Lots of thoughts in this thread, so I'll just throw a couple more bits of spaghetti against the wall.
If the numbers we are hearing are correct, the concept of "Stanford being a 40-year decision" is definitely irrelevant for some student-athletes. If a college kid can make somewhere between 500-750K/year, I don't think there are many incentives to leave that financial bubble. Now if the alternative is NBA money or maybe even whatever Caleb Williams thinks he can get from the NFL, sure --- leave, go pro, good luck. Otherwise -- keep feeding off the NIL t** and enjoy the ride, wherever it may take you (like van Lith, for example).
If Kiki's choices were indeed between a) staying at Stanford and navigating the various protocols for grad school admissions, making whatever Lifetime Cardinal or any other Stanford NIL gives her, etc; b) going pro and making $300K over 4 years in the WNBA and traveling around the world to try to bump that figure up; and c) going somewhere else that can easily give her $600-750K while she essentially delays option b for at least one year ----- then option c seems very attractive, because option b will always exist.
So I think we have the equivalent of loopholes in the infrastructure -- some Stanford can address and some that Stanford, for various reasons, cannot.
It's just a reality we have to face, and adjust to. I'm not having a very easy time making that adjustment, because I sense our programmatic barriers are more insurmountable than not.
Meanwhile, I'll join jacket3ree in reminiscing about cars past. I had a 56 Chrysler, looked like a small Moby Dick, had a 4-pushbutton automatic transmission. Got about 12 mpg.
Then had a 53 MGTD. I misplaced my keys once and actually started the car with a screwdriver. One time I forgot to shut the hood tightly and was reminded of that when it flipped up and banged into my windshield at 65mph on the Bayshore. That was a lot of fun -- not!
If the numbers we are hearing are correct, the concept of "Stanford being a 40-year decision" is definitely irrelevant for some student-athletes. If a college kid can make somewhere between 500-750K/year, I don't think there are many incentives to leave that financial bubble. Now if the alternative is NBA money or maybe even whatever Caleb Williams thinks he can get from the NFL, sure --- leave, go pro, good luck. Otherwise -- keep feeding off the NIL t** and enjoy the ride, wherever it may take you (like van Lith, for example).
If Kiki's choices were indeed between a) staying at Stanford and navigating the various protocols for grad school admissions, making whatever Lifetime Cardinal or any other Stanford NIL gives her, etc; b) going pro and making $300K over 4 years in the WNBA and traveling around the world to try to bump that figure up; and c) going somewhere else that can easily give her $600-750K while she essentially delays option b for at least one year ----- then option c seems very attractive, because option b will always exist.
So I think we have the equivalent of loopholes in the infrastructure -- some Stanford can address and some that Stanford, for various reasons, cannot.
It's just a reality we have to face, and adjust to. I'm not having a very easy time making that adjustment, because I sense our programmatic barriers are more insurmountable than not.
Meanwhile, I'll join jacket3ree in reminiscing about cars past. I had a 56 Chrysler, looked like a small Moby Dick, had a 4-pushbutton automatic transmission. Got about 12 mpg.
Then had a 53 MGTD. I misplaced my keys once and actually started the car with a screwdriver. One time I forgot to shut the hood tightly and was reminded of that when it flipped up and banged into my windshield at 65mph on the Bayshore. That was a lot of fun -- not!