06-10-2022, 11:55 AM
Yup, I agree. My thoughts are as follows:
1) Given the decreasing likelihood of five year graduation, we might as well burn redshirts with impunity. If someone can contribute their freshman year, even if it is on special teams or as an Ogre, forget about the six game limit and just play them. Any benefit that could be anticipated on the back end has to be heavily discounted by the probability that there won’t be a back end.
2) work hard to get potential fifth year contributors on track for a Stanford graduate program early. Stanford’s coterminal degrees are designed to be completed in five years for both a bachelor’s and master’s program, which fits well with the football program. Plus, a Stanford master’s degree does carry some cachet. The catch is that planning for it really has to happen during a student’s third year. So, have that conversation early, work to plan for coterm enrollment, which has the additional advantage of two-way certainty (the player will know they have a spot on the team for their fifth year and the staff will know the player won’t grad transfer). Plus, it looks good all the way around— prospective student athletes can be wooed with the possibility of getting an undergraduate and master’s degree, and touting all the guys who graduate with graduate degrees is something that the program and university can point to with pride.
3) this is an observation… things will change once the COVID year has worked itself through the system. You had a bunch of athletes suddenly looking at an extra year of eligibility, which may have upended some plans.
BC
1) Given the decreasing likelihood of five year graduation, we might as well burn redshirts with impunity. If someone can contribute their freshman year, even if it is on special teams or as an Ogre, forget about the six game limit and just play them. Any benefit that could be anticipated on the back end has to be heavily discounted by the probability that there won’t be a back end.
2) work hard to get potential fifth year contributors on track for a Stanford graduate program early. Stanford’s coterminal degrees are designed to be completed in five years for both a bachelor’s and master’s program, which fits well with the football program. Plus, a Stanford master’s degree does carry some cachet. The catch is that planning for it really has to happen during a student’s third year. So, have that conversation early, work to plan for coterm enrollment, which has the additional advantage of two-way certainty (the player will know they have a spot on the team for their fifth year and the staff will know the player won’t grad transfer). Plus, it looks good all the way around— prospective student athletes can be wooed with the possibility of getting an undergraduate and master’s degree, and touting all the guys who graduate with graduate degrees is something that the program and university can point to with pride.
3) this is an observation… things will change once the COVID year has worked itself through the system. You had a bunch of athletes suddenly looking at an extra year of eligibility, which may have upended some plans.
BC