Will next year be better? - Printable Version
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RE: Will next year be better? - GK3 - 09-26-2023
(09-25-2023, 06:22 PM)msqueri Wrote:(09-25-2023, 05:17 PM)81alum Wrote: I am not sure that long "rebuilding" efforts can work anymore, in the era of the transfer pandemic.
I'm not even sure that most programs can be successful by primarily recruiting high school students, when their toughest competition recruits experienced and proven college-level winners.
I hope, for Stanford's sake, that the traditional approach can be made to work at this one unique university, even if it is no longer the norm elsewhere.
To what extent does your prediction account for the change in transfer rules now supposedly only allowing players to transfer without penalty once, barring extreme circumstances? That seems like it could be a fundamental change. Part of why the "transfer pandemic" has been so revolutionary is how efficient it makes the talent market. Going from essentially unlimited transfers to one transfer seems like it could change all that big time.
My brain isn't big enough to game out what this could mean for Stanford. I could see it benefiting us by making high school recruiting more important than it was for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. I could see it hurting us by making our players, who mostly are at their first school, very attractive to poaching by others. I could see it having impacts I can't predict. I could see if affecting the landscape one way one year and another the next.
My hunch is that regardless of how it plays out there will still be a place for high school recruiting, good coaching, culture....in other words the various models that have traditionally allowed for winning will still succeed to some degree. The norm may become transfer shopping but it won't be the exclusive model. Further, I would hypothesize that the combination of high school and transfer recruiting will matter more than who wins the transfer portal. To look into this, I thought I might look at this year, when the transfer landscape was at its peak and not regulated in the way it supposedly will be going forward. Here are the top 25 teams in Sagarin at the moment with two numbers listed, the On3 transfer portal ranking (ranking net inflow/outflow of transfer talent) and the 247 talent composite ranking (ranking teams based on their full rosters inclusive of high school recruits and transfers):
1. Alabama - 66, 1
2. Ohio State - 37, 3
3. Georgia - 62, 2
4. Oklahoma - 24, 9
5. Penn State - 44, 13
6. Texas - 36, 6
7. Michigan - 23, 14
8. Oregon - 16, 10
9. Washington - 17, 26
10. USC - 3, 8
11. Notre Dame - 50, 11
12. Texas A&M - 68, 4
13. Ole Miss - 6, 23
14. Kansas State - 29, 68
15. Florida State - 10, 20
16. Tennessee - 27, 16
17. LSU - 9, 7
18. Utah - 31, 33
19. Wisconsin - 8, 30
20. TCU - 18, 19
21. North Carolina - 33, 17
22. Clemson - 65, 5
23. Miami - 12, 12
24. Oregon State - 34, 56
25. UCLA - 4, 24
[For perspective: 102. Stanford - 69, 37]
Only 13 of the top 25 teams were top 25 in the transfer portal, which compares to 20 being top 25 in the talent rankings (anybody still think it's not Jessies and Joes when 80 percent of the top 25 can be predicted by recruiting rankings?).
The top 25 includes 8 teams that were below average in the transfer portal, all of whom were elite overall talent composite teams. The closest thing to an outlier in that respect is Oregon State, totally mediocre in the transfer portal and well below average in total on paper talent.
The Beavers are instructive outliers here. It is still possible to have a very good team based on Xs and Os and culture. Jonathan Smith is a hell of a coach. As you can see above, this model is also succeeding at Kansas State....and that's it. Smith and Chris Klieman are excellent coaches that should have a lot of suitors. But they're outliers. Only two of the top 25 programs don't belong in terms of on paper composite talent. RIP Xs and Os as the major explanation for success.
When I look at this - again, a year at the apex of transfer portal salience and chaos - it seems clear to me that the overriding factor in college football competitiveness is not the transfer portal at all but rather the blue bloods that always compete at the top are continuing to compete at the top, transfer portal be damned. Because it's extremely hard to break into that group if you're not already one of those programs, some look to inspired coaching hires to overcome talent deficits. But it's hard to identify the next Smith or Klieman, and even if you do it's tough to hold on to a coach like that.
To me the model to aspire to is something like what Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin are accomplishing. Be ambitious enough to demand good coaching and then pair it with good enough recruiting. If you can recruit in the upper half of Power Five football - even if just barely - and have enough pride in the program not to accept results worse than that, you can be a relevant program. Stanford had that going on for almost a decade but when the results slipped we didn't have any pride to demand better. I think we can and should do more to put ourselves in position to be like the Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin types of the world. But we don't act with that level of ambition. When Washington had an opening, they got a supernova Group of Five coach who had also won three NAIA national championships. When Wisconsin had an opening, they got one of the most proven and long-coveted coaches in the nation. When it was out turn, we went with a guy with three years of FCS coaching experience. We choose to roll the dice and hope to strike gold like the Oregon States and Kansas States of the world. Much lower probability of success, and I think that should be beneath the Home of Champions.
It is very hard to break into that group at this point unless we can keep our best guys on campus for 4 years, get 3 or 4 transfers each year and find enough 4 stars and high ranked 3 stars each year to fill out the rosters. We CANNOT compete overall in transfer portal battle simply due to academics requirements. The 4 and done situation is what it is, no point in bringing up the whata, coulda, shoulda stuff.
Our success will depend on finding the best guys we can find and getting them to sign up, then we need to coach the you know what out of them, and grab the odd transfer who shows up. We simply have to coach and recruit well each and every year. There will be no time off in those endeavors.
RE: Will next year be better? - old spanish trail - 09-26-2023
Agree, GK. Frosh entering early, and credit during summer school for everybody make it very difficult to extend studies beyond four years without grad school. Co Term is the only way and that ain't easy now.
RE: Will next year be better? - GK3 - 09-26-2023
(09-26-2023, 12:16 PM)old spanish trail Wrote: Agree, GK. Frosh entering early, and credit during summer school for everybody make it very difficult to extend studies beyond four years without grad school. Co Term is the only way and that ain't easy now.Finding guys who can get in and who can play at a high level has to pretty much be the focus for the staff, then recruit them hard. Statistics show that the top 25 teams recruit 6 to 10 4 stars a year, we are not coming close to that now and it will be something we need to focus on. We can't win without at least some talent.
RE: Will next year be better? - SamuelMcF - 09-26-2023
(09-26-2023, 03:19 PM)GK3 Wrote:(09-26-2023, 12:16 PM)old spanish trail Wrote: Agree, GK. Frosh entering early, and credit during summer school for everybody make it very difficult to extend studies beyond four years without grad school. Co Term is the only way and that ain't easy now.Finding guys who can get in and who can play at a high level has to pretty much be the focus for the staff, then recruit them hard. Statistics show that the top 25 teams recruit 6 to 10 4 stars a year, we are not coming close to that now and it will be something we need to focus on. We can't win without at least some talent.
We have 6 composite 4* commits right now for 2024. Is that "not coming close to that now?"
RE: Will next year be better? - BostonCard - 09-26-2023
(09-25-2023, 01:34 PM)msqueri Wrote: The comparison to the law of gravity rings hollow. There is nothing immutable about the notion that became popular under Shaw that a Stanford career was four years. I have compiled data sets on hundreds of Stanford football players going back decades and as recently as under Teevens, Harris, and Harbaugh 54 percent of OL stayed five years and 71 percent of DL stayed five years, compared to less than 30 percent at both positions under Shaw. Stanford cared about academics in the 2000s too and, in fact, almost certainly had higher standards for football players than it has today.
This is an apples to oranges comparison. In the days of Teevens and Harris, graduate transfers weren't just more difficult (due to the absence of the portal), they were virtually unheard of because the requirement to sit a year out meant that in order to transfer and play football in graduate school, athletes had to 1) not have redshirted and 2) graduate in three years so that they would be able to sit out a year and still have one year of eligibility remaining to play as fifth years. Even with the introduction of graduate transfers in 2007, they were limited to pursuing graduate degrees not available at the undergraduate institution, and even when that requirement was taken down, it wasn't until the portal was developed that it became relatively frictionless to transfer to a different school.
In addition, there was the impact of a rule change allowing players to play up to 4 games without losing their redshirt, which meant that playing freshmen (for example, if a starter is injured, or if you just want to see how they do in a game situation) is less of a dilemma, and lastly the impact of the COVID pandemic and the blanket addition of a year of eligibility, which means that a fair number of players were able to graduate, transfer, and benefit from having two years of eligibility remaining.
Furthermore, there was one major university undergraduate policy that changed which made it harder. I don't know when it happened, but the university went from not caring if a student took more than 4 years to graduate, to actively discouraging it, if not de facto prohibiting it. That means that we've gone from a system where it is easier to stay than leave to a system where, strangely enough, it is easier to leave than stay as other universities don't really require students to apply to their graduate school the way Stanford does. We've had several cases of students essentially being forced out when they were not accepted to a master's program at Stanford. Unsurprisingly, then that we have gone from a majority of athletes staying in school to exhaustion of eligibility to a majority leaving.
Personally, I'm not entirely sure that students taking more than four years to graduate was problem that needed solving. Even before the new policy, Stanford's graduation rate was above 95% for both non-athletes and athletes, and, at least for athletes, being able to graduate in more than 4 years seemed, if anything, to give them added flexibility and make it more likely that they would graduate, not less. If there is one change I would like to see it is for the de facto requirement to graduate in four years to be waived for athletes, as it is not unreasonable to expect that their commitment to athletics might slow their academic progress and, for example, make certain majors more challenging to pull off.
Do we know for a fact that Shaw was complicit or agnostic to this change? While football is the sport most affected by the four year graduation requirements, it is not the only one. Were other coaches also pursuing a "suicide cult"? Or, was this a case of a change that was implemented without regard to its impact on football or athletics, as a solution to a problem that we might not appreciate (I certainly am not sure what instigated the change), by a department that might have been indifferent to its impact on athletics? I think there is some evidence that Shaw did push for (and eventually succeed) in getting the administration to implement policies that went against long-standing University traditions in order to benefit the football team, and that he did so even though at least in some cases, it didn't benefit him personally because he was on his way out. We know that he advocated for, and eventually won, endorsement for some freshmen to be enrolled in the Spring of their senior year in high school (even though I think it is a bad idea that separates football players from all other students), and we know that on his way out the door he received commitments from the administration to ease the path towards taking in transfer students. I haven't heard one way or another about the graduation policy, but maybe it has been reported elsewhere that Shaw agreed with it or was ok with it.
(09-25-2023, 01:34 PM)msqueri Wrote: But programs and administrations can make decisions about how to operate within their given landscape. The football team can recruit players who care more about team goals than individual goals. It can recruit players who care more about football than academics. It can have the conversations you talk about with regard to long-term academic plans and options to stay on campus for the years of maximum football impact. If the administration is going to insist that only people still completing degrees can stay on the team or that football players need to get into grad school on non-football merits, a coach who cares about what he's hired to do can and should push back at that and find a way to not be overseeing a football suicide cult.
Two comments here: first, I think recruiting players who care more about football than academics is at best a mixed bag, and potentially runs the risk of throwing away Stanford's comparative advantage. Yes, there are some players who might graduate in four years and are academically focused enough that they would view a chance at a graduate degree as a reason for leaving (ie, a player whose reason for transferring out is academic), but I think you run a greater risk of losing players because they value football more than academics and are seeking a) a chance to play for a winning team (or a more winning team) b) a chance to play in a better atmosphere c) a better chance to start (at least for those moving to a lesser program) d) a [perceived] better chance to improve their chances to make it to the next level or e) a better NIL deal. Moreover, while an academic first transfer will really only transfer out as a fifth year, a football-first transfer could transfer out at any time where the football side of the equation looks better elsewhere, degree or not.
I think to the extent that Stanford has been able to recruit better than our record, it is because it has been able to convince players of the value of the 40-year decision. While I think that rankings are very overstated, Stanford can point to itself as consistently the highest USNWR ranked FBS football program, and for at least some players who would otherwise not think much of a middling football school, the prospect of a Stanford degree is the school's comparative advantage. Eschewing academic-first players probably means less of a chance with players like Bryce Love and Andrew Luck; both clearly valued the academic side of Stanford, and both passed up a chance to enter the NFL draft as underclassmen for that reason.
The second thing is that I think as it becomes increasingly clear that the NCAA and its schools are acting in a revenue maximizing way and the relationship between school and student-athlete becomes more like one between an employer and employee, selling players on "family" and "team goals" is increasingly naive. I mean, the Pac-12 dissolved and Stanford joined the ACC because of money that does not flow to the student-athletes. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but if I'm a 20-year old weighing my prospects, I would roll my eyes at a coach making multiple millions of dollars a year, who, in the back of my mind, I know will not hesitate to jump to a bigger program if he can be successful at Stanford. When the entire system (NCAA, conferences, university presidents, athletic directors, head coach, and all the assistants) are demonstrably only in it for themselves, expecting the athletes to be in it for some mythical greater purpose is naive.
BC
RE: Will next year be better? - Mick - 09-26-2023
Nice post, BC. Interesting emphasis on graduating in four years. When my sons and I toured Cal (back in 2009 and 2013), the Cal student guide leading the tour said to count on spending five years as an undergraduate in order to graduate, and six for some majors...and that seven was not unheard of. All this because the classes were so impacted.
My son's teammate did in fact graduate from Cal in four years (2014), but he said it took a lot of hustle, a little moxie and a lot of luck.
RE: Will next year be better? - SkiBum80 - 09-27-2023
(09-26-2023, 04:33 PM)BostonCard Wrote: ... I mean, the Pac-12 dissolved and Stanford joined the ACC because of money that does not flow to the student-athletes. ...
Stanford along with others was victimized by the implosion of the PAC-12 catalyzed by USC/UCLA and then further dogpiled onto by Colorado, et.al.
We were between a rock and a hard place to be able to continue fielding multiple sports with relevance. Not just football.
By relevance I mean that aim to play at the highest level of national competition and with visibility.
Including Basketball, Soccer, Volleyball, Swimming, Baseball, Softball, and others.
Our choice came down to join ACC or become almost instantly irrelevant in many sports.
If we still aim to have nationally talented student-athletes in these many sports wearing a Stanford jersey/suit/uniform then it was in their interests for us to join the ACC.
RE: Will next year be better? - Mick - 09-27-2023
I think Stanford will do better in ACC football than the last four years in the Pac 12. Quality of product, top to bottom, is not as strong in the ACC.
Hopefully, men's basketball recruiting will pick up. ACC has some serious programs. I can't wait to see Duke, Virgina, North Carolina, Miami. They had nine men's basketball programs with 19 or more wins. At one point or another in the season, eight teams were ranked in the Top 25 (three finished in the Top 25). Only five of the Pac 12 had 19 or more wins, and just four were ranked in the Top 25 at any point in the season, finishing with the Big Two, UCLA and Arizona.