What’s next for Stanford after David Shaw resigns?

David Shaw announced he was stepping down as head coach of the Cardinal in his postgame press conference after Stanford’s loss to BYU. 

Few head coaches have as much success coaching their alma mater as David Shaw did at Stanford. Shaw went 96-54 during his tenure on The Farm, winning two Rose Bowls and three Pac-12 Titles. Those 96 wins make Shaw the winningest head coach in Stanford football history, making him the only African-American football coach to do so.

The former Cardinal wide receiver owns two of the three 12-win seasons in school history — Jim Harbaugh owns the other. 2015 was Shaw’s best season. The Cardinal finished 12-2, won the Rose Bowl, and ended the season ranked third, its best since 1940.

The program has fallen on hard times recently, however. The Cardinal has been 14-28 since 2019 and 3-16 in Pac-12 play the last two seasons. Worst of all, Stanford has lost to California in the previous two seasons, something that has not happened since 2008-2009. Early signing and the transfer portal have hurt Stanford’s talent depth during this downturn.

“I prayed about it, I thought about it,” Shaw said. “With every hour, it seemed, it was more cemented in my head. The phrase that kept coming to me is: ‘It’s time.'” The 50-year-old head coach says that he is not burned out on coaching.

“I am not burnt out,” he said. “I’m healthy; I feel good. But 16 years is a long time. … Sixteen years of running a program, 16 years of being responsible for everything, and everybody catches up to you.”

What’s next for the Cardinal? 

Stanford is in a difficult place. Unlike many universities in the Pac-12 and Power Five, football is not the driver in Palo Alto; academics are. Stanford is known as “The Harvard of the West Coast,” so football does not hold as much sway on campus. Former quarterback Andrew Luck often commented about his ability to walk around campus without being bothered.

Stanford’s ability to “get old and stay old” has been hampered by the transfer portal and its difficult graduate school. Players with eligibility left after graduation often transfer because they cannot get into graduate school. Stanford is one of the most challenging graduate schools to get into.

Stanford’s difficult admissions standards also make it difficult for players to transfer quickly, so players often transfer out of Stanford at a higher rate than they transfer into Stanford. If Stanford decided to devalue football and join the Ivy League sometime in the next 5-7 years, it would not be a surprise.

That said, the university has to figure out what allowances they are willing to make for football if they are willing to make as they begin the process of hiring a new head coach.