[OutsiderFan]

My greatest takeaway from a "this is a new reason for optimism" standpoint, is what he said about campus visits. As some of us have lamented, the lack of Spring official visits has seemed detrimental to recruiting.

In this podcast, Shaw talked about how they are finding ways to do what you might call virtual visits in new ways. It's almost like there was a mindset  that if a guy won't visit in person, that's pretty much all there is to it. Now, my read is by trying to accommodate those who would have visited, they are effectively expanding the net beyond those who would ordinarily visit on their own, to those who wouldn't visit if the only way they could is flying across the country to do so. So instead of 25 guys visiting on their own, the program is hosting 50 guys who would and wouldn't come on their own, but have enough interest to check out Stanford all the same.

Will be interesting to see if the program puts more emphasis into virtual visits in the future, and if getting an expanded pool of total visitors in person and virtual, leads to more applications and possibly more coveted players available to sign in future classes.

[OutsiderFan]

My greatest takeaway from a "this is a new reason for optimism" standpoint, is what he said about campus visits. As some of us have lamented, the lack of Spring official visits has seemed detrimental to recruiting.

In this podcast, Shaw talked about how they are finding ways to do what you might call virtual visits in new ways. It's almost like there was a mindset  that if a guy won't visit in person, that's pretty much all there is to it. Now, my read is by trying to accommodate those who would have visited, they are effectively expanding the net beyond those who would ordinarily visit on their own, to those who wouldn't visit if the only way they could is flying across the country to do so. So instead of 25 guys visiting on their own, the program is hosting 50 guys who would and wouldn't come on their own, but have enough interest to check out Stanford all the same.

Will be interesting to see if the program puts more emphasis into virtual visits in the future, and if getting an expanded pool of total visitors in person and virtual, leads to more applications and possibly more coveted players available to sign in future classes.