[M T]

So-called "academic" universities actually do quite well on the football field.

There's an interesting correlation between academic quality and football success, outside of Stanford, Purdue and UCLA. Check it out, here's the Top 51 National Universities (according to US News & World Report, a flawed but common measuring stick) that have D1 FBS football programs, and I threw in the service academies and BYU, which have uniquely challenging recruiting requirements apart from academics:

Army and BYU are 8-0
Notre Dame, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas are 7-1
Texas A&M is 7-2
Duke, Illinois and Vanderbilt are 6-3
Navy is 6-2
Washington, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Michigan are 5-4
Virginia, Cal, Wake Forest, Rutgers, Maryland, Florida and Boston College are 4-4
Northwestern and USC are 4-5

All are in the Top 51/USNWR. Stanford, Purdue and UCLA are the only "academic" teams with poor W/L records. Somehow, we need to be able to recruit better than our history. Harbaugh figured it out, as he said, you can find 22 excellent football players a year who can matriculate at Stanford. I don't think Taylor is going to figure it out, but whoever succeeds Taylor needs to be able to recruit at a high level.

Why not use all the schools?   Then you know the average winning percentage is 50%.

The top 5 is a more appropriate cohort for Stanford than the top 51.
Oh, I guess you can't compare to the top 5, because Stanford is the only FBS school in the top 5.

Ok, drop it down to the top 10.  Records against FBS schools:
  Top 10 (non-Stanford):  8-8
  Top 16 (non-Stanford): 11-13
  Top 20 (non-Stanford): 22-24

Top 5 record vs FBS:  Princeton 0-0; MIT 0-0;  Harvard 0-0;  Stanford 1-7;  Yale 0-0.
Next 5:   Caltech 0-0;  Duke 5-3;  Johns Hopkins 0-0; Northwestern 3-5; Penn 0-0
Next 6:   Cornell 0-0;  Chicago 0-0; Brown 0-0;  Columbia 0-0;  Dartmouth 0-0; UCLA 3-5
Next 4:   Cal 3-4; Rice 1-5; Notre Dame 7-0 ; Vanderbilt 3-2;

(I took a shortcut and presumed FCS schools didn't play any FBS schools.  That may not be true.)

[M T]

So-called "academic" universities actually do quite well on the football field.

There's an interesting correlation between academic quality and football success, outside of Stanford, Purdue and UCLA. Check it out, here's the Top 51 National Universities (according to US News & World Report, a flawed but common measuring stick) that have D1 FBS football programs, and I threw in the service academies and BYU, which have uniquely challenging recruiting requirements apart from academics:

Army and BYU are 8-0
Notre Dame, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas are 7-1
Texas A&M is 7-2
Duke, Illinois and Vanderbilt are 6-3
Navy is 6-2
Washington, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Michigan are 5-4
Virginia, Cal, Wake Forest, Rutgers, Maryland, Florida and Boston College are 4-4
Northwestern and USC are 4-5

All are in the Top 51/USNWR. Stanford, Purdue and UCLA are the only "academic" teams with poor W/L records. Somehow, we need to be able to recruit better than our history. Harbaugh figured it out, as he said, you can find 22 excellent football players a year who can matriculate at Stanford. I don't think Taylor is going to figure it out, but whoever succeeds Taylor needs to be able to recruit at a high level.

Why not use all the schools?   Then you know the average winning percentage is 50%.

The top 5 is a more appropriate cohort for Stanford than the top 51.
Oh, I guess you can't compare to the top 5, because Stanford is the only FBS school in the top 5.

Ok, drop it down to the top 10.  Records against FBS schools:
  Top 10 (non-Stanford):  8-8
  Top 16 (non-Stanford): 11-13
  Top 20 (non-Stanford): 22-24

Top 5 record vs FBS:  Princeton 0-0; MIT 0-0;  Harvard 0-0;  Stanford 1-7;  Yale 0-0.
Next 5:   Caltech 0-0;  Duke 5-3;  Johns Hopkins 0-0; Northwestern 3-5; Penn 0-0
Next 6:   Cornell 0-0;  Chicago 0-0; Brown 0-0;  Columbia 0-0;  Dartmouth 0-0; UCLA 3-5
Next 4:   Cal 3-4; Rice 1-5; Notre Dame 7-0 ; Vanderbilt 3-2;

(I took a shortcut and presumed FCS schools didn't play any FBS schools.  That may not be true.)