Stanford Doesn't Miss a Beat

It is a very difficult environment in today’s day of college football recruiting. Not only are you fighting for the signature of the top athletes on Signing Day, you have to make sure they qualify academically to get into school.

For lots of college football programs across the country, it is a much easier process than the schools like Stanford, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt and Duke, just to name a few. These schools have much higher academic standards than most football powers.

Lets take a look at Stanford. The Cardinal from the PAC 10 enjoyed a very successful year on the field, going 9-3, having played one of the toughest schedules in the nation. Tyrone Willingham did an excellent job both on and off the field. He recruited athletes that had the credentials to get into a school like Stanford. At the same time, these prospects turned into very good college football players.

The scholarship offer from Stanford is contingent on each prospect being admitted to Stanford. For instance, last season, only 24 prospects took official visits to Palo Alto. Of the 24 student-athletes, 21 were admitted into the school and Stanford received 18 commitments from this pool. So far this season, 20 prospects have visited netting 15 commitments for the Cardinal. Even more amazing, the average SAT score for this year’s recruiting class is an outstanding 1270! The average GPA is 3.5 and Stanford does not take into account AP or Honors courses.

Something else that stands out is the type of football player Stanford can go out and sign. Giving the fact of their stringent academic standards and that Coach Willingham moved on to Notre Dame, new Head Coach Buddy Teevens has hit the recruiting trail with a blaze of success. Teevens, who was most recently an assistant coach at the University of Florida, was always regarded as one of the South’s top recruiters.

But anytime there is a coaching transition, recruiting becomes a little more difficult. In addition, Coach Teevens doesn’t even have a coaching staff set. Yet he has been able to go out and get players that have the academic background to get into Stanford and at the same time, beat teams like Michigan, Notre Dame, Maryland, UCLA, Southern Cal, and Washington on commitments from some super college football prospects. And he did this in just a few short weeks.

Trent Edwards recently committed to Stanford and he is widely regarded as the nation’s top quarterback prospect. Stanford’s big recruiting need was on the offensive line, and thus far, they have six OL commitments including David Beall and Josiah Vinson. Vinson, in fact, scored a 1500 on his SAT and turned down Notre Dame and other powers. Julian Jenkins is committed to the Cardinal and he is one of the top defensive line prospects in the nation.

Despite the coaching change, Stanford appears to be in very good shape when it comes to recruiting. The Cardinal has proved you can go out and recruit true student athletes and have a very successful football program.

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Check Out NewbergRecruiting.com to Get Further Inside Recruiting in the Southeast.