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In the past few years, college football has entered a new era. A 2021 rule change allowing players to sell their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), coupled with the ability for student-athletes to enter an online transfer portal where they may indicate desire to change schools, an arms race among college football programs has emerged.
This novel system allows schools to reward those who transfer with huge monetary incentives through NIL "collectives."
While other schools have reacted quickly to these new changes, Stanford has lagged behind, failing to build support and a strong donor base for its collective "Lifetime Cardinal" program.
At the outset of the NCAA NIL changes in 2022-2023, there was donor and alumni demand to make Lifetime Cardinal dedicated to recruiting top football and basketball NIL recruits. However, the current Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir was reluctant to support an NIL collective without making it more equitable, and prevented Lifetime Cardinal from getting off the ground, contributing to its slow start. Over time, receptivity has changed as women’s basketball has also attracted dollars.
Yet, in spite of the university’s $37 billion endowment and scores of billionaire graduates, Stanford refuses to give school donor mailing lists to Lifetime Cardinal to strengthen NIL recruitment or promote the program at athletic events. As a result, Stanford’s spending on football has fallen behind ACC rival football programs like Clemson, Florida State, SMU and UVA.
Stanford needs to immediately reverse course. When not counting the shortened COVID season, Stanford hasn't had a winning season since 2018. Stanford Stadium is almost empty during many of its home games.
While Stanford flounders, schools such as Notre Dame have leveraged NIL to pull away top quarterbacks from Wake Forest and Duke. BYU has been able to pay the top basketball recruit to join its team.
Stanford shouldn't be in the middle of the pack or behind given its resources and history of excellence across a multitude of sports and academics, it should be leading the way. Stanford also is reeling from being caught off guard on conference realignment and the implosion of the PAC-12 conference. In a desperate move to find a new conference after many other former PAC-12 teams had found new homes, Stanford joined the ACC (alongside Cal and SMU) at a price: getting a significantly smaller share of ACC revenues.
To be fair, Stanford has been warming up to transfers. For example, its basketball team has started to take transfers to fill some of its gaps.
Also, when Stanford promises NIL money to players who move to Stanford, it makes good on its promises unlike other schools who often promise students money who then show up receiving a fraction of the dollars.
If Stanford doesn't invest in its collective now, Stanford athletics could be entering a dark age from which it could not recover.
Many billionaire alumni might not like sports or Stanford sports, but understanding that sports are key to Stanford's unique brand has to move some donors.
Other sports depend on Stanford football revenue (including many of the sports which produce Stanford's record number of Olympians).
In football only a few players are generally good enough to be paid. It's not a huge effort. But finding Stanford donors to pony up for NIL may very well determine whether Stanford can remain competitive at all in future years.
Stanford has now hired former Stanford and Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck as the inaugural general manager for the Stanford football team. Hopefully this is a positive sign that the University is finally ready to re-up its commitment to its football team.
