[SamuelMcF]

What I can’t see is how Stanford can achieve any level of football excellence in the current transfer-driven system. USC has 26 transfers on the team? (Seven starters on the defense, I think I heard.) You’re rooting for the uniform, not the players — how do you have time to get to know the players? At Stanford, it’s an accomplishment to get one transfer. I’m reminded of the fact that the University of Chicago used to be a football powerhouse…

Michigan, Ohio State, Clemson, and Iowa are all doing so with very few or zero transfers. You can still achieve football excellence with excellent coaching, recruiting, development, and S&C. The first 3 have all four, and Iowa has three (their OC sucks and recruiting is good-not-great). We have 0.5 if you look at recruiting rankings and ignore the depth holes everywhere.


Copy-pasting my reply from when this question was posted a while ago:


"I agree with this. Even though transfer portal-mania and NIL likely put a ceiling on the program, it's a high ceiling. We could feasibly get back to consistent 8-10 win seasons here with some relatively simple changes. (I don't think 2010-15 was sustainable either.)

Here is what a new coach could do, perfectly legitimately, to keep the program competitive (as you can probably tell, I believe Shaw will not do any of this):


From a recruiting/roster management standpoint:

- Sign full 20+ classes every year that address every single position. The Stanford brand is enough to recruit top-25 classes on its own, and there are easily enough 4* or high 3* guys out there with the grades. (Not all will be interested, but TRY.)
     - As a subset of this, the trenches are the most important position on the field besides QB. Recruit 3-4 OL and 2-3 DL every single year. Period.
     - I do think the staff is starting to do this now.

- Actively pursue a handful of high-academic grad transfers every year at positions of need. The goal should be to sign 1-2 guys that can immediately contribute and address glaring depth issues we've continued to see. Leverage the Master of Liberal Arts program to get them in. (Tara did this with the Northwestern grad transfer.) Stop relying on non-mega-whale freshmen to be immediate depth. That's not how college football works.

- This one may be a bit controversial, but recruit players who are football first and happen to be smart. The team is currently full of guys who are primarily smart and happen to play football. We're seeing the difference.


From a coaching standpoint:

- Hire good coordinators and let them call everything. The best thing a CEO can do is adapt and adjust strategy to follow where the puck is going.

- Fire assistants who aren't recruiting P5-level guys or whose position rooms have horrifically underperformed (unless there's a good explanation/it's a one-year aberration type of thing). Replace them with hungry G5 coaches or NFL assistants with previous P5 experience who know how to recruit.

- As a corollary to the above two points: if you're the HC and you're making 6+M a year, and the AD won't give you a bigger assistant salary pool, take a pay cut to fund the above and attract great assistant and support staff. Making 5M a year for 10 years sounds way better than making 6+ for 4, but that's just me.

- Seniority should mean nothing in a position battle, unless knowledge of playbook/scheme legitimately moves the needle between two guys who are neck and neck. (And that second younger guy should still see some backup snaps and breathe down the older guy's neck. If he makes more plays in fewer snaps, guess who's gonna get more snaps?) Every position battle should be a real battle. Every season.


From a broader NIL and campus/community standpoint:

- Give free tickets to surrounding high schools. Get butts in seats. It's not like they're filling up anyways (and obviously winning would help in the first place).

- Leverage Stanford's Silicon Valley connections to create a relatively small NIL fund for players. A few grand here and there to promote an alum VC's portfolio startups, for example. Have Chris Marinelli sponsor the Tunnel Worker's Union. We don't need to be throwing Miami $$$ around, IMO (and really shouldn't, though our alums probably could if they wanted), and it's more of a nice to have since the guys coming here aren't coming for the NIL in the first place.


Of course, all the above relies on having an AD who actually gives a shit about on-field performance, which we don't have either."


A couple of the above are happening, but most are not.

[SamuelMcF]

What I can’t see is how Stanford can achieve any level of football excellence in the current transfer-driven system. USC has 26 transfers on the team? (Seven starters on the defense, I think I heard.) You’re rooting for the uniform, not the players — how do you have time to get to know the players? At Stanford, it’s an accomplishment to get one transfer. I’m reminded of the fact that the University of Chicago used to be a football powerhouse…

Michigan, Ohio State, Clemson, and Iowa are all doing so with very few or zero transfers. You can still achieve football excellence with excellent coaching, recruiting, development, and S&C. The first 3 have all four, and Iowa has three (their OC sucks and recruiting is good-not-great). We have 0.5 if you look at recruiting rankings and ignore the depth holes everywhere.


Copy-pasting my reply from when this question was posted a while ago:


"I agree with this. Even though transfer portal-mania and NIL likely put a ceiling on the program, it's a high ceiling. We could feasibly get back to consistent 8-10 win seasons here with some relatively simple changes. (I don't think 2010-15 was sustainable either.)

Here is what a new coach could do, perfectly legitimately, to keep the program competitive (as you can probably tell, I believe Shaw will not do any of this):


From a recruiting/roster management standpoint:

- Sign full 20+ classes every year that address every single position. The Stanford brand is enough to recruit top-25 classes on its own, and there are easily enough 4* or high 3* guys out there with the grades. (Not all will be interested, but TRY.)
     - As a subset of this, the trenches are the most important position on the field besides QB. Recruit 3-4 OL and 2-3 DL every single year. Period.
     - I do think the staff is starting to do this now.

- Actively pursue a handful of high-academic grad transfers every year at positions of need. The goal should be to sign 1-2 guys that can immediately contribute and address glaring depth issues we've continued to see. Leverage the Master of Liberal Arts program to get them in. (Tara did this with the Northwestern grad transfer.) Stop relying on non-mega-whale freshmen to be immediate depth. That's not how college football works.

- This one may be a bit controversial, but recruit players who are football first and happen to be smart. The team is currently full of guys who are primarily smart and happen to play football. We're seeing the difference.


From a coaching standpoint:

- Hire good coordinators and let them call everything. The best thing a CEO can do is adapt and adjust strategy to follow where the puck is going.

- Fire assistants who aren't recruiting P5-level guys or whose position rooms have horrifically underperformed (unless there's a good explanation/it's a one-year aberration type of thing). Replace them with hungry G5 coaches or NFL assistants with previous P5 experience who know how to recruit.

- As a corollary to the above two points: if you're the HC and you're making 6+M a year, and the AD won't give you a bigger assistant salary pool, take a pay cut to fund the above and attract great assistant and support staff. Making 5M a year for 10 years sounds way better than making 6+ for 4, but that's just me.

- Seniority should mean nothing in a position battle, unless knowledge of playbook/scheme legitimately moves the needle between two guys who are neck and neck. (And that second younger guy should still see some backup snaps and breathe down the older guy's neck. If he makes more plays in fewer snaps, guess who's gonna get more snaps?) Every position battle should be a real battle. Every season.


From a broader NIL and campus/community standpoint:

- Give free tickets to surrounding high schools. Get butts in seats. It's not like they're filling up anyways (and obviously winning would help in the first place).

- Leverage Stanford's Silicon Valley connections to create a relatively small NIL fund for players. A few grand here and there to promote an alum VC's portfolio startups, for example. Have Chris Marinelli sponsor the Tunnel Worker's Union. We don't need to be throwing Miami $$$ around, IMO (and really shouldn't, though our alums probably could if they wanted), and it's more of a nice to have since the guys coming here aren't coming for the NIL in the first place.


Of course, all the above relies on having an AD who actually gives a shit about on-field performance, which we don't have either."


A couple of the above are happening, but most are not.