[BostonCard]

It is very hard to disentangle Shaw's contribution from secular changes in college football since he started.  Broadly, anything that lowers the barrier to transfer is going to hurt Stanford more than other schools, because of internal reasons, the flow will favor students transfer out over transferring in.

To wit:

First, the graduate transfer rule eliminated the one-year waiting period for players who graduated transferring.  This is a good thing for student-athletes, but disproportionately hurts Stanford, since a) our players graduate at a higher rate than other schools, b) it is harder to get into a Stanford graduate program than at other schools, and c) we disproportionately have relied on fifth year seniors historically.

Then, the transfer portal made it easier to transfer.  It is easier to put your name in a web portal than it is to do the legwork to contact other programs to find out if they are looking for a transfer and whether they would consider you.

Third, the COVID year generally wreaked havoc on everyone, and has dramatically increased transferring throughout college football (which, as I mentioned hurts Stanford more than other places).  As winflop noted, outbound transfers have been increasing (12 in 2020, 16 in 2021), but for pretty much everywhere else, the number of outbound transfers can be balanced by the number of inbound transfers, so the net effect is the difference in quality between the two.  That is not possible at Stanford, and even if we were to be able to keep the number of outbound transfers to half our peer school average, that still is a net negative compared to a world in which transfers of any kind are very rare.

Fourth, opening the portal and eliminating the penalty for undergraduate transfers further increases mobility between schools.

I'm all for a "culture" that encourages loyalty to the team and school, but let's be honest here, comparing today to 13 years ago is an apples to oranges comparison, because it was hard for someone who wanted to transfer to do so.  I doubt players in the past were more loyal or that the culture was all that much different; they just had no choice and didn't know any better.

I guess we will see if our next coach can change things around.  If this is all "culture rot" instigated by Shaw, then that's a fixable issue.  If not, then our best hope is the efforts that Shaw undertook to decrease the restrictions on inbound transfers bear fruit.

BC

[BostonCard]

It is very hard to disentangle Shaw's contribution from secular changes in college football since he started.  Broadly, anything that lowers the barrier to transfer is going to hurt Stanford more than other schools, because of internal reasons, the flow will favor students transfer out over transferring in.

To wit:

First, the graduate transfer rule eliminated the one-year waiting period for players who graduated transferring.  This is a good thing for student-athletes, but disproportionately hurts Stanford, since a) our players graduate at a higher rate than other schools, b) it is harder to get into a Stanford graduate program than at other schools, and c) we disproportionately have relied on fifth year seniors historically.

Then, the transfer portal made it easier to transfer.  It is easier to put your name in a web portal than it is to do the legwork to contact other programs to find out if they are looking for a transfer and whether they would consider you.

Third, the COVID year generally wreaked havoc on everyone, and has dramatically increased transferring throughout college football (which, as I mentioned hurts Stanford more than other places).  As winflop noted, outbound transfers have been increasing (12 in 2020, 16 in 2021), but for pretty much everywhere else, the number of outbound transfers can be balanced by the number of inbound transfers, so the net effect is the difference in quality between the two.  That is not possible at Stanford, and even if we were to be able to keep the number of outbound transfers to half our peer school average, that still is a net negative compared to a world in which transfers of any kind are very rare.

Fourth, opening the portal and eliminating the penalty for undergraduate transfers further increases mobility between schools.

I'm all for a "culture" that encourages loyalty to the team and school, but let's be honest here, comparing today to 13 years ago is an apples to oranges comparison, because it was hard for someone who wanted to transfer to do so.  I doubt players in the past were more loyal or that the culture was all that much different; they just had no choice and didn't know any better.

I guess we will see if our next coach can change things around.  If this is all "culture rot" instigated by Shaw, then that's a fixable issue.  If not, then our best hope is the efforts that Shaw undertook to decrease the restrictions on inbound transfers bear fruit.

BC