We haven’t tried using the mechanism that teams without elite high school recruiting, massive LDS contingents, or the best most stable long-term entrenched cultures in the country require to become competitive: bringing in large numbers of transfers every year.
The one thing almost everybody seems to agree on is that players are the driving force of college football teams. Tavita: we're going to be player-driven. Andrew: retaining and getting talent is the biggest part of the job. Matt: you're a loser if you don't recruit top ten high school classes and/or bring in 20+ guy transfer classes.
The question is how to optimize the roster in these complicated times. We used to debate whether a recruit and retain model is a feasible basis for a program turnaround. It's possible that is still an open debate or something our powers-that-be think about, but I hope not. I have marshalled what I think is convincing evidence that recruit and retain only works from extant positions of (extreme) strength, like the most cream of the crop bluebloods, and a very few other exceptions (e.g., one can imagine in a new five-in-five era that BYU's religious mission exemption becomes a major structural advantage). By and large transfers are essential in the modern era. This is only logical, for reasons I hope all understand. Evaluating adults who have competed against Division I opponents is a lot easier than evaluating adolescents competing against guys in their terminal stages of football. It's like the difference between basic arithmetic and differential calculus.
Stanford has experienced this just like everybody else has. We are among the bottom few transfer-reliant programs in the country and even we are in a situation where our QB1 has been a transfer two years in a row, one of our two draft picks last year was a transfer (and he was also last year's Offensive MVP), arguably three of our four best offensive players last year were transfers, and arguably three of our top four defensive players last year were transfers. If you think about Stanford's best players the last two years you have Davis Warren, CJ Williams, Caden High, Niki Prongos, Clay Patterson, Jay Green, and Jahsiah Galvan on one side of the ledger and Micah Ford, Collin Wright, Brandon Nicholson, and I'll be magnanimous and say Sam Roush on the other. Transfers are like a fifth of our roster and 70 percent of the best players. And that is happening without paying or succeeding in attracting transfers. The highest ranked transfers we've gotten are Nico Brown (hopefully by the end of the year we are talking about him in this pattern of transfers dominating our list of best players) and Gaethan Bernadel (certainly part of the pattern of transfers being among our best).....we have yet to attract a top 300 national transfer. In other words, we aren't even getting notable transfers and yet transfers are still our best players. This dynamic is just so obvious that I have to think Stanford's powers-that-be understand it.
So we know we need transfers. The bargaining will come over how many. I tried to wrap my head around this during the offseason with an analysis of top 25 and top 40 teams in 2024 and 2025 and how many incoming transfers they had. In 2024, the median top 25 team had 13 and the median top 40 team had 12.5. In 2025, the median top 25 team had 16 and the median top 40 team had 17. We'll have to let 2026 unfold to see which teams are top 25/top 40, but using the SP+ preseason model the median top 25 team brought in 18 transfers and the median top 40 team brought in 19.5. Lest any wishful thinkers want to say "aha, that's just the median, there are less transfer-reliant teams that do well," it's the Notre Dame and Georgia type program that do well without a ton of transfers. Or, deliciously, a program like Miami is very low on transfers (13 incoming this year....yes, that's very low) but shovels the biggest NIL deal ever to get the QB of their dreams. That analysis convinced me that bare minimum seriousness has to mean transfers in the teens. Bare minimum. I will also note the interesting pattern that the median number for incoming transfers has been rising each year. As teams experience this era, the market adjusts and teams are bringing in even more transfers and/or the teams that actually succeed are the ones with more transfers.
Fundamentally, what we need to do is get from the basement into competitive environs. The teams that most interest me in navigating transfer portal tradeoffs are not the Notre Dame and Georgia types with dream rosters or the Clemson type in free fall (except as a cautionary tale). What I want to know is how have teams been competitive in the NWO despite not having killer high school recruiting. That is what we have to navigate because, sadly, we have failed to supercharge the roster via the high school path that is clearly our philosophical preference. Our trajectory continues to fall in on-paper talent, now #50 in the 247 team talent composite, a NWO trajectory of 25-->23-->37-->42-->46-->50. Because our 2027 recruiting class is lackluster - currently only two 4-stars and 1-2 top 400 recruits - we are likely to lose more on-paper talent after this year than we gain. We very well may be ranked in the 50s in the talent composite again in 2027. We are still trying to find bottom from a talent perspective. Even if that is pessimistic, we are destined to be below-average in on-paper talent vis-a-vis the Power Four for several more years. Even an optimist would have to say what we are planning around for the next few years is talent in the 40s.
The one thing almost everybody seems to agree on is that players are the driving force of college football teams. Tavita: we're going to be player-driven. Andrew: retaining and getting talent is the biggest part of the job. Matt: you're a loser if you don't recruit top ten high school classes and/or bring in 20+ guy transfer classes.
The question is how to optimize the roster in these complicated times. We used to debate whether a recruit and retain model is a feasible basis for a program turnaround. It's possible that is still an open debate or something our powers-that-be think about, but I hope not. I have marshalled what I think is convincing evidence that recruit and retain only works from extant positions of (extreme) strength, like the most cream of the crop bluebloods, and a very few other exceptions (e.g., one can imagine in a new five-in-five era that BYU's religious mission exemption becomes a major structural advantage). By and large transfers are essential in the modern era. This is only logical, for reasons I hope all understand. Evaluating adults who have competed against Division I opponents is a lot easier than evaluating adolescents competing against guys in their terminal stages of football. It's like the difference between basic arithmetic and differential calculus.
Stanford has experienced this just like everybody else has. We are among the bottom few transfer-reliant programs in the country and even we are in a situation where our QB1 has been a transfer two years in a row, one of our two draft picks last year was a transfer (and he was also last year's Offensive MVP), arguably three of our four best offensive players last year were transfers, and arguably three of our top four defensive players last year were transfers. If you think about Stanford's best players the last two years you have Davis Warren, CJ Williams, Caden High, Niki Prongos, Clay Patterson, Jay Green, and Jahsiah Galvan on one side of the ledger and Micah Ford, Collin Wright, Brandon Nicholson, and I'll be magnanimous and say Sam Roush on the other. Transfers are like a fifth of our roster and 70 percent of the best players. And that is happening without paying or succeeding in attracting transfers. The highest ranked transfers we've gotten are Nico Brown (hopefully by the end of the year we are talking about him in this pattern of transfers dominating our list of best players) and Gaethan Bernadel (certainly part of the pattern of transfers being among our best).....we have yet to attract a top 300 national transfer. In other words, we aren't even getting notable transfers and yet transfers are still our best players. This dynamic is just so obvious that I have to think Stanford's powers-that-be understand it.
So we know we need transfers. The bargaining will come over how many. I tried to wrap my head around this during the offseason with an analysis of top 25 and top 40 teams in 2024 and 2025 and how many incoming transfers they had. In 2024, the median top 25 team had 13 and the median top 40 team had 12.5. In 2025, the median top 25 team had 16 and the median top 40 team had 17. We'll have to let 2026 unfold to see which teams are top 25/top 40, but using the SP+ preseason model the median top 25 team brought in 18 transfers and the median top 40 team brought in 19.5. Lest any wishful thinkers want to say "aha, that's just the median, there are less transfer-reliant teams that do well," it's the Notre Dame and Georgia type program that do well without a ton of transfers. Or, deliciously, a program like Miami is very low on transfers (13 incoming this year....yes, that's very low) but shovels the biggest NIL deal ever to get the QB of their dreams. That analysis convinced me that bare minimum seriousness has to mean transfers in the teens. Bare minimum. I will also note the interesting pattern that the median number for incoming transfers has been rising each year. As teams experience this era, the market adjusts and teams are bringing in even more transfers and/or the teams that actually succeed are the ones with more transfers.
Fundamentally, what we need to do is get from the basement into competitive environs. The teams that most interest me in navigating transfer portal tradeoffs are not the Notre Dame and Georgia types with dream rosters or the Clemson type in free fall (except as a cautionary tale). What I want to know is how have teams been competitive in the NWO despite not having killer high school recruiting. That is what we have to navigate because, sadly, we have failed to supercharge the roster via the high school path that is clearly our philosophical preference. Our trajectory continues to fall in on-paper talent, now #50 in the 247 team talent composite, a NWO trajectory of 25-->23-->37-->42-->46-->50. Because our 2027 recruiting class is lackluster - currently only two 4-stars and 1-2 top 400 recruits - we are likely to lose more on-paper talent after this year than we gain. We very well may be ranked in the 50s in the talent composite again in 2027. We are still trying to find bottom from a talent perspective. Even if that is pessimistic, we are destined to be below-average in on-paper talent vis-a-vis the Power Four for several more years. Even an optimist would have to say what we are planning around for the next few years is talent in the 40s.