Uncle Phil... two days after the Oregon loss

[M2]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 3802485776

[Carson]

They'll let anybody in that place.

[Truman]

Note Uncle Phil's black ball cap...





































Only a matter of time, Sammy...

[R-Jack]

Never happen. The fans would pour onto the field and stop the game.

Bullshit. Bama fan would accept it as their new formal wear. You know throngs of tards would love to git thar hands ona new tuxeder.

[The Seer]

These "black out" unis seem to be a passing fad. Gonna have ours Friday night for homecoming vs. UW...If the kids like it, let them have it.

[Dinsdale]

Uncle Phil went to a bigboy school that's also a Nike school, when his own team had the day off?

Color me shocked. Dude isn't a huge CFB fan or anything.

Fucker needs to stop giving Stanford money, though (OK, he did postgrad stuff there, so it's "his school" as well).

[Mikey]

Interesting article in the WSJ on how Stanford finances its football team.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 3355000052

Doesn't mention the two anonymous donors who gave $15 million last year because they were "inspired by Andrew Luck."

The Odd Economics of Stanford Football
With a Small Fan Base and Modest Revenue, The Cardinal Leans on Donors; $500,000 From a 26 Year Old

Fifth-ranked Stanford, once again in the mix for the Pac-12 title and maybe even more, pounded No. 3 Oregon, 26-20, on Thursday in one of this college-football season's biggest games, making the Cardinal the only team to slow down the Ducks the last two years. That makes this as good a time as any to ponder one of this sport's great mysteries: How is Stanford doing it?

There is no single reason for Stanford's rise from a pushover—one that supposedly couldn't compete because of its tough academic standards—to a powerhouse that wins because of them. The transformational 2007-to-2010 tenure of coach Jim Harbaugh, who has since gone on to the San Francisco 49ers, was clearly pivotal. So is the program's growing ability to convince elite high-school recruits of a Stanford degree's value.

But there is another critical factor behind the Cardinal's ascent: the way Stanford finances its football program.

Stanford isn't like other football powers. It can't generate as much cash from its fans, since it doesn't have nearly as many. Stanford Stadium seats about 50,000—half the size of some venues in the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences.

The school accounted for $9.7 million in football ticket sales on its 2012 annual report. The four teams ranked above Stanford in the latest Bowl Championship Series standings averaged $27 million, with Ohio State topping the list at $41 million. In merchandise sales, Stanford ranked 42nd this year on the Collegiate Licensing Company's list of top-selling schools, well behind not just Texas but also Texas Tech.

The normal revenues Stanford receives from football are so low, in fact, that its 36 varsity sports teams depend on something no other school has, or would dare rely so heavily on: an athletics-only endowment worth between $450 million and $500 million that pays out at 5.5% each year, people familiar with the matter said.

The way Stanford keeps up in the college-football arms race is to lean on private donations. As a result, almost everything the football program touches is endowed, from each of the school's 85 football scholarships to David Shaw's head-coaching position. Stanford's offensive coordinator is even known as the Andrew Luck Director of Offense in honor of an anonymous gift in 2012.

"Many have looked at Stanford to say: 'How can we make that happen at our place?'" said Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir.

Given that Stanford sits in the heart of Silicon Valley, and many of its graduates are making untold millions, it seems like fundraising should be easy. But most football donors are well past 50, and younger donors can be hard to find, since football was mostly an afterthought on campus until recently.

In its attempt to build a football program this way, though, Stanford does benefit from a specialized network of benefactors most schools can only dream about.

Among the young Stanford alumni crowding into a New York sports bar on a recent Saturday night was Salman Al-Rashid, 26, who attended Stanford just as the Cardinal football team was becoming relevant again. As that night's Stanford game against Oregon State played on televisions around him, Al-Rashid sat at a table in the back, wearing a Rose Bowl sweatshirt and eating chicken wings.

Earlier this year, Al-Rashid pledged a $500,000 donation to Stanford's football program, a highly unexpected gift given his age and background. He grew up in Saudi Arabia, where his only access to football was an American Forces Network feed. He moved to New Jersey when he was 12 and had his first experience playing the game in a prep-school intramural league.

When Al-Rashid was at Stanford, the team's success produced some formative experiences. He recalls rushing the field after Stanford beat rival California in 2007, for instance, and he has a photo on his phone commemorating an improbable win that season over 41-point-favorite Southern California, a game that ranks as one of the biggest upsets in college-football history.

But what was most unusual about Al-Rashid's donation to the football program is that nobody at Stanford saw it coming.

"He was on no one's radar," said Joe Karlgaard, Rice's athletic director, who led athletic fundraising at Stanford until October. "No one at the university knew who he was."

Football philanthropy runs in Al-Rashid's family. He is the son of Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid, who fell in love with the game as an undergraduate at Texas. Despite never seeing a snap before moving to the U.S. for college, he ended up giving funds for the Texas weight room in the 1980s. He has since invested in several renovations, most recently a few months ago, to the Dr. Nasser Al-Rashid Strength Complex, considered one of the finest in the game.

But the younger Al-Rashid was never identified as a potential donor by Stanford's athletic department. His gift was only the result of Al-Rashid introducing himself to a member of Stanford's athletic board at an alumni gathering last year to hear Muir speak in a private setting. Al-Rashid hadn't even been invited to the event.

Al-Rashid and Karlgaard, Stanford's former development director, discussed the athletics endowment as one option for his donation. But others beat him to their checkbooks before Al-Rashid could fund the defensive-coordinator or strength-coach positions.

As it turns out, Al-Rashid came along as the football team was raising funds for a 27,000-square-foot addition to a building named for the family of John Arrillaga, a 76-year-old Stanford benefactor whose $151 million gift to the university this year was its largest from a living donor. The facility includes new player lockers, coaching offices, a study lounge and a meeting room with theater-style seating.

Al-Rashid, who manages an investment fund that focuses on the Mongolian and Southeast Asian markets, decided to earmark his gift for this football building, which opened this month. The meeting room for the defensive line and defensive coaching staff—which dominated Oregon on Thursday—carries Al-Rashid's name and graduation class. He is also listed on a plaque with other backers, such as former Stanford quarterbacks Jim Plunkett and John Elway, who had his No. 7 jersey retired at halftime of this week's Stanford win.

While it may seem like an anomaly, Al-Rashid's experience suggests that Stanford's football economic model, which depends on passion more than anything else, could work long into the future. In fact, Al-Rashid cares so deeply about the Cardinal that he watched Stanford's overtime upset of Oregon last season from Beijing, celebrating with dumplings and baijiu.

"I just want to support the program and make sure it has long-term, sustained success," said Al-Rashid, who watched Thursday's game from the stadium. "The athletics at Stanford epitomize what the university is all about."