[washingtonismoney]

If we finish with the top Pac-12 class (but second in the Pac-12 + N.D. derby), that's a problem for our opponents. Everyone talks about how admissions and its requirements are a barrier but don't consider that it confers some benefits: namely, that we know the kids can do the classroom work and are (generally) reasonably solid citizens. Stanford filters players up front and reaps the benefit in the form of lower attrition. For our competitors, the formula is flipped: they let more players in, and filter them out later.

So every year they'll lose guys for reasons incidental to football -- because they can't do the work, because they have some indiscretion, or because they get homesick/get tired of spending winter in a cold, gloomy post-industrial ghost down, and exit, pursued by screaming Brian Kelly. (Or they sign but never quite make it into school, for whatever reason.) Stanford loses far fewer than they do, but the only formalized rating of a team's roster quality measures signed players. For tons of schools that rating system works OK, because they're all roughly equivalent in attrition. Stanford attrits less, and so will always be deceptively low in recruiting rankings. If it starts with a lead, the odds are stacked in its favor.

(But they're just odds.)

[washingtonismoney]

If we finish with the top Pac-12 class (but second in the Pac-12 + N.D. derby), that's a problem for our opponents. Everyone talks about how admissions and its requirements are a barrier but don't consider that it confers some benefits: namely, that we know the kids can do the classroom work and are (generally) reasonably solid citizens. Stanford filters players up front and reaps the benefit in the form of lower attrition. For our competitors, the formula is flipped: they let more players in, and filter them out later.

So every year they'll lose guys for reasons incidental to football -- because they can't do the work, because they have some indiscretion, or because they get homesick/get tired of spending winter in a cold, gloomy post-industrial ghost down, and exit, pursued by screaming Brian Kelly. (Or they sign but never quite make it into school, for whatever reason.) Stanford loses far fewer than they do, but the only formalized rating of a team's roster quality measures signed players. For tons of schools that rating system works OK, because they're all roughly equivalent in attrition. Stanford attrits less, and so will always be deceptively low in recruiting rankings. If it starts with a lead, the odds are stacked in its favor.

(But they're just odds.)