[GK3]

Nobody can be surprised by this, can they?  

You guys may get your wish that Stanford becomes a D3 athletic program.

Stanford and Cal could pay a massive price for not caring about and prioritizing winning in the "revenue" sports.

Stanford could probably get away with being an Independent, but Cal not so much.

OF, so what do you propose, that Stanford prostitute itself and do away withy academic standards for athletes and go the way of Alabama?
Stanford cares about winning but I don't think it is going to change its admission or other standards.  Was Stanford invited to join UCLA and USC? We may pay a price, but what option do we or did we have to prevent this?  The current state of college football and basketball is such as that there is little school loyalty at most places.  The transfer rules are such that guys are going to two or three schools in a four year career.  I don't see this as a path Stanford sports.  Stanford and big money sports don't have much in common philosophically.  I am mostly concerned about the lower or non revenue sports.

I don't know where you all have been that you think Stanford hasn't prostituted itself on academic standards. Without naming names, we have athletes who are barely functional across multiple sports that I know and/or have first-hand experience with: football, women's soccer, women's softball. I mean droolingly stupid, and totally indifferent to academics. I'm talking current and/or very recent too. I'd actually like to go non-scholarship D1 (like an Ivy) or D3. The athlete vs non-athlete divide at Stanford in an era of 4-5% admission rates is a bigger gulf (the Grand Canyon!) than it has ever been. 

I admit that I'm a bit two-faced on this because I root hard for Stanford football and am a men's basketball season ticketholder. I basically think of them as a pro sports franchise, because there's nothing academic about those teams (with some exceptions of course) as much as we like to pretend otherwise. And don't give me this "our football players are smarter than Alabama's" cr@p. That may or may not be true, but it's beside the point.

Based on current offspring enrolled and involved in athletics, I don't find your comments valid.

[GK3]

Nobody can be surprised by this, can they?  

You guys may get your wish that Stanford becomes a D3 athletic program.

Stanford and Cal could pay a massive price for not caring about and prioritizing winning in the "revenue" sports.

Stanford could probably get away with being an Independent, but Cal not so much.

OF, so what do you propose, that Stanford prostitute itself and do away withy academic standards for athletes and go the way of Alabama?
Stanford cares about winning but I don't think it is going to change its admission or other standards.  Was Stanford invited to join UCLA and USC? We may pay a price, but what option do we or did we have to prevent this?  The current state of college football and basketball is such as that there is little school loyalty at most places.  The transfer rules are such that guys are going to two or three schools in a four year career.  I don't see this as a path Stanford sports.  Stanford and big money sports don't have much in common philosophically.  I am mostly concerned about the lower or non revenue sports.

I don't know where you all have been that you think Stanford hasn't prostituted itself on academic standards. Without naming names, we have athletes who are barely functional across multiple sports that I know and/or have first-hand experience with: football, women's soccer, women's softball. I mean droolingly stupid, and totally indifferent to academics. I'm talking current and/or very recent too. I'd actually like to go non-scholarship D1 (like an Ivy) or D3. The athlete vs non-athlete divide at Stanford in an era of 4-5% admission rates is a bigger gulf (the Grand Canyon!) than it has ever been. 

I admit that I'm a bit two-faced on this because I root hard for Stanford football and am a men's basketball season ticketholder. I basically think of them as a pro sports franchise, because there's nothing academic about those teams (with some exceptions of course) as much as we like to pretend otherwise. And don't give me this "our football players are smarter than Alabama's" cr@p. That may or may not be true, but it's beside the point.

Based on current offspring enrolled and involved in athletics, I don't find your comments valid.