[Chupacabra]

Appreciate the thought and analysis. My thoughts to these items follow:

• Stanford needed someone in charge of on-field football immediately. This is not a time of year where you're likely to find the best candidate in a full-scale coaching search. An overwhelming majority of the time, an interim job would be given to a current staffer. On only very rare occasions, someone from outside the organization comes in. Interestingly, this did happen when Reich was fired by the Colts and they brought in Jeff Saturday from a TV studio.
  
• Luck and Reich have a special relationship so the GM probably started to wonder, "What if???" I have an image of him having the idea at night and waking up knowing he wanted to do it.
  
• It's an agreement for one year because you can't conduct a full search now but can do so when the season ends. And when this agreement is over after the season, Reich can be a candidate. So can April or Byham, if appropriate. Maybe Jim Leonhard or Mike Denbrock. Maybe Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, or Curly Lambeau.
  
• If interested, Reich will have the upper hand due to his incumbency and his relationship with Luck. It's hard to imagine Luck would choose someone other than the man who officiated his wedding if that man is successful and wants the job. This is also probably a brobdingnagian reason why Luck had to be so firm in all terms. Setting boundaries early can reduce anyone's expectations.
  
• You don't know how Reich will respond to the college game, or to Stanford. It seems like he may not be interested in pounding the recruiting trail. Does he have the fire in him to rally young players?
  
• Regarding the current assistants, I think the most interesting thing we're seeing from Luck here is a core value of loyalty and being honorable. Is he not "cold blooded" enough? Maybe not. But he doesn't think these guys deserved to pay for Taylor's misdoings and I applaud him for that. Ripping apart a coaching staff at this point in the cycle could breed a good amount of negativity and ill-will toward the head coach. I see Luck as recognizing this and not wanting to make the feeling in the building any more negative than it was.
  

I like the Reich hire. I love the out of the box idea. I do have some skepticism about it. I don't think the experience this year will necessarily lead to warm feelings on the Farm that make him want to stay or make the majority of people want to keep him. I just see the season as being too difficult considering the talent level.

If it does work out it could be a lot of fun. If not, there's an opportunity to lock in on a guy. My target (possibly forever) is Jim Leonhard.

* They could not have been more definitive that this is only for 2025. That's disappointing to me because the idea of Frank Reich trying to build something at Stanford is something I could really get behind. But there was no wiggle room. I hear what people are saying about how things can change and I know intellectually that's true, but to me this dispelled my notion that this could have been a savvy political move by Luck to circumvent Stanford bureaucracy and get his preferred guy in the door before finding a way to remove the interim tag. Unless they are both lying through their teeth, which seems implausible, this truly was a situation where Luck had a specific interim vision and had that as a condition and Reich bought in to that specifically. If so, it's an unusual and potentially quite awkward situation but I like what Reich said about leaning into it with players and coaches and trying to make 2025 a special year. Still, this is going to make the next Stanford coach a hot topic of discussion for the next eight months and there's no getting around that interim equals lame duck.

* Interesting insight into Luck telling Reich the staff is good but younger and Reich meeting with the staff and telling Luck he understated how good the staff is, though Reich did acknowledge it's a young staff. That was a super interesting answer in general, with Reich acknowledging that it was a big source of uncertainty to come in and not bring his own guys - that's what I'm saying! - and also saying that he told the staff that sometimes you earn trust but in this case we're starting from trust. Clearly Reich was told Taylor's staff was staying on and Reich is working within that construct. I can only hope his impression of the staff is as positive as he is saying. Reich made this explicit at the end of the press conference - Luck dictated that Reich couldn't pick the staff. Welp, hope Luck is making a good call.

[Chupacabra]

Appreciate the thought and analysis. My thoughts to these items follow:

• Stanford needed someone in charge of on-field football immediately. This is not a time of year where you're likely to find the best candidate in a full-scale coaching search. An overwhelming majority of the time, an interim job would be given to a current staffer. On only very rare occasions, someone from outside the organization comes in. Interestingly, this did happen when Reich was fired by the Colts and they brought in Jeff Saturday from a TV studio.
  
• Luck and Reich have a special relationship so the GM probably started to wonder, "What if???" I have an image of him having the idea at night and waking up knowing he wanted to do it.
  
• It's an agreement for one year because you can't conduct a full search now but can do so when the season ends. And when this agreement is over after the season, Reich can be a candidate. So can April or Byham, if appropriate. Maybe Jim Leonhard or Mike Denbrock. Maybe Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, or Curly Lambeau.
  
• If interested, Reich will have the upper hand due to his incumbency and his relationship with Luck. It's hard to imagine Luck would choose someone other than the man who officiated his wedding if that man is successful and wants the job. This is also probably a brobdingnagian reason why Luck had to be so firm in all terms. Setting boundaries early can reduce anyone's expectations.
  
• You don't know how Reich will respond to the college game, or to Stanford. It seems like he may not be interested in pounding the recruiting trail. Does he have the fire in him to rally young players?
  
• Regarding the current assistants, I think the most interesting thing we're seeing from Luck here is a core value of loyalty and being honorable. Is he not "cold blooded" enough? Maybe not. But he doesn't think these guys deserved to pay for Taylor's misdoings and I applaud him for that. Ripping apart a coaching staff at this point in the cycle could breed a good amount of negativity and ill-will toward the head coach. I see Luck as recognizing this and not wanting to make the feeling in the building any more negative than it was.
  

I like the Reich hire. I love the out of the box idea. I do have some skepticism about it. I don't think the experience this year will necessarily lead to warm feelings on the Farm that make him want to stay or make the majority of people want to keep him. I just see the season as being too difficult considering the talent level.

If it does work out it could be a lot of fun. If not, there's an opportunity to lock in on a guy. My target (possibly forever) is Jim Leonhard.

* They could not have been more definitive that this is only for 2025. That's disappointing to me because the idea of Frank Reich trying to build something at Stanford is something I could really get behind. But there was no wiggle room. I hear what people are saying about how things can change and I know intellectually that's true, but to me this dispelled my notion that this could have been a savvy political move by Luck to circumvent Stanford bureaucracy and get his preferred guy in the door before finding a way to remove the interim tag. Unless they are both lying through their teeth, which seems implausible, this truly was a situation where Luck had a specific interim vision and had that as a condition and Reich bought in to that specifically. If so, it's an unusual and potentially quite awkward situation but I like what Reich said about leaning into it with players and coaches and trying to make 2025 a special year. Still, this is going to make the next Stanford coach a hot topic of discussion for the next eight months and there's no getting around that interim equals lame duck.

* Interesting insight into Luck telling Reich the staff is good but younger and Reich meeting with the staff and telling Luck he understated how good the staff is, though Reich did acknowledge it's a young staff. That was a super interesting answer in general, with Reich acknowledging that it was a big source of uncertainty to come in and not bring his own guys - that's what I'm saying! - and also saying that he told the staff that sometimes you earn trust but in this case we're starting from trust. Clearly Reich was told Taylor's staff was staying on and Reich is working within that construct. I can only hope his impression of the staff is as positive as he is saying. Reich made this explicit at the end of the press conference - Luck dictated that Reich couldn't pick the staff. Welp, hope Luck is making a good call.