[msqueri]

We'll know Stanford's fate tonight, hopefully. ACC Presidents have scheduled a call to discuss and potentially vote on the fate of Cal, Stanford, and SMU additions.

From where I sit, beyond the arrogant PAC-12's leaders having royally messed up the media rights situation, the fact that we are waiting to know "Stanford's fate," is due in no small measure to the fact that over the past five years Muir and top SU administrators have been pathetically passive and permissive in allowing Stanford football under Shaw to deteriorate into low-level mediocrity that we find ourselves sitting in the waiting room hoping for a digestable crumb to fall off the ACC table.

I of course agree with all of this. But I think there's more to this than just Shaw failed and wasn't held accountable to not fail or be replaced sooner. Stanford football has imploded numerous times before, in 1962-1963, 1983-1984, 2006-2007, and now in 2022-2023. It's essentially a once a generation thing. That itself is not that notable. I bet a lot of power programs would have an incidence of implosion more or less that regularly. Sometimes bad coaches get hired or coaches get stale or bad luck happens or some combination of things. The main problem Stanford has right now is that the latest incidence of our implosion had such spectacularly bad timing. But looking holistically at the whole sweep of the program, the more fundamental issue is what level of program we're committed to having. All programs will have relative ups and relative downs, but the height of the peaks and the depth of the valleys will differ. I don't think Stanford has shown a commitment that would give a dispassionate outside observer confidence that it will reliably be on the highest end of the peaks or valleys. We've shown a commitment level that would make somebody think we're a solid power program, maybe or maybe not sneaking in to the top 30 all things considered. That's a very respectable program but it's not a rainmaker. Ultimately, when we diagnose the causes of our predicament, yes, it's Shaw's failure, but it's also how we act in response to the failure, which is like a mediocre power program on a budget. I don't think we can be surprised when conference and media power brokers treat us like a mediocre power program on a budget.

[msqueri]

We'll know Stanford's fate tonight, hopefully. ACC Presidents have scheduled a call to discuss and potentially vote on the fate of Cal, Stanford, and SMU additions.

From where I sit, beyond the arrogant PAC-12's leaders having royally messed up the media rights situation, the fact that we are waiting to know "Stanford's fate," is due in no small measure to the fact that over the past five years Muir and top SU administrators have been pathetically passive and permissive in allowing Stanford football under Shaw to deteriorate into low-level mediocrity that we find ourselves sitting in the waiting room hoping for a digestable crumb to fall off the ACC table.

I of course agree with all of this. But I think there's more to this than just Shaw failed and wasn't held accountable to not fail or be replaced sooner. Stanford football has imploded numerous times before, in 1962-1963, 1983-1984, 2006-2007, and now in 2022-2023. It's essentially a once a generation thing. That itself is not that notable. I bet a lot of power programs would have an incidence of implosion more or less that regularly. Sometimes bad coaches get hired or coaches get stale or bad luck happens or some combination of things. The main problem Stanford has right now is that the latest incidence of our implosion had such spectacularly bad timing. But looking holistically at the whole sweep of the program, the more fundamental issue is what level of program we're committed to having. All programs will have relative ups and relative downs, but the height of the peaks and the depth of the valleys will differ. I don't think Stanford has shown a commitment that would give a dispassionate outside observer confidence that it will reliably be on the highest end of the peaks or valleys. We've shown a commitment level that would make somebody think we're a solid power program, maybe or maybe not sneaking in to the top 30 all things considered. That's a very respectable program but it's not a rainmaker. Ultimately, when we diagnose the causes of our predicament, yes, it's Shaw's failure, but it's also how we act in response to the failure, which is like a mediocre power program on a budget. I don't think we can be surprised when conference and media power brokers treat us like a mediocre power program on a budget.