To be clear, not only do I not know the percentage of the elite football player pool that is admissible, I don't think anybody does and I don't even think it's knowable/possible to assign a number. Some thoughts on this:
This is a moving target in many respects. It depends on the decisions of Stanford admissions. It depends on the relationship/jockeying/massaging Stanford's football staff can muster vis-a-vis admissions review. It depends on the effort and results of individual recruits who come through the process. It depends on the academic profiles of the players the coaches decide pass the football screen. It depends on how early and effectively the football staff gets engaged with a recruit to shape his future academic efforts. It depends on luck. All of these are complex, can be influenced by the football staff in some ways but not others, and interact with one another in unpredictable ways.
It would be nonsensical to say X percent are admissible. X can go up or down based on effort or chance. It can be manipulated by increasing or lowering the football standards that are just as important of a screen as the academic standards. And what's "admissible?" Is it people who would have a shot of being admitted if Stanford engaged with them early enough in the process and they took all the necessary steps along the way, or is it the final group of players who by Signing Day could be admitted if they went through the rigors of the application process, or is it the players who literally get admitted to Stanford (no, it's not this one, much as some would like to advance that narrative of our uber-selectivity)? Which of those questions you answer has massive implications on how big the pool is. If you look at the pool as the players who could have gotten themselves in a position to be admitted to Stanford if they buckled down starting sophomore year of high school, that's massively bigger than if you look at it as the players who met our standards by Signing Day.
Thinking about this theoretically, if you take the top 1000 players and then roll the clock back 16+ years ago when they were babies/toddlers, essentially all 1000 of them theoretically could be admissible to Stanford football. As the years go on, environmental factors and other issues start culling the pool, but by the time they get to high school the overwhelming preponderance of them still could theoretically be Stanford football players. It's sophomore year when the pool starts to be culled more aggressively, and that process grinds on relentlessly every single semester of high school. Every semester there are more players getting Cs or worse in a class or electing not to take honors/AP classes or committing crimes (errr, I guess that didn't stop us from recruiting Ayden Hector) or otherwise doing something/having something happen that materially diminishes the chances of getting into Stanford. My guess is that we might have 80+ percent of the pool "admissible" when they're sophomores but then it keeps decreasing.
It would be really interesting to know what the number is on a given Signing Day, but I don't think that's knowable. We won't have perfect information and there will be players who our screen missed or who showed so little interest in Stanford that we stopped tracking their academics. There will also be a very large number of players - dozens if not hundreds - who Stanford does not pursue to the altar not because the player isn't willing or able but because we don't think they're good enough. This is an under-looked aspect to all this. In essence: how selective we are has (and should have) just as much to do with our football selectivity as it does with our academic selectivity. There are many thousands of high school football players in America who could be admitted to Stanford if they got the golden ticket from Stanford football to Stanford admissions saying we wanted to use one of our precious chits on them. Many, many thousands. But we don't want just some run of the mill honorable mention all league 4.8 40 safety. We don't want the plucky team leader option quarterback captain of three varsity sports teams. And on and on and on. We want guys who compete at the Pac-12 level.
In this sense, the size of our pool is inextricably linked not only with the efficacy of our recruiting staff in identifying players and working to get targets to keep their academics in order but also with the ambition of our recruiting staff. When I was graduating from Stanford we were bringing in guys like Xxavier Carter, Stephen Carr, Joe Dembesky, Tyler Porras, and Mark Mueller. If that's your football standard and your academic standard is where we were a half decade later under a more accommodating admissions regime, there are literally hundreds - maybe thousands - of football players a year who meet that standard. On the far opposite end of the spectrum, our 2017 recruiting class was almost exclusively comprised of prospects at least one major service deemed a 4-star and the lowest regarded prospect in the class was #651 in the class and eventually an NFL starter. That is such a high football standard for a class that our "pool" was indeed small. But that's because we were being picky (refusing to offer 4-star prospects who became big-time stars). Just another set of reasons it's kind of a fool's errand to try to pin down the size of our pool.
By the way, the "we" I am using here is in reference to Stanford football. Even those with the most perfect information possible (Lance Anderson, Mike Eubanks, et al under the ancien regime) have severe limits on how much they can know. As I outlined above, the target is always moving and there are many individual pieces moving and interacting with each other. But for outsiders like me and those on this board, it's an even more opaque information environment. We don't know the GPAs, SATs, and course loads of our prospects by and large. It's really hard for outsiders to know the minimum requirements for Stanford football admissions or the median qualifications of recruits, much less a lot of specifics. We used to know more, but it's gone out of style for Stanford football reporters to ask probing questions about players' unweighted GPAs, test scores, number of AP classes, and more. My hypothesis is Stanford football very much likes it that way. We're probably getting similar, if not even more aggressive, leeway than Harbaugh got, but by keeping it all out of the news it doesn't become a reputational liability. Win-win for football program and university to get some better players but have alumni blissfully ignorant that it's much easier to get into Stanford as a football player in 2023 than it was in 2006.
All that being said: I think it's a fool's errand to assign a specific number, but if we stipulate "admissibility" as the number of top 1000 players (i.e., forget about the football screen above, which in reality chops off dozens if not hundreds of these players because our staff evaluation differs from the recruiting services or we think we can do better) who by Signing Day could be admitted to Stanford IF they went through the rigors of the admissions process and had full backing from our football staff, I suspect the number would be in the 15-30 percent range (and could go up to 40 if you bake in my assumptions about how much the pool could expand with incredibly early and effective work to keep prospects on track academically earlier in their career). That's a big range and I mean it to be: this is an amorphous, dynamic, unpredictable target.
This is a moving target in many respects. It depends on the decisions of Stanford admissions. It depends on the relationship/jockeying/massaging Stanford's football staff can muster vis-a-vis admissions review. It depends on the effort and results of individual recruits who come through the process. It depends on the academic profiles of the players the coaches decide pass the football screen. It depends on how early and effectively the football staff gets engaged with a recruit to shape his future academic efforts. It depends on luck. All of these are complex, can be influenced by the football staff in some ways but not others, and interact with one another in unpredictable ways.
It would be nonsensical to say X percent are admissible. X can go up or down based on effort or chance. It can be manipulated by increasing or lowering the football standards that are just as important of a screen as the academic standards. And what's "admissible?" Is it people who would have a shot of being admitted if Stanford engaged with them early enough in the process and they took all the necessary steps along the way, or is it the final group of players who by Signing Day could be admitted if they went through the rigors of the application process, or is it the players who literally get admitted to Stanford (no, it's not this one, much as some would like to advance that narrative of our uber-selectivity)? Which of those questions you answer has massive implications on how big the pool is. If you look at the pool as the players who could have gotten themselves in a position to be admitted to Stanford if they buckled down starting sophomore year of high school, that's massively bigger than if you look at it as the players who met our standards by Signing Day.
Thinking about this theoretically, if you take the top 1000 players and then roll the clock back 16+ years ago when they were babies/toddlers, essentially all 1000 of them theoretically could be admissible to Stanford football. As the years go on, environmental factors and other issues start culling the pool, but by the time they get to high school the overwhelming preponderance of them still could theoretically be Stanford football players. It's sophomore year when the pool starts to be culled more aggressively, and that process grinds on relentlessly every single semester of high school. Every semester there are more players getting Cs or worse in a class or electing not to take honors/AP classes or committing crimes (errr, I guess that didn't stop us from recruiting Ayden Hector) or otherwise doing something/having something happen that materially diminishes the chances of getting into Stanford. My guess is that we might have 80+ percent of the pool "admissible" when they're sophomores but then it keeps decreasing.
It would be really interesting to know what the number is on a given Signing Day, but I don't think that's knowable. We won't have perfect information and there will be players who our screen missed or who showed so little interest in Stanford that we stopped tracking their academics. There will also be a very large number of players - dozens if not hundreds - who Stanford does not pursue to the altar not because the player isn't willing or able but because we don't think they're good enough. This is an under-looked aspect to all this. In essence: how selective we are has (and should have) just as much to do with our football selectivity as it does with our academic selectivity. There are many thousands of high school football players in America who could be admitted to Stanford if they got the golden ticket from Stanford football to Stanford admissions saying we wanted to use one of our precious chits on them. Many, many thousands. But we don't want just some run of the mill honorable mention all league 4.8 40 safety. We don't want the plucky team leader option quarterback captain of three varsity sports teams. And on and on and on. We want guys who compete at the Pac-12 level.
In this sense, the size of our pool is inextricably linked not only with the efficacy of our recruiting staff in identifying players and working to get targets to keep their academics in order but also with the ambition of our recruiting staff. When I was graduating from Stanford we were bringing in guys like Xxavier Carter, Stephen Carr, Joe Dembesky, Tyler Porras, and Mark Mueller. If that's your football standard and your academic standard is where we were a half decade later under a more accommodating admissions regime, there are literally hundreds - maybe thousands - of football players a year who meet that standard. On the far opposite end of the spectrum, our 2017 recruiting class was almost exclusively comprised of prospects at least one major service deemed a 4-star and the lowest regarded prospect in the class was #651 in the class and eventually an NFL starter. That is such a high football standard for a class that our "pool" was indeed small. But that's because we were being picky (refusing to offer 4-star prospects who became big-time stars). Just another set of reasons it's kind of a fool's errand to try to pin down the size of our pool.
By the way, the "we" I am using here is in reference to Stanford football. Even those with the most perfect information possible (Lance Anderson, Mike Eubanks, et al under the ancien regime) have severe limits on how much they can know. As I outlined above, the target is always moving and there are many individual pieces moving and interacting with each other. But for outsiders like me and those on this board, it's an even more opaque information environment. We don't know the GPAs, SATs, and course loads of our prospects by and large. It's really hard for outsiders to know the minimum requirements for Stanford football admissions or the median qualifications of recruits, much less a lot of specifics. We used to know more, but it's gone out of style for Stanford football reporters to ask probing questions about players' unweighted GPAs, test scores, number of AP classes, and more. My hypothesis is Stanford football very much likes it that way. We're probably getting similar, if not even more aggressive, leeway than Harbaugh got, but by keeping it all out of the news it doesn't become a reputational liability. Win-win for football program and university to get some better players but have alumni blissfully ignorant that it's much easier to get into Stanford as a football player in 2023 than it was in 2006.
All that being said: I think it's a fool's errand to assign a specific number, but if we stipulate "admissibility" as the number of top 1000 players (i.e., forget about the football screen above, which in reality chops off dozens if not hundreds of these players because our staff evaluation differs from the recruiting services or we think we can do better) who by Signing Day could be admitted to Stanford IF they went through the rigors of the admissions process and had full backing from our football staff, I suspect the number would be in the 15-30 percent range (and could go up to 40 if you bake in my assumptions about how much the pool could expand with incredibly early and effective work to keep prospects on track academically earlier in their career). That's a big range and I mean it to be: this is an amorphous, dynamic, unpredictable target.