08-21-2023, 07:50 AM
Thanks, Mick. I appreciate the exchange and your perspective too. On the points you raised:
Low point: even if 2023 is 2-3 wins and/or #90-100 in the algorithms (the current expectation whereas Sagarin had us #87 last year), I view that as the denouement of Shaw's low point. In the normal rhythm of rebuilds, Taylor would have good prospects of doing better from there. It's an open question how much better but given our talent base it strikes me as unlikely we'd be flirting with sub-top 100 for long. In any case, I think the normal level for Stanford football performance is considerably better than where we are now. Shaw really screwed it up but getting a few years past Shaw should revert toward the mean a bit.
Transfers: the transfer-conducive environment isn't going away but what we've seen is Stanford willing to bring in 5-6 transfers a year and once we revert toward the Stanford mean the quality of those transfers will rise. Regardless, this environment creates advantages for Stanford in high school recruiting that we can use to somewhat mitigate the transfer disadvantage. Most importantly, Shaw was a perfect storm of environment, circumstance, philosophy, and personality pushing people out the door to a devastating extent and Taylor's move to a more fun and family-oriented environment will make it much easier for us to navigate the transfer environment (by keeping more players in the fold). If Taylor can couple that with actually winning the difference will be fundamental.
NIL: I'm not sure what makes my evidence any more anecdotal than yours. Elijah Brown is one person, but a $4 million NIL collective, as publicly reported, is a real number that as far as I can tell is a competitive foray into NIL. I honestly don't know whether Stanford is approaching NIL with more or less dispatch and imagination than other programs but I suspect you don't either. I think many fans focus on the eye-catching (anecdotal) stories of the most prominent NIL players and draw conclusions about where their school stands, but that's not a rigorous comparison. There are over 130 major college programs and high 60s (exact number TBD with the fate of the Pac-4 remnants) power programs. If Stanford is #25 or #30 in the NIL game that means it's actually a benefit to us. Too many people are throwing their hands up saying we can't compete with USC in NIL but that's the wrong way to think about this.
OL depth chart: Sports Illustrated is now a bogus aggregator rather than a new source and has indescribably less insight than the handful of people who follow Stanford football very closely. It is possible I will be surprised by the depth chart but I am comfortable saying Fisher Anderson is a bigger part of Stanford's future in the coming years than Alec Bank.
Harbaugh/Taylor comparisons: I don't think Taylor will be as successful as Harbaugh either. That would be quite a historic success. Harbaugh's NFL resume was good but a very high number of our new coaches played in the NFL too and one of the key ones, April, had a lot more NFL coaching experience than Harbaugh. Harbaugh had strong coaching relationships but so did Taylor. In fact, it's easy to make an argument that our new Chris Petersen-enabled coaching staff is stronger on paper than Harbaugh's initial Harbaugh family tree-enabled staff. Harbaugh had EUTM but Taylor has culture of love. It's inherently subjective to compare cultures and intangibles and certainly with the benefit of hindsight Harbaugh's worked spectacularly but all available evidence points to very strong culture, energy, and morale in our new staff too. In any case, the point is less to predict how Taylor will do compared to Harbaugh and more to say you could not have asked for a closer comparison resume-wise - former NFL QBs with limited (three years) but spectacular FCS level head coaching experience, a lifetime of succeeding at essentially everything they've ever done, young hungry staff (though Taylor's has far more established veteran guys too), a palpable sense of self and theory of change (and competitiveness). The bottom line is an FCS to Power Five leap is highly unusual and we are in the same situation as 2007 as putting on faith that the outstanding but limited track record, culture, and intangibles of the new guy will translate, but there's a lot of reason to be optimistic it will.
Wager going forward: My view is rebuilds take time and Stanford will win 3-5 games in 2023 and something like 12-16 over the next three years and it's a tossup whether we make a bowl, maybe a bit more likely than not so I'd probably predict one bowl. Do we have action?
Low point: even if 2023 is 2-3 wins and/or #90-100 in the algorithms (the current expectation whereas Sagarin had us #87 last year), I view that as the denouement of Shaw's low point. In the normal rhythm of rebuilds, Taylor would have good prospects of doing better from there. It's an open question how much better but given our talent base it strikes me as unlikely we'd be flirting with sub-top 100 for long. In any case, I think the normal level for Stanford football performance is considerably better than where we are now. Shaw really screwed it up but getting a few years past Shaw should revert toward the mean a bit.
Transfers: the transfer-conducive environment isn't going away but what we've seen is Stanford willing to bring in 5-6 transfers a year and once we revert toward the Stanford mean the quality of those transfers will rise. Regardless, this environment creates advantages for Stanford in high school recruiting that we can use to somewhat mitigate the transfer disadvantage. Most importantly, Shaw was a perfect storm of environment, circumstance, philosophy, and personality pushing people out the door to a devastating extent and Taylor's move to a more fun and family-oriented environment will make it much easier for us to navigate the transfer environment (by keeping more players in the fold). If Taylor can couple that with actually winning the difference will be fundamental.
NIL: I'm not sure what makes my evidence any more anecdotal than yours. Elijah Brown is one person, but a $4 million NIL collective, as publicly reported, is a real number that as far as I can tell is a competitive foray into NIL. I honestly don't know whether Stanford is approaching NIL with more or less dispatch and imagination than other programs but I suspect you don't either. I think many fans focus on the eye-catching (anecdotal) stories of the most prominent NIL players and draw conclusions about where their school stands, but that's not a rigorous comparison. There are over 130 major college programs and high 60s (exact number TBD with the fate of the Pac-4 remnants) power programs. If Stanford is #25 or #30 in the NIL game that means it's actually a benefit to us. Too many people are throwing their hands up saying we can't compete with USC in NIL but that's the wrong way to think about this.
OL depth chart: Sports Illustrated is now a bogus aggregator rather than a new source and has indescribably less insight than the handful of people who follow Stanford football very closely. It is possible I will be surprised by the depth chart but I am comfortable saying Fisher Anderson is a bigger part of Stanford's future in the coming years than Alec Bank.
Harbaugh/Taylor comparisons: I don't think Taylor will be as successful as Harbaugh either. That would be quite a historic success. Harbaugh's NFL resume was good but a very high number of our new coaches played in the NFL too and one of the key ones, April, had a lot more NFL coaching experience than Harbaugh. Harbaugh had strong coaching relationships but so did Taylor. In fact, it's easy to make an argument that our new Chris Petersen-enabled coaching staff is stronger on paper than Harbaugh's initial Harbaugh family tree-enabled staff. Harbaugh had EUTM but Taylor has culture of love. It's inherently subjective to compare cultures and intangibles and certainly with the benefit of hindsight Harbaugh's worked spectacularly but all available evidence points to very strong culture, energy, and morale in our new staff too. In any case, the point is less to predict how Taylor will do compared to Harbaugh and more to say you could not have asked for a closer comparison resume-wise - former NFL QBs with limited (three years) but spectacular FCS level head coaching experience, a lifetime of succeeding at essentially everything they've ever done, young hungry staff (though Taylor's has far more established veteran guys too), a palpable sense of self and theory of change (and competitiveness). The bottom line is an FCS to Power Five leap is highly unusual and we are in the same situation as 2007 as putting on faith that the outstanding but limited track record, culture, and intangibles of the new guy will translate, but there's a lot of reason to be optimistic it will.
Wager going forward: My view is rebuilds take time and Stanford will win 3-5 games in 2023 and something like 12-16 over the next three years and it's a tossup whether we make a bowl, maybe a bit more likely than not so I'd probably predict one bowl. Do we have action?