Andrew Luck completely doesn’t want the job — some would even name it a burden — that he has taken at his alma mater. The four-time Professional Bowler is each a Stanford and Faculty Soccer Corridor of Famer. The previous No. 1 total draft decide threw for nearly 30,000 yards within the NFL. He is bought a household, safety, even celeb.
Who wants the aggravation of negotiating the NIL jungle with mother and father, gamers and brokers? Actually not Luck. It wasn’t so way back that his life was easier because the offensive coordinator for the freshman staff at Palo Alto Excessive Faculty.
Now he’s about to take over the operational playbook for an mental large fallen on onerous soccer instances.
“Soccer?” Luck stated just lately. “I am again in soccer, child.”
No, Luck doesn’t want his new place given this level in his life, however he can actually get the job finished. Maybe he’ll even kill it in reshaping Stanford soccer as this system’s new basic supervisor.
The GM title has emerged in these transitioning instances as second-most vital on a school soccer workers. If the GM job is executed appropriately, solely the top coach is extra substantial and highly effective.
Properly, at the least theoretically. On Stanford’s organizational chart, Luck’s title is above head coach Troy Taylor, in keeping with ESPN. Luck, who was named to the place on Nov. 30, can even work with the teaching workers on personnel selections.
GMs have turn out to be a mix of economic adviser, recruiter, director of participant personnel, roster analyst, wage capologist and, effectively, add some other descriptions you see match. Luck is amongst those that proceed to construct the job description on the fly.
“I do assume our place of basic supervisor is considerably totally different than most GMs within the nation due to the wants of Stanford now,” Luck advised CBS Sports activities.
“We do imagine in scholar-athletes, nonetheless.”
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Stanford’s ongoing mission must be apparent. However the very nature of GMs is managing a tranche of cash that was by no means there earlier than. The essential GM job might also contain allocating $20.5 million ought to the Home settlement cross. Niceties apart, the cash would go on to athletes within the first sanctioned pay-for-play association in faculty historical past.
How greatest to weave that money into Stanford’s tutorial mission is the principle problem for Luck. Former coach David Shaw as soon as stated that when he bought highschool grades for junior prospects in June, there have been 75 gamers within the nation Stanford might recruit.
So what’s modified? Luck is at the least saying the fitting issues — emphasizing fundraising and having a direct affect on the soccer operation.
“A part of it’s trial by hearth,” he stated. “Hopping in in the course of the switch portal has been pretty much as good as an schooling as something. I am fired up for Troy. A part of what I am doing is taking rather a lot off his plate. It is an excessive amount of for a head coach to do X quantity of distinctive negotiations with gamers contracts or brokers or representatives.”
It may be finished. Taking part in inside these acquainted tutorial strictures, Shaw and Jim Harbaugh led the Cardinal to longest run of success in class historical past from 2010 to 2018. However this system hasn’t been ranked since early within the 2019 season. Stanford hasn’t been to a bowl since 2018.
These days, the Cardinal misplaced their convention (Pac-12) and loads of video games. There have been 4 consecutive 3-9 seasons. The 12 complete wins are the fewest in a four-year span since 1960. This system simply occurred to transition on the identical time into the NIL period and away from Shaw, its winningest coach.
A worldwide chief in analysis, innovation and coverage, Stanford should additionally get Saturdays proper, too.
That begins with among the new world of pay-for-play.
“Soccer simply issues extra on this nation,” Luck stated. “We all know maybe we have not been enjoying sufficient of the sport. And we’re beginning to play the sport and we’ll be there.”
Whereas the job description continues to evolve, there may be one fundamental query for Stanford that is being requested at each program within the nation: Will it absolutely fund that $20.5 million income share? If not, that is doubtlessly an issue in branding, status and recruiting.
“That is a giant a part of my job proper now,” Luck stated throughout a cellphone interview in December. “I am seeing a transparent path ahead and it is making me optimistic. It has actually been a degree of debate in 100% negotiations with any switch participant coming in.”
This week, CBS Sports activities adopted up with Luck asking the identical query about that $20.5 million.
“We’re working diligently to arrange for the post-Home period, and we completely intend to be aggressive whereas sustaining the educational rigor and requirements which can be vital to the college,” he stated.
Negotiations for a former NFL quarterback? Properly, he was a member of a gamers union (an alternate consultant with the Colts), has an undergrad diploma in architectural design and is getting grasp’s in schooling.
But it surely’s these negotiations with mother and father, gamers and brokers which have turned off coaches within the trendy period. Some have retired. Others put up with it. Nonetheless, others rent sport changers like Luck.
“I am unsure it is [negotiations] a part of the job that lent itself most naturally to my character, to say the least,” Luck stated. “At coronary heart, part of me continues to be a participant, proper? … On precept, I imagine within the renumeration of faculty soccer gamers.”
Luck could be the best-known determine on this place that’s nonetheless largely unknown and undefined. Alabama GM Courtney Morgan set the market final 12 months when he acquired a increase to greater than $800,000. Notre Dame simply went onerous after Texas Tech GM James Blanchard, one of many prime 5 within the career. Michigan’s Sean Magee oversaw the recruiting of No. 1 total prospect Bryce Underwood, a five-star QB within the 2025 class the Wolverines flipped from LSU with the lure of a reported $10 million deal.
Given these developments, it is not a stretch to recommend Luck is being introduced in to assist migrate Stanford athletics into this new NIL age.
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The college has been sluggish to embrace its major NIL collective, Lifetime Cardinal. That is the place that reduce 11 sports activities in 2020 citing the COVID-19 impression. The sports activities had been reinstated in 2021 after an outcry.
It is secure to say any FBS athletic division reducing sports activities nowadays would face a authorized problem. A part of that $20.5 million might be used to maintain minor sports activities. Most athletic departments are distributing that complete this fashion: 75% to soccer, 15% to males’s basketball, 5% to ladies’s basketball and 5% to minor sports activities.
Faculty athletics is watching. Stanford has one of the crucial broad-based athletic departments within the nation. The athletic expertise is genuinely thought of a part of the academic expertise.
Stanford alone had 59 Olympians in final 12 months’s Paris Summer time Video games. One among Luck’s former teammates, Eric Shoji, received a bronze medal in males’s volleyball.
“I feel alumni, followers, kind of the neighborhood writ massive felt like we might misplaced just a little of that [momentum in football],” Luck stated.
“A part of what makes me optimistic is that I do know that this place’s ethos — not simply Stanford however Silicon Valley, the West Coast — [is] let’s make the issue larger and let’s go assault it,” he added. “I actually, deep in my bones, know that we will carve out related area.”
The portal has opened up [from Stanford’s standpoint] to welcome 12 new gamers. That is essentially the most on the college since earlier than NIL debuted in 2021. Shaw had identified that, within the portal period, he had problem bringing transfers in due to Stanford’s excessive tutorial requirements.
Here’s a have a look at a few of these admission necessities.
“We have now an extremely rigorous admissions course of,” Luck stated. “We anticipate our guys to use to high school. That can by no means change. I am unsure anyone else is doing that. Not solely that they must have the chops to get in and succeed and add worth to this mental neighborhood … I would not take this job if I assumed we had been handing free spots out.”
Stanford is more and more an outlier in looking for that significant mixture of athletics and teachers. The NCAA has all however abdicated oversight of the educational aspect.
It isn’t the primary time Luck has needed to clarify himself after a profession transfer. When he retired in 2019 after seven NFL seasons, Luck cited the bodily put on and tear. That call is to be admired. He’s solely 35 now, nonetheless capable of volunteer coach highschool soccer, be a household man and try to save lots of a soccer program.
“I did have an epiphany … there was a degree after retirement,” Luck stated. “I assumed, ‘My God, I’ve two-thirds of my life left hopefully. Possibly three-quarters. I am not going to let myself get caught prior to now.”
