[Goose]

I was talking to a faculty friend the other day and he said guys who are graduating are nuts if they don’t do whatever they need to for a graduate transfer (which he insists is a misnomer — he says it isn’t a transfer if the guys are graduating), since admission to a Stanford graduate program is not guaranteed, in fact far from it.

That is true, but they don't have to go to grad school for the fall quarter of their fifth year.  They can simply delay graduation until after the fall.  The question then becomes whether a player wants a graduate degree or wants to get on with a job as soon as they are done playing football.

BC

Not quite that simple. The interaction between getting your tuition paid by playing football and getting a graduate degree can be very significant. Just marking time for a quarter so you can play another season of football at Stanford makes little sense if you intend to go to graduate school elsewhere. If you can get a year of free education by playing, it would be stupid not to check out your options. OTOH, if you are going off to a job, postponing doing so makes sense only if you really, really want another year of football. I imagine a few guys do, do, but in my experience, once people are ready to go, they go. Those guys don't go into the portal, they just retire. It may be that some of the players in the portal are doing it on speculation, and will quit football if nothing real good shows up.

[Goose]

I was talking to a faculty friend the other day and he said guys who are graduating are nuts if they don’t do whatever they need to for a graduate transfer (which he insists is a misnomer — he says it isn’t a transfer if the guys are graduating), since admission to a Stanford graduate program is not guaranteed, in fact far from it.

That is true, but they don't have to go to grad school for the fall quarter of their fifth year.  They can simply delay graduation until after the fall.  The question then becomes whether a player wants a graduate degree or wants to get on with a job as soon as they are done playing football.

BC

Not quite that simple. The interaction between getting your tuition paid by playing football and getting a graduate degree can be very significant. Just marking time for a quarter so you can play another season of football at Stanford makes little sense if you intend to go to graduate school elsewhere. If you can get a year of free education by playing, it would be stupid not to check out your options. OTOH, if you are going off to a job, postponing doing so makes sense only if you really, really want another year of football. I imagine a few guys do, do, but in my experience, once people are ready to go, they go. Those guys don't go into the portal, they just retire. It may be that some of the players in the portal are doing it on speculation, and will quit football if nothing real good shows up.