First comes the rival, then comes the other rival, and then things get real for the Stanford football program.
The Cardinal needs a permanent coach and will be venturing into what might be the hottest, rowdiest hiring market in the sport’s history.
How hot?
So hot that one coach, Mississippi’s Lane Kiffin, is wanted by three different teams … in his conference.
So hot that Virginia Tech fired Brent Pry in September and hired a coach in November, James Franklin, who had been fired in October.
So hot that Stanford needed an edge, a spark — something that would prove the university is ready to get serious about its long-floundering football program.
And along came Bradford Freeman.
The former Stanford player and longtime supporter stepped forward with a $50 million donation earlier this fall that changed not only the math but the calculus.
“Brad’s gift is a vote of confidence in the program, and in me,” Cardinal general manager Andrew Luck said. “It will allow us to invest in people, help us attract and retain players, and get the program into a virtuous cycle.
“We need to invest in people to regain our competitive edge.”
Freeman’s gift will be spread across a number of fronts, according to athletic director John Donahoe, but revenue sharing is integral to the process.
Under the settlement terms of the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit, schools are allowed to share up to $20.5 million with athletes beginning this academic year. (The amount will rise over time as revenues increase.)
In the ACC and other major conferences, $13 million to $15 million will be allocated to football, which generates the revenue used to support the Olympic sports.
For Stanford, the funds used for revenue sharing must be generated by athletics.
“We are not taking any university resources,” Donahoe said. “We are raising the funds for revenue sharing. And the intent is to start competing for championships next year, right out of the gate.
“This year is about the building blocks. Andrew is laying out his vision, and people are getting on board. Brad’s gift is a symbol of that.”
But the financial pressure is hardly limited to talent acquisition and retention. The Cardinal must pay for a new head coach in this ultra-competitive market. And for coordinators and assistants. And the support staff. Also, there are expenses associated with recruiting and facilities, nutrition and strength and conditioning.
And in this hyper-competitive environment, where every gaze is cast to the 12-team College Football Playoff, nothing is getting cheaper.
That’s doubly true for a program that fell woefully behind its competition in the post-COVID era — in both the former Pac-12 and the present ACC — and has posted four consecutive 3-9 seasons.
Unless the Cardinal beats Cal on Saturday or Notre Dame next weekend, the streak of three-win seasons will hit five.
But there are reasons to believe the stretch of woe will end, if not next year then soon after. And atop that list is the top of the university org chart.
President Jonathan Levin cares about football in a way his predecessor did not. And like his counterpart in Berkeley, Cal chancellor Rich Lyons, Levin understands the benefits on-field success can bring to the campus writ large.
It’s not a difficult concept for anyone who watched the Cardinal ascend from irrelevance to powerhouse during Luck’s playing career under coaches Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw. Donations soared. Applications for admission spiked.
And it all unfolded under a president, John Hennessy, who did not view every letter of intent as a pact with the devil. Stanford could recruit players capable of beating USC and winning Rose Bowls without abdicating its educational mission and staining its academic reputation.
But Hennessy stepped down in 2016; his longtime provost, John Etchemendy, walked away a year later; and regression followed.
The next president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, didn’t know if footballs were inflated or stuffed; nor did his provost, Persis Drell. Far worse: They didn’t care.
The indifference atop the food chain, combined with an ineffective athletic director, Bernard Muir, allowed rot to take hold at precisely the wrong time: In the post-COVID world of athlete compensation and the transfer portal, when campus alignment with athletics in general, and football specifically, was more important than ever.
Not surprisingly, the Cardinal was slow to respond to NIL, accepted few transfers and sank to the bottom of the Pac-12 (before it imploded) and is wallowing on the bottom tier of the ACC.
But Levin views football through a different lens. He attended Stanford when the program mattered — in the early 1990s, during Bill Walsh’s second stint as head coach — and recognizes how success can elevate the campus community.
The decision to hire Luck late last year, and then move on from Muir, were the first moves on Levin’s chessboard. Just as Freeman’s $50 million gift signaled to the industry that Stanford is mustering the resources needed to win, so, too, did Levin’s decision to hire Luck announce to the campus community that football won’t be left to collect dust. The move created a permission structure for constituents to care and invest.
Since that point, Luck has fired Troy Taylor, hired Frank Reich (as the interim coach for 2025) and immersed himself in every aspect of the program. He prowls the sideline during games, works with the players during practice and even sells season tickets.
Above all, he raises money.
Freeman’s gift is “the first major investment” in the program, Luck explained, “but there have been others.”
And there will be more — there must be more, because $50 million spread across multiple new expense buckets (revenue sharing, coaching staff, additional scholarships, etc.) won’t sustain the program by itself.
“If you aren’t revenue sharing, you are an unserious program,” Luck said. “And we are serious. But to win championships, you need championship people. We want to be the preeminent destination for the best and the brightest.
“My goal is to build a business model that gives us the exit velocity we need to win championships.”
Freeman’s gift was one step; hiring a coach is another.
And because of the former, Stanford has a better chance for success with the latter.
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