While minimally relevant to Stanford in some ways,
this article on the new era of college football roster building was an interesting read.
Thinking through a Stanford lens, a few quotes jumped out at me:
"Our philosophy is, our best opportunity for success at Mizzou is to retain players who had the potential to play in the NFL but were not a third-round or better grade," Drinkwitz said. "We want to get them back. If you swing and miss [in the draft], you're going to be on a practice squad. Well, we're going to make sure you're paid better than a practice squad player. We're going to provide you for a year to get better and improve your stock. If you hit on that, you're going to make way more. Do you want to cash in your lottery ticket now, or do you want to invest a year?"
"Not to name names, but there's certain schools that have gone extremely transfer-heavy that, if you just look at the individual talent on the roster, you'd be like, 'Man, what a team,'" Sumrall said. "But then you watch them play and they're not a very good team. They may look great some Saturdays, but they don't look very consistent. I'll take consistency over maybe some things that are flashier at times."
"I keep hearing everybody talk about how you've got to recruit your roster," Fritz said, referencing the increasing need to avoid transfer portal losses. "We've tried to do that since I started coaching. You always want to treat your guys the right way. We try to retain them by providing a culture where they can thrive and grow."
The Drinkwitz quote points to an imperative (but I fear blind spot) for Stanford football, the Sumrall quote points to the possible opportunity/optimistic case for Stanford's place in this landscape, and the Fritz quote points to a successful coach talking just like Coach Taylor.
To Drinkwitz's point, the sweet spot for a major college program that can't constantly reload with blue chip prospects is to be a program that is developing and/or acquiring NFL talent but, crucially, not losing out on NFL backup/practice squad level guys because you can't entice them to stay. Stanford under Shaw became an abject failure in this regard. Since 2018, Tanner McKee, Elijah Higgins, Kyu Blu Kelly, Elijah Higgins, Davis Mills, Dalton Schultz, Harrison Phillips, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Simi Fehoko, Connor Wedington, Kaden Smith, Colby Parkinson, Nate Herbig, Drew Dalman, Walker Little, Foster Sarell, Thomas Booker, Tucker Fisk, Curtis Robinson, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, and more all left eligibility on the table to try their hand at the NFL. A good case can be made that Little was literally the only one (maybe JJAW, maybe Adebo, maybe Reid) who left with a reasonable expectation of entering the NFL as a starting-level player. I viewed this as a risible, devastating (from the perspective of competing in major college football) development. Really bad combo to recruit like a #25 (or #40) team and have players leave for the NFL more readily relative to draft stock than they would even at a #1 team. It is one of Taylor's big challenges to get guys to want to play for Stanford rather than leave after three years to be a Day 3 pick (the beyond risible McKee/Herbig/Meeks/Fehoko/Smith/Parkinson situation). If possible, hopefully he can get them in significant numbers to decline to leave even after four years. But to Drinkwitz's point, there is an incentive aspect to this equation. The collectives allow a program like Mizzou to pay their equivalent of these guys (on our current roster maybe Yurosek an example) so that in a cold hard calculation staying in college doesn't feel like a troubling opportunity cost. Is Stanford postured to do this? Is our collective going to offer Yurosek hundreds of thousands of dollars or will we pat ourselves on the back for giving every walk-on $10,000?
To Sumrall's point, I do not think it is Pollyanna-ish for Stanford fans or any other teams that are on the more restrained end of the transfer competition to have hope (and, more to the point, build a theory of the case) around building more continuity, teamwork, esprit de corps, etc. I would think it would be difficult for Dillingham to build a culture at Arizona State with that kind of roster turnover.
But that gets to the Fritz point. If you're not reloading in this current era that increases the premium even more on recruiting your own roster. Taylor says the right things about it, but what we don't know is how well he will walk his talk, nor what kind of tools the administration and the collective will give him with regard to graduate school, NIL compensation, etc.
One of the overarching themes of the article was that this new landscape amounts to a market inefficiency that those with imagination and execution can exploit. Stanford needs to do that by making Stanford an attractive place to play and study, benefiting from more (and, crucially, the right kind of) roster stability, and knocking high school recruiting out of the park. The article alluded to this last point but it's essential for Stanford: with other programs dividing their rosters across high school recruiting, transfer portal recruiting, and JC transfers, that means many fewer high school recruits will be signing with Power Five programs. Stanford absolutely has to take advantage of this and get a higher caliber of high school recruit than we would have if competitors weren't so distracted by the bright shiny transfer portal.
stanford.rivals.com
