12-02-2022, 07:42 AM
(12-01-2022, 08:30 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Matt, I think ship has sailed. I too pine for an era when playing football was less transactional, when guys played for one another and for the joy of the sport, not to best position themselves for the NFL or for the transfer portal. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely support having players who instill a culture that you stay at the school out of loyalty for one another and put the team in front of individual goals, and, institutionally, I've said several times that the biggest thing we can be doing (more so than NILs or transfer portals) is to plan for and enable graduate studies among our own student athletes. I think that's something that can easily be sold to the powers that be, to not only be able to say that we have very high graduation rates, but that a substantial proportion of our student athletes graduate with a master's degree or a second undergraduate degree.
But I am also a realist, and as it has become increasingly obvious that the NCAA, the schools, the coaches, and even many fans view student athletes as an expendable means to an end (winning football games and drawing in money from TV), and increasingly view players throughout the college football landscape prioritize advancing their own aims rather than the teams, it is really hard to blame our guys for doing what, basically, everyone else is doing. When everyone else is looking out only for themselves, it is hard to expect our guys to look out for the team at the expense of their own ambitions.
BC
I haven't given up. There is very strong evidence Stanford football players have been uniquely selfish/individual career-oriented under Shaw. This is the result of a complex mix of factors, some within our control and some not. There are also Stanford-specific things that make attrition difficult. But the fact is our players leave for the NFL extremely readily, transfer for lateral football opportunities extremely readily, and focus on the 40 year decision/non-football futures/big courseloads to maximize academic optionality at the expense of football far more than players at other schools. These are things a new coach/culture COULD (not necessarily will) have an influence on, potentially at the margins but also potentially more fundamentally.
Believe me, our players are not "doing what everybody else is doing." We've become unusually selfish (or put more charitably individually career-oriented/professionally-oriented/academic) than others.
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