Quote:I don't know what the Stanford administration is thinking, but I do think we have some clues based on past history.
1) Stanford was once the school that was willing to enforce strict admissions criteria on its athletes even at the expense of success in football.
2) Stanford was once the school that was willing to cut numerous sports ostensibly for budget reasons but more probably because the percentage of student athletes was--in the minds of administration and faculty--excessive compared with the relatively small undergraduate student body.
3) Stanford feels far, far more connected to schools like the Ivies, MIT, CalTech and U Chicago than it does to most of the other schools of the Pac 12/10, which (other than Cal) never had much in common with Stanford's mission as an elite university.
In my mind, Stanford athletics reached a zenith when a rare combination came along of a supportive Admissions director (after 2005), competent Athletics Director (before 2012), a couple of football coaches who fit in their own ways within the unique Stanford culture (after 2007,) and an avid donor with very deep pockets who endowed pretty much every coaching job at the university (2006-2013 were Arillaga's biggest gifts.) The identity and mission of the university was never going to deeply embrace athletics, but so long as athletics could pay for itself and have such splendid success the apathy abated and the intellectual crowd tolerated (and even enjoyed) the sideshow of sports. But this should never have concealed the fact that the culture was never, ever, going to be able to make the least sacrifice to the Stanford image as an ethical, elite, academic institution.
With the latest developments--too numerous but all discussed at length on this board--I have a hard time imagining a way forward that will preserve the wonderful success we had with our athletics program over the last couple of decades. External forces seem arrayed against our unique model. But we also lack the internal leadership that we had at the beginning of this heyday. I will hope that something gets worked out, since I want to enjoy the next couple of decades of retired life watching Stanford athletics flourish. But I think I know the Stanford culture quite well, and it leaves me less and less optimistic. I will be ecstatic to be wrong.
Best summary Stanford current thinking (indifference?) to this current crisis I have seen. MTL and Drell are probably on vacation and disappointed they get sucked back in again to another AD centered challenge. Stanford is really in a hole with the current leadership at the top and in the AD. With Muir I would use the Costanza test i.e. do the opposite of what he recommends.
Given where major college football is going (NIL, players as employees, farcical coaching salaries) I would probably use this as an opportunity to exit this version of the game and move down a level in football. However given the importance of high level athletics to Stanford's past and future identity I would allocate what is necessary from the endowment to preserve and protect all the other sports (including MBB and WBB) playing at a high level. Get out from the fiction of football covering for all of these other sports and protect their future by allocating the requisite funds to make them whole. With this model Stanford will be in the strongest economic position of any of the Universities offering these sports and not dependent on the crumbs from football's table.
I don't take this approach lightly have been a Stanford sports fan (primarily football and MBB) for 52 years. The lack of leadership by the NCAA, Pac-12 and Stanford has brought us to this point so there are only mediocre and expensive choices left. I have no interest in seeing Stanford continue on its current football path of mediocrity whether in the Pac-12 or the BiG10. Given Stanford's unwillingness to play the "game" I don't see a positive outcome here. Who wants to be the equivalent of Vanderbilt in the SEC?