the way. In this game, 6.07 yards per play allowed against the #85 yards per play offense is sorry. We were significantly closer to Mercer's level of defense than to Colorado or Tennessee. Thankfully, the offense uncorked 6.60 yards per play, our most in the last 11 games (going back to the San Jose State shootout), 0.17 off what ranked Tennessee mustered, and massively more than Colorado and Mercer. The offense made optimism about its future look reasonable.
4. The main thing that shined, of course, was the passing game. It was even more sparkling statistically, aside from total yards, than last year's Virginia and San Jose State passing extravaganzas. You have to go back almost exactly four years to the 2022 Washington game for passing efficiency against an FBS opponent like last night. This was an awesome performance by QB, receivers, and pass protection. There is an element of enemy gets a vote that needs to be acknowledged, as Georgia Tech's secondary is decimated. Nonetheless, we more than doubled up Tennessee's passing output with four more yards per attempt and more than 40 more passer rating points (and Tennessee did a lot better than Colorado). This was a majestic passing game. We really tried to establish the run, with 37 carries 14-15 more than in either of our other ACC games. It was not very effective, a yard less per carry than we averaged against Miami or Duke. That's pretty remarkable considering we only gave up one sack compared to four against Duke. The run game's inefficacy was especially pathetic in light of a bad Yellow Jacket run defense that gave up about a yard and a half per carry more to Colorado, over four yards more per carry to Tennessee, and nearly two yards more per carry to Mercer. This game reinforced that Stanford has a miserable run game. That said, we did attempt rushes 37 times total and one has to think that commitment played into play action working so well. No complaints about what Pritchard is dialing up. The woes are due to point of attack run blocking by the line and tight ends. On defense, it's hard to get past giving up five yards per carry for the second game in a row, the worst anybody has done against this Rambling Wreck run game, which had half of its primary 1-2 punch out with injury. We made the third string guy look like a star. For all our talk about run defense, we are now 104th in yards per carry allowed and 125th in PFF run defense grade, highly correlated with being 127th in PFF tackling grade. The run defense has fallen apart under Richard. We defended the pass worse than Tennessee and better than Colorado, which is surprisingly respectable since those are good and sub-par but not terrible pass defenses respectively.
Dante Moore slid after a big gain and U$C's Desman Stephens hits Moore in the head, helmet to helmet. Moore laid motionless on the ground for 8 minutes and was taken off in an ambulance. Below is the hit and Stephens' celebration while Moore is lying on the ground. Despicable, even for a Condom. Fortunately, Moore has movement in all his extremities, though remains in the hospital.
https://x.com/BrickCenter_/status/210400..._&ref_url=
https://x.com/CamMellor/status/210400533..._&ref_url=
LET'S *$%* GO!!
This info used to be readily available on gostanford but not anymore.
In case anyone else is looking for the Game audio (for pregame coverage at least, even if you’ll watch on ESPN in 30 minutes).
Nneka had some sweet things to say about the Stanford sisterhood: https://youtu.be/5lUTWPkiy_I?t=224&is=tRyyAlX0lixmu9tJ
Here’s the full ceremony with a tribute from her #1 fan, Chiney: https://youtu.be/hK2wACTKXV4?is=lyM-0WfmNbuaOpjF
So glad to have witnessed many wonderful moments in her journey thus far. Can’t wait to where she takes her leadership talent next - maybe beyond women’s basketball?!
The Youtube video begins around the 20minute mark. It’s replayable at the moment.
The parts I found interesting, average net-effective tuition for undergrads was less than $24k, and nearly 90% of undergrads graduated with no student debt. 2026-27 list price tuition is $67.7k so the average tuition discount from list price was ~63%. It would be interesting to know the median net-effective tuition. As with last year those with family income <$150k pay no tuition and those with family income <$100k pay no tuition, room or board (room and board is $23k)
Quote:"Today, Stanford University announced a 31.7% investment return in its Merged Pool for the year ending June 30, 2026, bringing its 5- and 10-year annualized return to 10.3% and 12.5%, respectively. These returns are net of all internal and external costs, but do not reflect federal excise taxes, which rise to 8.0% this academic year for Stanford and a very small number of other universities.
Stanford’s performance surpassed the 15.5% median return for U.S. college and university endowments last year, as preliminarily reported by Cambridge Associates. Over 5 and 10 years, the median college and university endowment returned 7.2% and 9.9% per year, respectively. Over the same 1-, 5-, and 10-year periods, a typical “70/30” passive portfolio of global stocks and high-quality U.S. bonds returned an annualized 17.8%, 7.4%, and 9.3%, respectively.
...
In fiscal year 2027, beginning Sept. 1, 2026, the Merged Pool will disburse more than $2.2 billion to the university, representing roughly one-fifth of Stanford’s operating budget. Distributions from the Merged Pool support Stanford’s teaching and research, and help make the university accessible and affordable.
Total financial aid and other student support from Stanford resources will reach a record $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2027, with endowment distributions contributing nearly half. With these dedicated resources, Stanford announced that it [did not increase undergraduate tuition] for the 2026-27 academic year and that families of undergraduates with annual incomes below $100,000 pay no tuition, room, or board, while those with [incomes below $150,000 pay no tuition]. Last year, 60% of undergraduate students were awarded financial aid, average net-effective tuition for all undergraduates was less than $24,000, and nearly 90% of students graduated with no student debt.[font=system-ui, -apple-system, 'system-ui', '.SFNSText-Regular', sans-serif]dent debt."[/font]
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/0...LPls821lJw