(11-29-2025, 10:27 AM)Farm93 Wrote:(11-29-2025, 09:19 AM)norcard10 Wrote:$50 million doesn't go quite as far as it used to.(11-29-2025, 09:17 AM)StanUSwagU Wrote: To be able to evaluate this hire, one has to hear what :
(1) The Goals or Aspirations of the Stanford Football program are (in terms of # of Wins per year):
-If the goal is to be a Perennial Top15, 10+ win, Regularly win the ACC conference team.
Or
-If the goal is merely to be a perennial 7 win team.
For a $50M donation, it better be the former.
In 2026 $50M could get you a good coach that has never won a Power 4 conference title (Kiffin, Franklin, etc.) for about 5 years. If a program wanted a coach with a few conference titles that would likely require another step up in money with something close to $50M sitting around if the coach was fired without cause at any point in their 5-8 year contract.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/st...5m-5-years
And that $50Milllion wouldn't include any assistant coaches.
Given Stanford plays in high tax California, and lacks any real potential for the coach to earn endorsement deal money on the side, I fear as we approach 2026 $50Million gets the program a CHANCE at a 6-8 win level coach with a very low ceiling or an unproven coach with an unknown ceiling.
I would guess if Stanford wanted to compete for someone with real CFP credentials they would need to pay 20%-40% more than whatever LSU is about to pay to get Kiffin.
Pritchard is a good hire for Stanford's current level of support. Those dreaming of better should quickly find 35,000 fans and force them to buy season tickets for 2026 and pay another few million fans to watch Stanford football in 2026. Without that elite level of fan support (45K+ butts in the seats and millions of eyes on the screens at home) Stanford probably has a hiring ceiling that excludes proven CFP-level coaches.
$200M is the rumored total fund raising amount. More than enough. And did people forget Shaw was getting paid $9M?
There's no reason Stanford couldn't pay competitively for an actual top coach.
https://sportsdata.usatoday.com/ncaa/sal...ball/coach
$9M would be top 13. I can't come to terms that we settled with Tavita for monetary reasons. More likely this was a character safe hire post the Taylor mess. It certainly isn't based on coaching accomplishments.
I'm not even asking for a CFP level coach however. I would have been thrilled with someone that had proven head coaching success at any level. San Diego State, Tulane, or Vandy headcoach as an example. Vandy's head coach was only receiving $3.7M before the extension he just signed.
