[gailtate]

No, he doesn’t.  The Leland years were pretty lean for football, but at least we had Mike Montgomery and basketball (though I think he was a Geiger hire).  Regardless, though, Leland never had NCAA tier 1 sanctions, never had a scandal that saw a coach be sentenced to jail (1 day, but still), never tried to cancel sports, and then backtrack, and never presided over a sprawling deficit.

But the proble, as Phogge noted, starts above Muir.  MTL and Drell would be fine if there weren’t a div 1 athletics program at Stanford.  At least when Gerhart Casper was puzzled by the concept of collegiate athletics, his Provost was a phenomenal sports fan who is still talked about as a possible NFL commissioner.  Without an ally at the top, Muir’s replacement, though likely not to continue to dig holes, will still be limited in what they can accomplish.

BC

Stanford has always been more inclined towards putting a platonic arm around big-time sports rather than a full-frontal embrace. Think Robin Mamlet (ugly thought I know). So far, I see MTL and P. Drell as the Axis of Benign Neglect for the future of FB and MBB. Depressing. The world doesn't need another Harvard or CalTech. It does need a full-bore Stanford.

It has always seemed to me that the primary goal of the school's head administrators was to distance Stanford from the football factories. If in doing that we could still have a successful team, great. If not, well so be it.

You imply resignation, as if the two things must inevitably be mutually exclusive. To me, what makes Stanford "Stanford" is the success it had fairly recently in football. It exploded the defeatist trope that you can't eat your academic cake and have Rose Bowls, too. You did. So, you can. So what if the NY6 games are typically associated with those "factories"? They're achievable. Yes, even for Stanford precisely because it's "Stanford". I didn't notice any erosion in the University's academic reputation or compromise in the mission due to having an elite football program. Hope to hell this isn't lost on MTL & Co. Hey, if it is, "so be it". BUT it did NOT have to be.

[gailtate]

No, he doesn’t.  The Leland years were pretty lean for football, but at least we had Mike Montgomery and basketball (though I think he was a Geiger hire).  Regardless, though, Leland never had NCAA tier 1 sanctions, never had a scandal that saw a coach be sentenced to jail (1 day, but still), never tried to cancel sports, and then backtrack, and never presided over a sprawling deficit.

But the proble, as Phogge noted, starts above Muir.  MTL and Drell would be fine if there weren’t a div 1 athletics program at Stanford.  At least when Gerhart Casper was puzzled by the concept of collegiate athletics, his Provost was a phenomenal sports fan who is still talked about as a possible NFL commissioner.  Without an ally at the top, Muir’s replacement, though likely not to continue to dig holes, will still be limited in what they can accomplish.

BC

Stanford has always been more inclined towards putting a platonic arm around big-time sports rather than a full-frontal embrace. Think Robin Mamlet (ugly thought I know). So far, I see MTL and P. Drell as the Axis of Benign Neglect for the future of FB and MBB. Depressing. The world doesn't need another Harvard or CalTech. It does need a full-bore Stanford.

It has always seemed to me that the primary goal of the school's head administrators was to distance Stanford from the football factories. If in doing that we could still have a successful team, great. If not, well so be it.

You imply resignation, as if the two things must inevitably be mutually exclusive. To me, what makes Stanford "Stanford" is the success it had fairly recently in football. It exploded the defeatist trope that you can't eat your academic cake and have Rose Bowls, too. You did. So, you can. So what if the NY6 games are typically associated with those "factories"? They're achievable. Yes, even for Stanford precisely because it's "Stanford". I didn't notice any erosion in the University's academic reputation or compromise in the mission due to having an elite football program. Hope to hell this isn't lost on MTL & Co. Hey, if it is, "so be it". BUT it did NOT have to be.