[GK3]

I agree. This is the single biggest thing he could do to right the ship, although it won't happen until at least the off season. 

The biggest example was promoting Tavita up the ranks. It's not that he's necessarily a bad position coach and someone who is passionate about Stanford, but he has limited perspective. Let him go outside, see some new philosophies, and maybe if there's an opening down the road, bring him back. It's nothing personal. It's about getting a mind trust. When people like Mason and Bloomgren leave, their positions need to be filled with people of equal caliber.

I believe our problem is compounded by the fact that it is now HARDER to get into Stanford than it was when Harbaugh arrived.  I am not at all sure the University cuts the athletic department as much slack in recruiting athletes as it used to do.  Is the University willing to pay the kind of money it would take to get top notch coordinators?  The figure might just be bigger than the University would be willing to pay and face the faculty and staff.  The various boards are full of complaints about the people we didn't offer who had 4.0 averages, or a Wunderlich  score of such and such.  A 4.0 average is rather meaningless in terms of getting accepted, there is so much more that needs to be part of the package.

I am not at all sure that it is all that important to the current administration that we do well in the revenue sports any longer.  There a lot of moving pieces involved in this issue and they all probably contribute to the current situation.

Excellent points GK3.  As a corollary I think there was a small bump on admissions class size a while back. Perhaps someone here can enlighten us. IMHO class size could increase to  2000-2100 without compromising any standards.

Thanks for the comment.  Shaw has been reported to have said it was now harder to find players who could pass through admissions.  I have no idea if the he actually said something like that but some people seem to think he did.  If we look back at another sport, MM led basketball from the desert to the final 4, then he left, I was never clear why he left, but problems getting players into school was reported as one of the reasons.  Since he left, basketball has wandered back into the desert.  I hope the football program does not follow the bouncing ball and we end up regressing to the historical mean.  
I believe that today, if you want to compete at the top in football and basketball, you need one thing above all others; you MUST have an institution for which winning is more important than education.  If you operate with this as your guiding light, admissions won't make life difficult for recruiters, and staff and faculty won't complain about salaries paid to coaches and athletic staff.  This does not describe Stanford.  Schools like Stanford have to do the best they can, recruit the best kids they can get through admissions and hire the best coaches willing to commute a long ways from their affordable housing to the school.  Some years the talent pool of kids thinking that the 40 year decision is important is larger and you get a better class.  Sometimes they will come in at the same time there is very capable staff available to coach them.  When all the stars line up you end up with a few years of very good teams, then the young assistants get head coach gigs, the size of the 40 year talent pool shrinks and you hire some new assistants who unfortunately are not as good as the ones who left.  This leaves us where we are now.

Does anyone on this board think Stanford can actually be Stanford and Alabama at the same time?  Can we actually recruit and get through admissions a class consistently ranked in the top 10 and usually in the top 5?  My personal opinion is that we can hope to average around 25th, with some years a bit higher, and others a bit lower.

Another question is how often do we fill our full scholarship allotment?.  I was of the opinion that in recent years that we have not done so.  Would it be possible to fill each class by giving those now known as Preferred Walkons a scholarship from the start, and then bringing in more PWO's who might have the chance to earn a scholarship at a point in the future.

[GK3]

I agree. This is the single biggest thing he could do to right the ship, although it won't happen until at least the off season. 

The biggest example was promoting Tavita up the ranks. It's not that he's necessarily a bad position coach and someone who is passionate about Stanford, but he has limited perspective. Let him go outside, see some new philosophies, and maybe if there's an opening down the road, bring him back. It's nothing personal. It's about getting a mind trust. When people like Mason and Bloomgren leave, their positions need to be filled with people of equal caliber.

I believe our problem is compounded by the fact that it is now HARDER to get into Stanford than it was when Harbaugh arrived.  I am not at all sure the University cuts the athletic department as much slack in recruiting athletes as it used to do.  Is the University willing to pay the kind of money it would take to get top notch coordinators?  The figure might just be bigger than the University would be willing to pay and face the faculty and staff.  The various boards are full of complaints about the people we didn't offer who had 4.0 averages, or a Wunderlich  score of such and such.  A 4.0 average is rather meaningless in terms of getting accepted, there is so much more that needs to be part of the package.

I am not at all sure that it is all that important to the current administration that we do well in the revenue sports any longer.  There a lot of moving pieces involved in this issue and they all probably contribute to the current situation.

Excellent points GK3.  As a corollary I think there was a small bump on admissions class size a while back. Perhaps someone here can enlighten us. IMHO class size could increase to  2000-2100 without compromising any standards.

Thanks for the comment.  Shaw has been reported to have said it was now harder to find players who could pass through admissions.  I have no idea if the he actually said something like that but some people seem to think he did.  If we look back at another sport, MM led basketball from the desert to the final 4, then he left, I was never clear why he left, but problems getting players into school was reported as one of the reasons.  Since he left, basketball has wandered back into the desert.  I hope the football program does not follow the bouncing ball and we end up regressing to the historical mean.  
I believe that today, if you want to compete at the top in football and basketball, you need one thing above all others; you MUST have an institution for which winning is more important than education.  If you operate with this as your guiding light, admissions won't make life difficult for recruiters, and staff and faculty won't complain about salaries paid to coaches and athletic staff.  This does not describe Stanford.  Schools like Stanford have to do the best they can, recruit the best kids they can get through admissions and hire the best coaches willing to commute a long ways from their affordable housing to the school.  Some years the talent pool of kids thinking that the 40 year decision is important is larger and you get a better class.  Sometimes they will come in at the same time there is very capable staff available to coach them.  When all the stars line up you end up with a few years of very good teams, then the young assistants get head coach gigs, the size of the 40 year talent pool shrinks and you hire some new assistants who unfortunately are not as good as the ones who left.  This leaves us where we are now.

Does anyone on this board think Stanford can actually be Stanford and Alabama at the same time?  Can we actually recruit and get through admissions a class consistently ranked in the top 10 and usually in the top 5?  My personal opinion is that we can hope to average around 25th, with some years a bit higher, and others a bit lower.

Another question is how often do we fill our full scholarship allotment?.  I was of the opinion that in recent years that we have not done so.  Would it be possible to fill each class by giving those now known as Preferred Walkons a scholarship from the start, and then bringing in more PWO's who might have the chance to earn a scholarship at a point in the future.