[Goose]

Why pursue another QB.  We have some.  What we do not have are offensive lineman who can block for the QB and such running backs as we might have.  The young man from Nevada is a keeper, we need at least three more of those. What we really need is CASH and lots of it. We need to buy ourselves an offensive line. There must be at least a half dozen offensive lineman out there who have the academic chops to do the work at Stanford.  Our mission needs to be find them and buy them.  
We need to put together a team that at least gets to some sort of bowl, show some progress.  I do not suggest we take those who can't do the work, but I do say there are a number of players at every position who can do the work, have done the work. Find them, pay them, coach them and start winning a little.  If we can't do that we are desitined to forever be the doormat of the ACC in football, Andrew Luck and President Levin included.  If we are unwilling to do what has to be done to get us out of mess, then we should just go quietly into the good night and root for the Basketball team.

“Need”… in the words of Inigo Montaya, You keep using that word.  I do not think that word means what you think it means.

While delving into the college free agent market might lead to marginally improved play next year, we do not actually need to do any of the above, and if we are to actually remain a University who gives a damned about the “student” in “student athlete”, we maybe shouldn’t, even if it leads to a 3-9 rather than a 4-8 record.

BC

While I think BC raises a good point that IMO needs more serious consideration than it gets, the theory that any given university can "buy" a good team is IMO not the case. First of all, there are already many institutions out there spending tons of money to buy a team and failing. The athletes in the portal are there for lots of different reasons. In a few cases it is because they are at a "lower tier" school and believe they have a better chance at the NFL by transferring. In other cases it is because they can get more NIL money. In the majority of the cases it is because there is some kind of a problem where they are. The latter case possibly has a few athletes that are behind a great starter and are transferring because they want playing time. In most cases they just aren't good enough to play at the school they currently attend. Most will actually end up at a lower tier school than they left.

The vast majority of these transfers cannot do the work at Stanford or do not WANT to do the work at Stanford. There are some that can and will, but damn few. We are however competing for their services with everybody else. Lots of those that can and will are like the guys we recruited out of high school. They are older, but not necessarily "better". There is now in college athletics a significant reshuffling of talent ever year through the portal. There are more misses than there are hits. Going out to buy an OL will fail more times than not. Most schools want OL help. Stanford can accept only a small fraction of the available choices for academic reasons, just as in high school recruiting. This doesn't mean we shouldn't take advantage of opportunities, but the idea that we can "mine the portal" every year to fix our OL problems just won't work. It hasn't reliably worked for anybody yet, and most of those competitors have very little academic "drag" to contend with.

It is probable that Stanford can get "a few" good contributors from the portal each year, but not a gamechanging supply. In any given year there is no guarantee there will be any academically acceptable transfers that fill our "positions of need", that being OL ATM. Even if there are a few such players available, they may prefer another school (e.g. a Georgia) that can pay them as much as we can but will also (much more importantly) provide a better path to the NFL. It might help our record by a game or so per year, but it won't reliably fix failing to recruit and coach freshmen.

[Goose]

Why pursue another QB.  We have some.  What we do not have are offensive lineman who can block for the QB and such running backs as we might have.  The young man from Nevada is a keeper, we need at least three more of those. What we really need is CASH and lots of it. We need to buy ourselves an offensive line. There must be at least a half dozen offensive lineman out there who have the academic chops to do the work at Stanford.  Our mission needs to be find them and buy them.  
We need to put together a team that at least gets to some sort of bowl, show some progress.  I do not suggest we take those who can't do the work, but I do say there are a number of players at every position who can do the work, have done the work. Find them, pay them, coach them and start winning a little.  If we can't do that we are desitined to forever be the doormat of the ACC in football, Andrew Luck and President Levin included.  If we are unwilling to do what has to be done to get us out of mess, then we should just go quietly into the good night and root for the Basketball team.

“Need”… in the words of Inigo Montaya, You keep using that word.  I do not think that word means what you think it means.

While delving into the college free agent market might lead to marginally improved play next year, we do not actually need to do any of the above, and if we are to actually remain a University who gives a damned about the “student” in “student athlete”, we maybe shouldn’t, even if it leads to a 3-9 rather than a 4-8 record.

BC

While I think BC raises a good point that IMO needs more serious consideration than it gets, the theory that any given university can "buy" a good team is IMO not the case. First of all, there are already many institutions out there spending tons of money to buy a team and failing. The athletes in the portal are there for lots of different reasons. In a few cases it is because they are at a "lower tier" school and believe they have a better chance at the NFL by transferring. In other cases it is because they can get more NIL money. In the majority of the cases it is because there is some kind of a problem where they are. The latter case possibly has a few athletes that are behind a great starter and are transferring because they want playing time. In most cases they just aren't good enough to play at the school they currently attend. Most will actually end up at a lower tier school than they left.

The vast majority of these transfers cannot do the work at Stanford or do not WANT to do the work at Stanford. There are some that can and will, but damn few. We are however competing for their services with everybody else. Lots of those that can and will are like the guys we recruited out of high school. They are older, but not necessarily "better". There is now in college athletics a significant reshuffling of talent ever year through the portal. There are more misses than there are hits. Going out to buy an OL will fail more times than not. Most schools want OL help. Stanford can accept only a small fraction of the available choices for academic reasons, just as in high school recruiting. This doesn't mean we shouldn't take advantage of opportunities, but the idea that we can "mine the portal" every year to fix our OL problems just won't work. It hasn't reliably worked for anybody yet, and most of those competitors have very little academic "drag" to contend with.

It is probable that Stanford can get "a few" good contributors from the portal each year, but not a gamechanging supply. In any given year there is no guarantee there will be any academically acceptable transfers that fill our "positions of need", that being OL ATM. Even if there are a few such players available, they may prefer another school (e.g. a Georgia) that can pay them as much as we can but will also (much more importantly) provide a better path to the NFL. It might help our record by a game or so per year, but it won't reliably fix failing to recruit and coach freshmen.