[Goose]

Right, that was my entire point. It is a difficult sell, but not an impossible one. If I sit down with a teenaged football player and tell him he'd have a better life if he went to Stanford irrespective of the football outcome, and spend five minutes on the discussion with a few statistics and some bland points, it won't move the needle. But if I spend 1/2 hour on all the great outcomes that a Stanford education has over his adult lifetime compared with the likely results at football factories, it would at least give him pause. If you go to a football factory, you can play in the NFL. Same with Stanford, 22nd most NFL players among D1 schools.

But the odds of achieving anything outside of the NFL are much slimmer at a football factory, if you're the kind of player who can manage the academic workload at Stanford. My guess is that if you listed 50 Stanford football alumni, starting with Mr. Packard, you would have some extraordinary achievers that other schools can't match. Any school can list five, even ten. But fifty? Or a hundred? The other part of it is the downside, most schools don't talk about that...here's the unsuccessful alumni. I doubt Stanford has many really unsuccessful football alumni. That should be part of the discussion.

The problem is that the "average" Stanford football player isn't Mr. Packard, ENG 1939, knows it, and most importantly doesn't want to be. Those "heroes" (https://engineering.stanford.edu/about/h...id-packard) are irrelevant to him because he isn't that academically oriented. The extraordinary achievers just don't matter at all because the player isn't intending to be one of them. Talking about them may be interesting but is quite unlikely to be persuasive.
 
If the player has the qualifications to get admitted to Stanford, he is also pretty confident he is going to be successful in football and in life. Suggesting that he might not be is probably just about the biggest "turn off" one could find.  There are plenty of "successful" people who graduate from other universities. Arguing that a given football player won't be one of them, especially when said player is qualified to get into Stanford, is an impossible argument to make. An counter argument is that going to a less academically challenging (but still "respectable") university may increase the odds of graduation and  simultaneously the odds of a successful football career. More time for football and less time doing academic work. More fun on top of that.

IMO the statement "The 40 year decision sells itself" has been made so often because it is basically true. The recruit (or his parents) either is very interested in academics, wants to get a good education, and is willing to accept the challenges required to do that at Stanford or he is not. If he is not, you can't really "sell" the decision. What Stanford offers isn't what this recruit wants. There are undoubtedly some guys that are on the fence. The fact Stanford isn't good at football right now probably deters many of them from choosing Stanford. Others verbally commit but when push comes to shove simply don't complete the high school AP classes required to get into Stanford. Even if they do and are admitted there is another consideration. In the past, once a recruit signed up for Stanford, we had him. He couldn't easily go someplace else. Today, guys who are on the fence are a much bigger risk. Once they experience the workload at Stanford going elsewhere may become lots more attractive :-). This is especially true if someone is willing to pay you to do so. Therefore spending lots of time trying to convince one of these "fence sitters" probably isn't generally productive.

[Goose]

Right, that was my entire point. It is a difficult sell, but not an impossible one. If I sit down with a teenaged football player and tell him he'd have a better life if he went to Stanford irrespective of the football outcome, and spend five minutes on the discussion with a few statistics and some bland points, it won't move the needle. But if I spend 1/2 hour on all the great outcomes that a Stanford education has over his adult lifetime compared with the likely results at football factories, it would at least give him pause. If you go to a football factory, you can play in the NFL. Same with Stanford, 22nd most NFL players among D1 schools.

But the odds of achieving anything outside of the NFL are much slimmer at a football factory, if you're the kind of player who can manage the academic workload at Stanford. My guess is that if you listed 50 Stanford football alumni, starting with Mr. Packard, you would have some extraordinary achievers that other schools can't match. Any school can list five, even ten. But fifty? Or a hundred? The other part of it is the downside, most schools don't talk about that...here's the unsuccessful alumni. I doubt Stanford has many really unsuccessful football alumni. That should be part of the discussion.

The problem is that the "average" Stanford football player isn't Mr. Packard, ENG 1939, knows it, and most importantly doesn't want to be. Those "heroes" (https://engineering.stanford.edu/about/h...id-packard) are irrelevant to him because he isn't that academically oriented. The extraordinary achievers just don't matter at all because the player isn't intending to be one of them. Talking about them may be interesting but is quite unlikely to be persuasive.
 
If the player has the qualifications to get admitted to Stanford, he is also pretty confident he is going to be successful in football and in life. Suggesting that he might not be is probably just about the biggest "turn off" one could find.  There are plenty of "successful" people who graduate from other universities. Arguing that a given football player won't be one of them, especially when said player is qualified to get into Stanford, is an impossible argument to make. An counter argument is that going to a less academically challenging (but still "respectable") university may increase the odds of graduation and  simultaneously the odds of a successful football career. More time for football and less time doing academic work. More fun on top of that.

IMO the statement "The 40 year decision sells itself" has been made so often because it is basically true. The recruit (or his parents) either is very interested in academics, wants to get a good education, and is willing to accept the challenges required to do that at Stanford or he is not. If he is not, you can't really "sell" the decision. What Stanford offers isn't what this recruit wants. There are undoubtedly some guys that are on the fence. The fact Stanford isn't good at football right now probably deters many of them from choosing Stanford. Others verbally commit but when push comes to shove simply don't complete the high school AP classes required to get into Stanford. Even if they do and are admitted there is another consideration. In the past, once a recruit signed up for Stanford, we had him. He couldn't easily go someplace else. Today, guys who are on the fence are a much bigger risk. Once they experience the workload at Stanford going elsewhere may become lots more attractive :-). This is especially true if someone is willing to pay you to do so. Therefore spending lots of time trying to convince one of these "fence sitters" probably isn't generally productive.