I view the two as comparable. The level Stanford continues to recruit at makes a strong case we're more "relevant" than we were in the prior dark ages. The results on the field are very comparable. Ultimately, I think parsing it too finely misses the point: to the vast majority of the nation we're now, like in that prior period, in the mediocre morass of largely irrelevant bottom tier Power Five teams. We're Indiana. We're Cal. We're Boston College. We're Maryland. People who aren't fans of these teams don't think about these teams and the teams aren't considered viable contenders for the major prizes in college football. That's where we were in 2002-2006 and where we are now.
That being said, if one wants to refer to objective (or at least external) metrics comparing across eras, there's always Sagarin, which allows us to adjust for OutsiderFan's excellent point about how much stronger the Pac-10 was in the prior period compared to the Pac-12 now. Here's what the computers think:
2002: #74
2003: #69
2004: #46
2005: #42
2006: #104
2017: #14
2018: #24
2019: #73
2020: #38 (algorithm was wild that year and at another time post-season I saw us at #75....bottom line is with the small sample and lack of non-conference games this became an unreliable data point)
2021: #89
A few ways to slice this:
* As five year eras, the current era (47.6 average, 38 median) is certainly better than the prior dark ages (67 average, #69 median).
* As a three year era, the current era (66.67 average, #73 median) is arguably worse than the aforementioned combined Teevens-Harris reign as well as the Teevens era (63 average, #69 median).
If the last three years are indicative of the current state of the program, nobody should view what we have now as better than what we had under Teevens and Harris. Very similar results.
In any case, again, all this parsing obscures the reality on a question like "relevance," which is that there's a whole morass of Power Five teams that are out of sight and out of mind for the college football world. Whether we're #42 or #89, we're irrelevant. Teevens' best team was akin to last year's Oregon State team. Big whoop.
That being said, if one wants to refer to objective (or at least external) metrics comparing across eras, there's always Sagarin, which allows us to adjust for OutsiderFan's excellent point about how much stronger the Pac-10 was in the prior period compared to the Pac-12 now. Here's what the computers think:
2002: #74
2003: #69
2004: #46
2005: #42
2006: #104
2017: #14
2018: #24
2019: #73
2020: #38 (algorithm was wild that year and at another time post-season I saw us at #75....bottom line is with the small sample and lack of non-conference games this became an unreliable data point)
2021: #89
A few ways to slice this:
* As five year eras, the current era (47.6 average, 38 median) is certainly better than the prior dark ages (67 average, #69 median).
* As a three year era, the current era (66.67 average, #73 median) is arguably worse than the aforementioned combined Teevens-Harris reign as well as the Teevens era (63 average, #69 median).
If the last three years are indicative of the current state of the program, nobody should view what we have now as better than what we had under Teevens and Harris. Very similar results.
In any case, again, all this parsing obscures the reality on a question like "relevance," which is that there's a whole morass of Power Five teams that are out of sight and out of mind for the college football world. Whether we're #42 or #89, we're irrelevant. Teevens' best team was akin to last year's Oregon State team. Big whoop.