[CardinalSagehen]

Can we read anything into Stanford's portal-acceptance policies after taking transfers from Nevada and Fresno State?  Both fine schools, full stop, but in '23 for example Stanford had transfers from Princeton, Harvard and Penn...   I'd love to see these new guys excel in the classroom just to derail the idea that only kids from snobby schools can succeed at Stanford....  Some people are born gifted, God bless 'em, but the great majority of kids at prestigious schools are more nurture than nature, as best I can tell anyway...

That would be a convenient excuse for poor recruiting in prior offseasons by Coach TT and his staff, if true. But it's really hard to tell a difference without having each player's undergraduate academic record. 

You left out last year's inbound transfers from the University of Northern Iowa (Jahsiah Galvan - presumably next year's starter at ILB) and Washington (Jay Green) - both early in their undergraduate careers.  In 2023, we took Lamson as a redshirt sophomore (Syracuse) and Bernadel as a junior (Florida International).  In fairness, Bernadel was reported to have a 4.0 GPA.

Let's not forget that until he waved the white flag recently, Coach TT's explicitly stated strategy was to recruit almost entirely from high school, develop players better than other programs, and retain them. If it's true that Admissions wasn't as supportive of inbound transfers as they are now (which is not yet clear), it's still on Coach TT for selling an "incomplete" vision for the previous two offseasons and failing to provoke any change. By "incomplete", I mean incompatible with winning and even having a full roster in the current transfer-intensive environment.

I'm with you - I'll bet if these kids have decent college grades from any institution, they're just as likely to do well at Stanford as the average high school football recruit to Stanford.

[CardinalSagehen]

Can we read anything into Stanford's portal-acceptance policies after taking transfers from Nevada and Fresno State?  Both fine schools, full stop, but in '23 for example Stanford had transfers from Princeton, Harvard and Penn...   I'd love to see these new guys excel in the classroom just to derail the idea that only kids from snobby schools can succeed at Stanford....  Some people are born gifted, God bless 'em, but the great majority of kids at prestigious schools are more nurture than nature, as best I can tell anyway...

That would be a convenient excuse for poor recruiting in prior offseasons by Coach TT and his staff, if true. But it's really hard to tell a difference without having each player's undergraduate academic record. 

You left out last year's inbound transfers from the University of Northern Iowa (Jahsiah Galvan - presumably next year's starter at ILB) and Washington (Jay Green) - both early in their undergraduate careers.  In 2023, we took Lamson as a redshirt sophomore (Syracuse) and Bernadel as a junior (Florida International).  In fairness, Bernadel was reported to have a 4.0 GPA.

Let's not forget that until he waved the white flag recently, Coach TT's explicitly stated strategy was to recruit almost entirely from high school, develop players better than other programs, and retain them. If it's true that Admissions wasn't as supportive of inbound transfers as they are now (which is not yet clear), it's still on Coach TT for selling an "incomplete" vision for the previous two offseasons and failing to provoke any change. By "incomplete", I mean incompatible with winning and even having a full roster in the current transfer-intensive environment.

I'm with you - I'll bet if these kids have decent college grades from any institution, they're just as likely to do well at Stanford as the average high school football recruit to Stanford.