Why Stanford football won’t be back on top anytime soon

Stanford football has been in a downward spiral for a little while now, and that most likely won’t change anytime soon for the Cardinal.

The Stanford football program was once one of the strongest that the West Coast had to offer, but such a sight cannot be seen today.

The struggling team is coming off of an abysmal 3-9 record to enter this approaching season, but considering how that serves as its third-straight run with four wins or fewer, it’s safe to say that losing is not too foreign at this point.

But hey, all sports programs have their tough stretches, right? Surely Stanford will be back in power after a season or two — or will it?

Despite the weakness of the Pac-12 today (and even more so in the future once USC and UCLA leave), chances are that the Cardinal will still have a hard time bouncing back when considering everyone that will remain on their horizon.

Think of it like this: if two movie characters are fighting, and one of them manages to knock the other to the ground, is the first guy going to wait for the second guy to get back up? No, he’ll literally kick the guy while he’s down, making the absolute most of whatever advantage he has. Essentially, that is how the Cardinal’s divisional opponents are going to treat them.

Comparing Stanford to said opponents, it is clearly the worst team in its division as of now, donning a 1-4 record in the Pac-12 North last year, along with being the only one in there that is coming off of less than four wins.

But along with having to endure the North on an annual basis, the Cardinal also have Utah and Arizona State lingering in the Pac-12’s South half, both of which have more victories than Stanford over the last five seasons.

All of this goes without even addressing the fact that the Cardinal will probably make a point of calling up both USC and UCLA to share out-of-conference matchups for the sake of preserving each rivalry. So despite what their moves to the Big 10 indicate, those two might be sticking around anyway.

What about non-conference competition?

Speaking of out-of-conference play, that brings us to who all Stanford has already scheduled for future slates. And to be frank, it doesn’t appear like it’s always going to be a cakewalk.

Between 2022 and 2035, names like Notre Dame, BYU, Hawaii, TCU, and Boston College pop up on multiple occasions. All of those teams would have a fair shot at downing the Cardinal if they were to face off today, and who’s to say that such a statement would be any less accurate five years from now?

One positive note that Stanford can look upon with hope is its performance in Pac-12 recruiting during this off-season, being ranked 2nd in the league — its highest placement in the rankings since 2017.

However, recruiting hauls looking good on paper and them looking good on the gridiron are two entirely different things. Over the course of these past several years, we’ve seen Cardinal recruiting fail to have a huge impact on their eventual performance. But nonetheless, it’s better than nothing.

The Stanford Cardinal look like a rather stable football team on the surface: a settled-in David Shaw at head coach, strong recruiting, and a weakening conference. But at the end of the day, there isn’t much about the on-field capabilities of this squad (or who all it’s meeting on the field) that hints at a comeback tour happening anytime soon.