[cardcrimson]

If the standard for keep your coaching job is to be as good or better than Bryant, most coaches should be fired.  

When Stanford has a recruiting class that is top 30 but not top 15, I would not call that a recruiting failure.  It is very difficult to land top 15 recruiting classes when each recruit must be admitted to Stanford.  The fact that we can ever crack the top 15 is quite amazing.

Well good golly. How have we ever won any championships at all? Only 123 so far. How the hell did those kids get in?

They didn't play "revenue" sports. Our one basketball championship dates to World War II, long before basketball was a "revenue" sport. We've never won it all at football.

It's a lot harder to recruit 15-20 Stanford admissible top football players every year than 2 blue chip women's tennis players - due to numbers, demographics, and the nature of those sports. All you need is 2 blue chips + Lele to win a championship every other year or so. Football, no such luck. 

Marty is absolutely right: we fight an extreme uphill battle in recruiting, and in some years the chips fall such that we come up well short. And this is hardly exclusive to football. Look at all the years Tara couldn't find one top 10 player who could get admitted as a WBB recruit, and could barely find one or two top *30* players. And a mere handful have turned Stanford down once admitted over the past decade. 

There are many upsides to a sub 5% acceptance rate, but athletic recruiting is not one of them.

So, athletes in non revenue sports are smarter than athletes in revenue sports? Is that really your point?

[cardcrimson]

If the standard for keep your coaching job is to be as good or better than Bryant, most coaches should be fired.  

When Stanford has a recruiting class that is top 30 but not top 15, I would not call that a recruiting failure.  It is very difficult to land top 15 recruiting classes when each recruit must be admitted to Stanford.  The fact that we can ever crack the top 15 is quite amazing.

Well good golly. How have we ever won any championships at all? Only 123 so far. How the hell did those kids get in?

They didn't play "revenue" sports. Our one basketball championship dates to World War II, long before basketball was a "revenue" sport. We've never won it all at football.

It's a lot harder to recruit 15-20 Stanford admissible top football players every year than 2 blue chip women's tennis players - due to numbers, demographics, and the nature of those sports. All you need is 2 blue chips + Lele to win a championship every other year or so. Football, no such luck. 

Marty is absolutely right: we fight an extreme uphill battle in recruiting, and in some years the chips fall such that we come up well short. And this is hardly exclusive to football. Look at all the years Tara couldn't find one top 10 player who could get admitted as a WBB recruit, and could barely find one or two top *30* players. And a mere handful have turned Stanford down once admitted over the past decade. 

There are many upsides to a sub 5% acceptance rate, but athletic recruiting is not one of them.

So, athletes in non revenue sports are smarter than athletes in revenue sports? Is that really your point?