[Goose]

That said, I remember around 15 years ago, an energetic young coach was able to push the players he wanted through the admissions office. Couldn't history repeat with the transfer admissions process?

I think it is orders of magnitude more difficult. The freshman class is a large number of people. You can swap applicant admissions without having the football players be a "statistically significant" component of the class (although when examined in detail even in this case questions have been asked). The transfer portal is too small to do that and not have it be "obvious". If even 20% of your transfers are athletes their are going to be questions raised about preferential admissions that would be impossible to refute. That simply won't fly in the "Stanford Community". There has to at least be a credible assertion that athletics is not a major "driver" in admissions.

Look, we can all whine about the portal and the NIL and our coaching staff can lament it and sit on their hands. What does that get us? More mediocrity or worse. Perhaps better would be to try something, anything, to take advantage of it. . . .

Trying to solve the problem is a good idea. We are just discussing what that solution may be. I just don't think modifying the parameters of Stanford's incoming transfer process is feasible.

[Goose]

That said, I remember around 15 years ago, an energetic young coach was able to push the players he wanted through the admissions office. Couldn't history repeat with the transfer admissions process?

I think it is orders of magnitude more difficult. The freshman class is a large number of people. You can swap applicant admissions without having the football players be a "statistically significant" component of the class (although when examined in detail even in this case questions have been asked). The transfer portal is too small to do that and not have it be "obvious". If even 20% of your transfers are athletes their are going to be questions raised about preferential admissions that would be impossible to refute. That simply won't fly in the "Stanford Community". There has to at least be a credible assertion that athletics is not a major "driver" in admissions.

Look, we can all whine about the portal and the NIL and our coaching staff can lament it and sit on their hands. What does that get us? More mediocrity or worse. Perhaps better would be to try something, anything, to take advantage of it. . . .

Trying to solve the problem is a good idea. We are just discussing what that solution may be. I just don't think modifying the parameters of Stanford's incoming transfer process is feasible.