Stanford will try to win the old-fashioned way – without NIL or the transfer portal

STANFORD, Calif. – Troy Taylor checked a lot of boxes on the Stanford wish list. He has won a lot at every level of coaching. He is naturally, insatiably curious. He is intensely competitive but knows how to park his ego at the door. He sees a larger societal picture, catnip to the Farm hierarchy.

Most relevant to the Cardinal cause, Taylor is undaunted at the university’s reluctance to employ the transfer portal or NIL as roster-building tools, even as his new locker room has more vacancies than a San Francisco office building. Taylor’s description of how he will rebuild Stanford sounds like Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha who made his fortune in part by ignoring the wisdom of the crowd.

“What do they say, confidence is when you don’t entirely understand the situation?” Taylor asked with a smile. “We are going to be an anomaly in college football.”

Stanford always has been an anomaly, the school that continued to insist that it can succeed athletically without cutting corners academically. During the 2010s, the Cardinal won three Pac-12 championships, played in the Rose, Orange and Fiesta bowls, and produced six NFL first-round draft choices, including quarterback Andrew Luck and running back Christian McCaffrey.

The 2010s are over.

David Shaw resigned in December, and the roster he left behind sprinted to the exit. More than a dozen players, including four-fifths of the starting offensive line and the team’s leading tackler, left the Farm for schools such as Michigan, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas and Iowa State.

Stanford is as picky about transfer students as it is about incoming freshmen (acceptance rate: 4.3 percent). Taylor squeezed three players through the portal. Two are offensive linemen from the Ivy League.

As for NIL, the university policy to follow the letter of the NCAA law is, shall we say, unique. Stanford is being so cautious that it wouldn’t allow the boosters running the NIL collective to meet with the players in the football building. One of the boosters is former Cardinal quarterback Andrew Luck – which meant that Andrew Luck couldn’t hold a meeting in the Andrew Luck Auditorium.

But Taylor is convinced that the intrinsic appeal of Stanford will win out. He intends to use a blueprint that looks familiar to the one Jim Harbaugh and Shaw used in the Cardinal heyday – identify academically and athletically talented players early in their high school career, make sure they load up on AP classes, then coach ’em up.

“Our players are going to want to get their degree, which is going to allow us to develop them over a four- to five-year period,” Taylor said. “And then we’re going to create a culture that’s so great, and so different and unique, that they’re going to enjoy being here. We’re not going to have a turnover rate, a turnover rate in our roster of 30 people like some people are doing. We’re going to have the same team. I don’t know how you build culture when you bring in 30 new players.”

Taylor, 54, did not walk into his first team meeting and tell his players he would run them off. He is more Ted Lasso than Coach Prime. Taylor counts Pete Carroll as an influence. Carroll served as the New York Jets’ defensive coordinator in Taylor’s two seasons (1990-91) on an NFL active roster, and Taylor remembers his optimism and belief in people.

“The principles of what we’re building on are timeless love, gratitude, mindfulness, competitiveness,” Taylor said. “Those are things that resonate with student-athletes.”

(Cut here to Nick Saban doing a spit take).

“We’ve got to make sure it’s such a great environment for them that they love it here,” Taylor said. “How do you do that? Well, you connect with them. I still think the human connection’s the most powerful thing in the world.”

A bigger influence on Taylor has been former Boise State and Washington coach Chris Petersen. Taylor respects Petersen for “doing things the right way, treating people the right way,” he said. It is a mutual admiration society. Petersen connected with Taylor a decade ago when he stopped by Folsom (Calif.) High, where Taylor had begun turning the Bulldogs into a state power (58-3 from 2012-15). Petersen fell in love with a sophomore quarterback named Jake Browning, who developed into an ideal player for Taylor’s offensive philosophy.

It’s a mashup of spread and Air Raid, focused on creating space and utilizing whatever tools the guy running the offense possesses. “If I can make the quarterback successful, I got a chance,” Taylor said. “Everything became about the quarterback.”

At Folsom, Browning set state (5,790 yards in 2014) and national passing records (229 career touchdown passes). Yet the Sacramento State team coached by Taylor that reached the FCS semifinals last season ran the ball on 57.5 percent of its snaps.

“He went to places and tried to pick people’s brains,” Petersen said. “He was really one of those guys who was listening to people. Something would resonate with him, he would kind of cut it up and chew on it, digest it, and see if it fit his philosophy on quarterbacks and offensive football. The more I talked to him, the more I thought, ‘This guy is on it.’

“A lot of people do that, but he was on a different mission, trying to learn and progress and improve.”

Seven years ago, when Eastern Washington coach Beau Baldwin needed an offensive coordinator, Petersen called him and told him to talk to the Folsom High coach. “He offered me the job and it was a two-thirds pay cut,” said Taylor, who was at EWU for one season. “I’ll never forget the look on her (wife Tracey’s) face.”

Ten weeks ago, when Stanford made its first phone call to Petersen, he politely demurred and made the same recommendation he had made to Baldwin.

“He said, ‘I’m not interested, but here’s the guy you want to hire,’ ” one member of the Stanford athletic administration said. “He did not give us a lot of names. He gave us Troy Taylor.”

The climb up the career leader has been swift. After Eastern Washington, it was two years as Utah offensive coordinator (one Pac-12 South championship), four seasons as Sacramento State coach (three Big Sky championships) and now Stanford.

Taylor brings at least one other unique trait to Stanford: He’s surely the first head football coach on the Farm to say, “I love Cal. I really do.”

Taylor played quarterback for the Golden Bears in the late 1980s – he left as the Bears’ leading career passer with 8,126 yards – and coached for five seasons (1996-2000) under Steve Mariucci and Tom Holmoe. He also spent seven seasons (2005-11) on the Cal radio broadcast team with the legendary Joe Starkey. His friends say, “ ‘Yeah, really happy for you. I hope we kick your butt,’ ” Taylor said. “Those are the people that are friends. Who knows what the other people are saying.”

The wisdom of the crowd would never hire an archrival’s star alum. The wisdom of the crowd is embracing NIL and the portal. Stanford is ignoring the wisdom of the crowd. Taylor’s unnamed offense and culture have been successful in high school and in the FCS. The latest returns will begin to arrive in September.