[BostonCard]

My response "of course its Pritchard".  Matt Squeri had this pegged in his 50-some odd coach list.  Something like 8 years ago when he was our OC and everyone was maligning that Shavita offense I noted that within the AD Pritchard is viewed as future head coach material.  My complaint now, as it was then, is that while I can believe that he will be an outstanding head coach in 5-10 years, it is usually the combination of innate qualities (leadership, management, intellect, people skills, all of which Pritchard supposedly has in spades) and experience, which is somewhat lacking.  Back when he was elevated to OC, I said that I wished he had flown the coop and had a chance to work with a couple more experienced coaches to learn different systems and how to succeed somewhere other than Stanford.  He now has experience with the Washington Commanders, but two years, none as head coach, means that he will learn from his mistakes here, instead of making them somewhere else and bringing his learnings to Stanford.

To me, his career has some parallels to Lane Kiffin's.  Assistant coach to a highly successful head coach (Pete Carrol), rising to OC, and then made a head coach probably before he was ready.  Kiffin at least first floundered around with the Raiders (and had a one year stop in Tennessee) before being brought back to USC, where he floundered a bit, ending with the infamous tarmac firing.  Now, of course,  after stops at Alabama as a coordinator, Florida Atlantic, and most recently at Ole Miss, he just got lured to LSU for stupid money.  I could see a similar trajectory for Pritchard, where he struggles at Stanford for a few years, goes somewhere else and builds back to a very successful career.  Of course, picking up a USC retread might make more sense for an FBS team than a Stanford flunky, so I hope Pritchard succeeds as much for his own sake as for ours.

So, I'm Missouri on this hire.  I hope he succeeds, of course, and think that he has many of the ingredients to do so.  But I could see him flailing a while before figuring it out.  And I continue to believe that the headwinds facing Stanford generally and Stanford Football specifically are going to be very tough for any coach, much less an inexperienced one, to overcome.  As much as there is a pervasive feeling that much as the Green Lantern, Stanford Football can accomplish whatever it wants and that its failure is due to a lack of willpower (something that is shared by the fanbases of all 133 FBS teams), the truth is that there are substantial countervailing institutional pressures that limit the long term trajectory of the team, and sadly, I think those pressures are only getting stronger.

I don't expect Pritchard to restore Stanford to the highs we saw under Harbaugh and the early Shaw years, but honestly, I don't think any coach would be able to.

BC

[BostonCard]

My response "of course its Pritchard".  Matt Squeri had this pegged in his 50-some odd coach list.  Something like 8 years ago when he was our OC and everyone was maligning that Shavita offense I noted that within the AD Pritchard is viewed as future head coach material.  My complaint now, as it was then, is that while I can believe that he will be an outstanding head coach in 5-10 years, it is usually the combination of innate qualities (leadership, management, intellect, people skills, all of which Pritchard supposedly has in spades) and experience, which is somewhat lacking.  Back when he was elevated to OC, I said that I wished he had flown the coop and had a chance to work with a couple more experienced coaches to learn different systems and how to succeed somewhere other than Stanford.  He now has experience with the Washington Commanders, but two years, none as head coach, means that he will learn from his mistakes here, instead of making them somewhere else and bringing his learnings to Stanford.

To me, his career has some parallels to Lane Kiffin's.  Assistant coach to a highly successful head coach (Pete Carrol), rising to OC, and then made a head coach probably before he was ready.  Kiffin at least first floundered around with the Raiders (and had a one year stop in Tennessee) before being brought back to USC, where he floundered a bit, ending with the infamous tarmac firing.  Now, of course,  after stops at Alabama as a coordinator, Florida Atlantic, and most recently at Ole Miss, he just got lured to LSU for stupid money.  I could see a similar trajectory for Pritchard, where he struggles at Stanford for a few years, goes somewhere else and builds back to a very successful career.  Of course, picking up a USC retread might make more sense for an FBS team than a Stanford flunky, so I hope Pritchard succeeds as much for his own sake as for ours.

So, I'm Missouri on this hire.  I hope he succeeds, of course, and think that he has many of the ingredients to do so.  But I could see him flailing a while before figuring it out.  And I continue to believe that the headwinds facing Stanford generally and Stanford Football specifically are going to be very tough for any coach, much less an inexperienced one, to overcome.  As much as there is a pervasive feeling that much as the Green Lantern, Stanford Football can accomplish whatever it wants and that its failure is due to a lack of willpower (something that is shared by the fanbases of all 133 FBS teams), the truth is that there are substantial countervailing institutional pressures that limit the long term trajectory of the team, and sadly, I think those pressures are only getting stronger.

I don't expect Pritchard to restore Stanford to the highs we saw under Harbaugh and the early Shaw years, but honestly, I don't think any coach would be able to.

BC