I know this is a CFB sub, but as a neutral, I’m honestly surprised Stanford went the ACC route.
If there’s any institution with enough gravitas to say, we are not going to participate fully in the idiocracy of modern CFB and are willing to accept being less serious about football because of it, I would have thought it was Stanford. Do most Stanford students and alumni really care that much about having a nationally competitive football program?
Instead, Stanford doubled down. It joined the ACC on financially unfavorable terms, is pouring substantially more resources into football, and now makes athletes in dozens of other sports (many of which have been far more nationally successful than Stanford football recently) do cross-country travel constantly for “conference” play.
I’m not suggesting they pull a UChicago and raze Stanford Stadium to build a library on top of it. But why not accept a less ambitious football model and organize the rest of Stanford athletics around what actually makes sense for the students and the sports involved? Apart from Cal, Stanford has essentially no geographic or historical connection the ACC. And the football program hasn’t been nationally relevant for years. Tbh, I think it’ll hard, if not impossible, to see it regaining relevancy in the present CFB environment—the Miami game being a case in point.
Stanford is one of the few universities whose reputation, alumni engagement, applicant pool, and institutional identity obviously do not depend AT ALL on being successful in football. So why make so many other parts of the athletic department accommodate the ridiculous and perverse economics of football?
Am I underestimating how much Stanford students and alumni actually care about remaining a nationally competitive football program?
We wanted into the Big 10 and they didn’t take us. It’s equal parts on USC and Oregon (fuck them) and on Shaw for not adapting and having the program circle the drain before NIL became a thing.
Yeah, sorry you guys got backstabbed. But given the history of the league going back to the Pacific Coast Conference days, it seems incredibly on-brand. The PCC/Pac-whatever have been screwing each other over since the 1910s, lol.
•
u/Flextime 3d ago
I know this is a CFB sub, but as a neutral, I’m honestly surprised Stanford went the ACC route.
If there’s any institution with enough gravitas to say, we are not going to participate fully in the idiocracy of modern CFB and are willing to accept being less serious about football because of it, I would have thought it was Stanford. Do most Stanford students and alumni really care that much about having a nationally competitive football program?
Instead, Stanford doubled down. It joined the ACC on financially unfavorable terms, is pouring substantially more resources into football, and now makes athletes in dozens of other sports (many of which have been far more nationally successful than Stanford football recently) do cross-country travel constantly for “conference” play.
I’m not suggesting they pull a UChicago and raze Stanford Stadium to build a library on top of it. But why not accept a less ambitious football model and organize the rest of Stanford athletics around what actually makes sense for the students and the sports involved? Apart from Cal, Stanford has essentially no geographic or historical connection the ACC. And the football program hasn’t been nationally relevant for years. Tbh, I think it’ll hard, if not impossible, to see it regaining relevancy in the present CFB environment—the Miami game being a case in point.
Stanford is one of the few universities whose reputation, alumni engagement, applicant pool, and institutional identity obviously do not depend AT ALL on being successful in football. So why make so many other parts of the athletic department accommodate the ridiculous and perverse economics of football?
Am I underestimating how much Stanford students and alumni actually care about remaining a nationally competitive football program?