There may be an explanation for the decline of our program that is different from the blame game on the coach, but if this alternative explanation is correct, it may be much more devastating for us, since a coaching change won't fix it.
The overall decline of Stanford football over the last few years is certainly due to a decline in the quality of recruiting--I think we all agree on that. But what if the decline of recruiting is due to the growing awareness over the same time span of the risks of CTE?
We have seen the numbers of young men playing high school football in decline in all regions of the United States except the South. This might also explain how the SEC becomes more and more dominant. College teams outside the south simply have a shallower, less talented pool of high school players to recruit from than they once did.
And what if it is even worse for Stanford, who recruits nationally? What if the fear of CTE runs higher in families that put special value on the quality of college education? Such families may be more aware of the risks. The problem would manifest itself in all those potential Stanford recruits deciding early in high school not to go out for the team. If this is true, then we are losing the recruiting battle not to other programs, but to CTE fears.
I had one AD tell me that he would never let his own kids play in a sport like football. I too am a hypocrite. I love watching the sport, but would never want a child of mine to play it. Maybe the answer is simpler than we would like to admit: there just are fewer and fewer quality players available to be recruited by Stanford, and the dearth of talent affects us more profoundly than schools who recruit from different demographics than we do.
I realize that this is speculative on my part, but it is a hypothesis worth exploring. Our decline coincides pretty well with growing CTE awareness, and I wonder if this is more than just correlation.
The overall decline of Stanford football over the last few years is certainly due to a decline in the quality of recruiting--I think we all agree on that. But what if the decline of recruiting is due to the growing awareness over the same time span of the risks of CTE?
We have seen the numbers of young men playing high school football in decline in all regions of the United States except the South. This might also explain how the SEC becomes more and more dominant. College teams outside the south simply have a shallower, less talented pool of high school players to recruit from than they once did.
And what if it is even worse for Stanford, who recruits nationally? What if the fear of CTE runs higher in families that put special value on the quality of college education? Such families may be more aware of the risks. The problem would manifest itself in all those potential Stanford recruits deciding early in high school not to go out for the team. If this is true, then we are losing the recruiting battle not to other programs, but to CTE fears.
I had one AD tell me that he would never let his own kids play in a sport like football. I too am a hypocrite. I love watching the sport, but would never want a child of mine to play it. Maybe the answer is simpler than we would like to admit: there just are fewer and fewer quality players available to be recruited by Stanford, and the dearth of talent affects us more profoundly than schools who recruit from different demographics than we do.
I realize that this is speculative on my part, but it is a hypothesis worth exploring. Our decline coincides pretty well with growing CTE awareness, and I wonder if this is more than just correlation.