[Goose]

It's an extraordinary risk to play at a football factory if a player has the intellectual capacity to succeed at Stanford.

I am not convinced this is true anymore, if it ever was. For a player that is actually interested in getting an education and possibly pursuing a career that values "credentials" it may still be true. However since today's society values style over substance you can get lots of followers on twitter and thereby be arguably in a position to "network" as well as any Stanford graduate can. You need not actually know anything to do that, as is demonstrated every day.
 
IMO there are lots of people intending to enter the "business" world that can easily do so with a degree from e.g. Colorado, Alabama, or UCF. The "networking" available to a football player at those schools may actually be more valuable, at least in the near term, than the Stanford network ever would be. Why attend Stanford, a school that hates fun where you may have to work very diligently, in order to major in Science, Technology, and Society? Why is a similar degree from <insert name here> demonstrably of less value? I am not convinced it is, but more importantly it will not be at all obvious to most prospective Stanford football players that it is. That makes it a very hard sell, especially when all the other schools recruiting the player will challenge the notion.

[Goose]

It's an extraordinary risk to play at a football factory if a player has the intellectual capacity to succeed at Stanford.

I am not convinced this is true anymore, if it ever was. For a player that is actually interested in getting an education and possibly pursuing a career that values "credentials" it may still be true. However since today's society values style over substance you can get lots of followers on twitter and thereby be arguably in a position to "network" as well as any Stanford graduate can. You need not actually know anything to do that, as is demonstrated every day.
 
IMO there are lots of people intending to enter the "business" world that can easily do so with a degree from e.g. Colorado, Alabama, or UCF. The "networking" available to a football player at those schools may actually be more valuable, at least in the near term, than the Stanford network ever would be. Why attend Stanford, a school that hates fun where you may have to work very diligently, in order to major in Science, Technology, and Society? Why is a similar degree from <insert name here> demonstrably of less value? I am not convinced it is, but more importantly it will not be at all obvious to most prospective Stanford football players that it is. That makes it a very hard sell, especially when all the other schools recruiting the player will challenge the notion.