Why is David Shawn’s seat NOT hot?

If I had to name one reason it is probably Apathy. 
Perhaps a buyout that they don’t have any reason to pay.  
I also assume they fire him or he resigns year end. 

well… They are recruiting rather well this year, are they not?

Who are you going to get that is better? He is a pretty good coach overall. You could pick up Scott Frost and have the same problem…

He runs a clean program. He doesn’t ask for facility upgrades or much of anything else and he makes millions of dollars a year doing those two things.

He keeps the program out of sight out of mind which I think the Stanford Admin likes.

His salary to do that is pennies to Stanford.

He has the sweetest gig in all of college sports. Imagine having those recruiting classes, sucking that bad and keep your job.

As of late, it’s been a tough road for Stanford. I would caution, Stanford may have a head start on what a lot of schools may be experiencing as NIL, realignment, and transfer portal start taking hold in the next couple years. Upside for Stanford is they have more power money than most P5 schools and it’s not even close if they want to jump into the NIL game. Stanford, as they should, won’t compromise academic standards and integrity as an operational and culture standard for the sake of winning like USC. To add some context, I know Utah was new to the P12 and other factors. Here’s a P12 program comparison.

P-12 starting 2011
Stanford/Shaw: 64-32 P12 record, 4 North titles, 3 Conference titles, 3-1 Rose Bowl Record
Utah/Whittingham: 53-42 record, 3 South titles, 1 Conference title, 0-1 Rose Bowl Record

He’s not on the hot seat because his players stay out of trouble, graduate with high GPAs, and go on to found tech startups that make 9 figures in an IPO. And Stanford is totally OK with that. And to be honest, more schools and fans should be totally OK with that as well.

One major drawback for SU is not being able to work the transfer portal due to entrance requirements.

Why is David Shaw’s seat not hot? Because Stanford just views football as a necessary evil and part of the cost of doing business to maintain a high-level college profile. Results are incidental because, with an endowment equal to the GDP of some countries (almost $40B), Stanford doesn’t need football for anything. I imagine that, if things go as many people in the know claim and college athletes in the near future will be considered salaried university employees, Stanford and other high-brow universities will just drop football altogether or go down to Division III. The University of Chicago (a founding member of the B1G) did just that and it hasn’t hurt their academic profile at all.