Many, many posts about TV rights, operating costs, travel hours and strength of conference/schedule. Why Stanford’s iconoclastic approach to our total athletics program, revenue and Olympic sports is appearing misguided. Who screwed the pooch.
However, I remain unconvinced. I’m not at all certain that I’ve read a post about how to reposition our program. Personally, I think our current situation results from poor execution not an obsolete overall institutional framework.
Stanford will remain for the foreseeable future a truly elite educational institution. For over 100 years Stanford has prepared leaders to confront the challenges facing the country and the world. Who makes a better offer to elite athletes than us? In 30 of 35 sports our offer has included the education AND the environment to maximize athletic potential. It has worked. But the commitment to athletic performance must be unquestioned. We must excel on the field beyond the schools who are in it only for the money…and we have. See the national championships. See the competitive success of our alumni athletes on the field and as impressively, post sports, Kate Starbird aside.
I believe we screwed up when we’ve failed to demand and support the athletic side of our offer to prospective students. We’re seeing it play out once again with baseball? Who’s got the best offer? Is it Vanderbilt with their biomechanics laboratory that is at the forefront of pitching performance improvement? A Vanderbilt education ain’t all bad eit. And let’s not kid ourselves, NIL is part of a competitive offer.
Stanford must reset the expectations for athletics coaching, facilities, PAY for athletes and personal performance enhancement possibilities if we’re going to continue in intercollegiate sports. Unless we choose to impose appropriate standards and focus for the Athletic Department we’re wasting a whole lot of money on mediocrity and that damages the overall Stanford “brand”.
Personally, I don’t care too much about which way we go, sports or no sports. But I do care that we are seeing our brand’s weaknesses exposed so obviously. We’re drifting, uncompetitive in a competitive environment, as they say scoreboard.
Our program needs to be redefined and personnel changes are long overdue if we want to exploit the strength of our academic offer in the area of competitive “revenue” sports. I think that in the near term, conference alignments are a second/third order priority. We’re unfocused on the totality of what we must offer student athletes to enhance our brand. Commit to this, fix our weaknesses with aggression and the other issues will take care of themselves.
stanford.rivals.com
