[Farm93]

Stanford simply has to be more flexible. It can't:

- Refuse JC transfers
- Limit itself to a few undergrad transfers (even Cal has like 27 transfers)*
- Require the highest admissions standards of everyone with whom it competes
- Require Grad School admission to stay for a 5th year and push guys to graduate in 4 years
- Look down on or not fully embrace NIL collectives, and paying players

A football-first school can't do those things.  Stanford should never become a football-first school.

Has there been any (good, non-self selecting) survey of football importance to the Stanford's 16,000+ students?

Outsider Fan and MT make excellent points.  What used to be is gone, most likely forever.  We have to learn to live with the new realities as outlined by OF.  Will Stanford change, maybe a little, but my guess we have pretty much changed as much as we are going to change in terms of transfers.  If we change we become more like Colorado and USC, which are academic institutions for the majority of their students but for athletes they are just a factory whose standards bear no resemblance to those of the parent institution.  Football is the one sport that suffers the most in the rules of the new world we are in.  It takes a LOT of players and a good number of very good players to be successful year in and year out. There will always be a few qualified players in the portal, but not USC or Colorado numbers. There may be a lot of 50/50 years coming up.
Stanford has always had challenging standards, it is partially what made it what it is. I don't see those standards changing much just to support athletics.

So why bend over backwards to get into the ACC and give up so much money to get your teeth kicked in? It makes absolutely zero sense. "We're going to make our players travel thousands of miles to be in a power conference for football, and give up tens of millions of dollars to do it, but we're not going to do what it takes to compete, are OK with being a punching bag, further de-valuing our brand, and when the next consolidation comes, we'll be OK being even more in the wilderness than we just were" is not a smart strategy.

If the "surrender monkey" mentality is ultimately going to prevail, why not just stay in a watered down Pac? But I've got news for you. Even IF Stanford were to stay with The Cougs and Beavs, if it doesn't raise its football game by making the yes, COMPROMISES it takes to win, Stanford would get its brains beat in by new Pac teams too.

IOW, if you play football, make the investments and adapt institutionally to be competitive, or drop the sport. 

What is amazing to me is I see no evidence anywhere that any Stanford fans have a clue what Stanford's BOT thinks about the importance of being a legit football program, and the compromises and adaptations it will make to have one. All we have is the scramble to get in the ACC to show it does place importance on it, but is that just to be in a power conference or to be in it to win in one.

We also have no idea what the new Provost thinks, or how she may or may not allow Muir to be more empowered to make things better, or if he even knows how.

Why the ACC?
In some ways the ACC is a really good conference for Stanford.   Travel is a problem, but it was going to be a problem as soon as USC and UCLA left the Pac-12. 

The ACC is just a short-term lifeboat.   A number of the ACC schools are in the same place as Stanford and I bet a few of them know it.   If the transfer portal turns into a college free agency vehicle, a few existing ACC schools are in trouble too.  

Stanford probably can deal with NIL trends, at least for a while.   The transfer portal is just a completely different deal.

Common Data Set numbers tell the story. 
Over the last 10 years the enrolling transfers have been 47, 65, 67, 20, 24, 27, 39, 15, 29 and 28.   The numbers were a bit higher in the three post-COVID fall quarters but that is likely because of the very unique disruptions COVID created in higher education.   
Put it together and that's 36.1 per year over that 10 year window.  36.1 is not for the football team, or the AD, that's 36.1 undergraduate transfers for the university.

Let's compare to USC
USC is rather notorious for using non-fall transfers to improve their US News metrics, but just looking at the Fall of 2022 USC's enrollment was 1,295.   That one semester in one year was 3.5 times what Stanford enrolled over 10 years. 

Colorado?  1,352
Clemson? 1,622
Florida State? 1,633
tOSU? 2,070
Duke? 50
Wake Forest? 32
Boston College? 80

I would submit it is not difficult to bring in 20, 30 or even 40 football players if the university has more than a thousand transfers each year.
It is quite another thing to bring in 20, 30 or 40 football players if a school has less than 100 transfers coming to campus each year.   It is nice to see that the ACC has a few other schools that probably will have the same issue with using the transfer portal as a free agency type resource.

Stanford will not be admitting 20 "student" athletes from JuCos for the football program each year.
Stanford will not even be admitting 20 student athletes for football from highly selective D1 schools each year.

If, or when, landing 20+ transfers becomes required to compete at the highest level in D1 football,  then it will be time for Stanford to accept playing at a lower level or step away.

[Farm93]

Stanford simply has to be more flexible. It can't:

- Refuse JC transfers
- Limit itself to a few undergrad transfers (even Cal has like 27 transfers)*
- Require the highest admissions standards of everyone with whom it competes
- Require Grad School admission to stay for a 5th year and push guys to graduate in 4 years
- Look down on or not fully embrace NIL collectives, and paying players

A football-first school can't do those things.  Stanford should never become a football-first school.

Has there been any (good, non-self selecting) survey of football importance to the Stanford's 16,000+ students?

Outsider Fan and MT make excellent points.  What used to be is gone, most likely forever.  We have to learn to live with the new realities as outlined by OF.  Will Stanford change, maybe a little, but my guess we have pretty much changed as much as we are going to change in terms of transfers.  If we change we become more like Colorado and USC, which are academic institutions for the majority of their students but for athletes they are just a factory whose standards bear no resemblance to those of the parent institution.  Football is the one sport that suffers the most in the rules of the new world we are in.  It takes a LOT of players and a good number of very good players to be successful year in and year out. There will always be a few qualified players in the portal, but not USC or Colorado numbers. There may be a lot of 50/50 years coming up.
Stanford has always had challenging standards, it is partially what made it what it is. I don't see those standards changing much just to support athletics.

So why bend over backwards to get into the ACC and give up so much money to get your teeth kicked in? It makes absolutely zero sense. "We're going to make our players travel thousands of miles to be in a power conference for football, and give up tens of millions of dollars to do it, but we're not going to do what it takes to compete, are OK with being a punching bag, further de-valuing our brand, and when the next consolidation comes, we'll be OK being even more in the wilderness than we just were" is not a smart strategy.

If the "surrender monkey" mentality is ultimately going to prevail, why not just stay in a watered down Pac? But I've got news for you. Even IF Stanford were to stay with The Cougs and Beavs, if it doesn't raise its football game by making the yes, COMPROMISES it takes to win, Stanford would get its brains beat in by new Pac teams too.

IOW, if you play football, make the investments and adapt institutionally to be competitive, or drop the sport. 

What is amazing to me is I see no evidence anywhere that any Stanford fans have a clue what Stanford's BOT thinks about the importance of being a legit football program, and the compromises and adaptations it will make to have one. All we have is the scramble to get in the ACC to show it does place importance on it, but is that just to be in a power conference or to be in it to win in one.

We also have no idea what the new Provost thinks, or how she may or may not allow Muir to be more empowered to make things better, or if he even knows how.

Why the ACC?
In some ways the ACC is a really good conference for Stanford.   Travel is a problem, but it was going to be a problem as soon as USC and UCLA left the Pac-12. 

The ACC is just a short-term lifeboat.   A number of the ACC schools are in the same place as Stanford and I bet a few of them know it.   If the transfer portal turns into a college free agency vehicle, a few existing ACC schools are in trouble too.  

Stanford probably can deal with NIL trends, at least for a while.   The transfer portal is just a completely different deal.

Common Data Set numbers tell the story. 
Over the last 10 years the enrolling transfers have been 47, 65, 67, 20, 24, 27, 39, 15, 29 and 28.   The numbers were a bit higher in the three post-COVID fall quarters but that is likely because of the very unique disruptions COVID created in higher education.   
Put it together and that's 36.1 per year over that 10 year window.  36.1 is not for the football team, or the AD, that's 36.1 undergraduate transfers for the university.

Let's compare to USC
USC is rather notorious for using non-fall transfers to improve their US News metrics, but just looking at the Fall of 2022 USC's enrollment was 1,295.   That one semester in one year was 3.5 times what Stanford enrolled over 10 years. 

Colorado?  1,352
Clemson? 1,622
Florida State? 1,633
tOSU? 2,070
Duke? 50
Wake Forest? 32
Boston College? 80

I would submit it is not difficult to bring in 20, 30 or even 40 football players if the university has more than a thousand transfers each year.
It is quite another thing to bring in 20, 30 or 40 football players if a school has less than 100 transfers coming to campus each year.   It is nice to see that the ACC has a few other schools that probably will have the same issue with using the transfer portal as a free agency type resource.

Stanford will not be admitting 20 "student" athletes from JuCos for the football program each year.
Stanford will not even be admitting 20 student athletes for football from highly selective D1 schools each year.

If, or when, landing 20+ transfers becomes required to compete at the highest level in D1 football,  then it will be time for Stanford to accept playing at a lower level or step away.