[msqueri]

I really don't know what to think about all of this. From a distance it seems like the transfer portal + NIL + COVID-19 + Stanford Hates Fun + maybe other social/cultural factors have added up to really challenge Stanford athletics. But it's also possible that these things are happening everywhere and our relative position is unchanged.

I also am starting to have philosophical thoughts about Stanford's place in the world, including the sports world, and what the natural order of things is. Thoughts way too nascent to put into words but part of it is wondering what were Stanford's decades of athletic dominance based on and is that any more right/proper/natural than schools with large passionate fan bases soaking up the fun? If Stanford's dominance was based in part on having more resources to spread across more sports, is a resource-intensive shifting of the power balance to schools that actually have fans a bad thing or just the Stanford rich kids finally getting put in their place by schools whose riches are more a function of having a large student/fan/donor/community base than Arrillaga-driven oligarchy?

Regardless of philosophical thoughts, viscerally I want Stanford to figure this out and churn out winning teams like we always have (and especially to figure it out in the sports people care about, in which we sometimes have had winning teams).

[msqueri]

I really don't know what to think about all of this. From a distance it seems like the transfer portal + NIL + COVID-19 + Stanford Hates Fun + maybe other social/cultural factors have added up to really challenge Stanford athletics. But it's also possible that these things are happening everywhere and our relative position is unchanged.

I also am starting to have philosophical thoughts about Stanford's place in the world, including the sports world, and what the natural order of things is. Thoughts way too nascent to put into words but part of it is wondering what were Stanford's decades of athletic dominance based on and is that any more right/proper/natural than schools with large passionate fan bases soaking up the fun? If Stanford's dominance was based in part on having more resources to spread across more sports, is a resource-intensive shifting of the power balance to schools that actually have fans a bad thing or just the Stanford rich kids finally getting put in their place by schools whose riches are more a function of having a large student/fan/donor/community base than Arrillaga-driven oligarchy?

Regardless of philosophical thoughts, viscerally I want Stanford to figure this out and churn out winning teams like we always have (and especially to figure it out in the sports people care about, in which we sometimes have had winning teams).