The day after Stanford football’s season ended, Cardinal legend Andrew Luck (2008-11) was announced on ESPN’s College Game Day as the new general manager of the program with Troy Taylor as head coach. It was a move that shocked the college football world and sent a signal that Stanford is serious about competing at the highest levels of college football despite having four straight 3-9 seasons.
Luck had a storied career on The Farm, quarterbacking the Cardinal to two BCS bowl appearances including a commanding 40-12 victory over Virginia Tech in the 2011 Orange Bowl. Luck was a runner-up to the Heisman Trophy in both 2010 & 2011 and went on to get selected with the 1st overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft by the Indianapolis Colts.
When talking about the greatest players in Stanford history, Luck is right at the top. He helped take the Cardinal to new heights during his time on The Farm and after a stellar NFL career in which he was named to four Pro Bowls, Luck is back on The Farm, leading the Cardinal in a role that was specifically carved out for him by university president Jonathan Levin. There was no way Luck could turn this down.
“Yeah, the exact date is not on my mind, I could go dig it up, but I want to say late October. Eh, maybe mid-October. Yeah, so mid-October,” Luck said of when he was first approached about the position. “The conversation started with President Levin…I think, you know, obviously, our performance hasn’t been up to the expectation in any fan, alum, over the last five/six years. Coaches, we all know we haven’t performed like we wanted to and so I think President Levin laid out compelling reasons for why I should be in this position. I agreed and in large part it is to help, right?”
The impetus for putting Luck in this position stems from Stanford’s belief that being a head college football coach is simply too big of a job for one person to hold. With college football evolving on so many fronts with NIL, transfer portal, and more nuanced roster management, they felt like it made sense to create a separate position to tackle those issues, allowing head coach Troy Taylor to focus a lot more of his time on the coaching and recruiting side.
“I love this program, I love this school, I love these players and the staff, it felt like there was an opportunity with how much college football has changed and is continuing to change,” Luck explained. “To support Troy and take stuff off of his plate and let him be the best coach he can be, because I sense that the head football coach, not just here, but in other places, like, there’s just stuff added on their plate every year.
“More and more and more and more. We thought it was too big for one man. So you know, that made sense and also you know what, it feels like Stanford, we were heading to a fork in the road and you know, do we want to embrace what’s happening in the future and figure out a way to re-established and re-assert ourselves in the college football landscape or are we just gonna sorta continue on, maybe a path of we don’t know who we want to be. Yeah, and it was to me it was, well, if I can help take the next steps with this program, then I’m gonna join.”
While there’s a definite learning curve for Luck, something that will help him is the presence of fellow Stanford alum Sam Fisher, who will be serving as assistant general manager. Fisher is excited to work with Luck and help him stay focused on what he most needs to hone in on.
“I think my primary job right now is to support Andrew and keep Andrew pointed in the right direction. Making sure we’re getting the most out of Andrew’s valuable time,” Fisher explained. “And then I think as we ramp that up and really take a lot of ownership and I just really know where we’re going on a more day-to-day granule level. I’ll probably free up some more of my cycles because there’ll be more areas where we’re each more independent of each other.
“I think it’s starting to become, there’s certain areas where there’s like really good people in house doing stuff like Matt Doyle: incredible at operations. So, if it’s more operations focused and some of those areas, like Andrew and Matt in a room together, they’re gonna crush it. I can kind of do other things. I think fundraising, too. Where I think when Andrew’s gonna be really involved in fundraising is we have some great development people who are gonna make sure Andrew is pointed in the right direction there.
“I’m kind of looking at myself a little bit like where sometimes like you’re the first business hire of a startup. You end up doing a little bit of everything and until you kind of figure out what do you not have to do? Like, what does an org not have to do when you say no to that? What does an org, do we have to do that we’re gonna be when we kind of give to people who are already here? And then what do you need to create and define a role and then hire someone to do that role?
“So a lot of what I’m doing is kind of that level of triage. Like all right, all this crazy stuff is happening, take a lot of interesting intro meetings, how we can kind of say no to this for now. We’re like all right, we should probably do this, you know, maybe Jordan Richards who does player development, he’s a good person or maybe our recruiting staff. They’re good to kind of do this stuff. It’s gonna be like oh, we probably need to hire a role for some of this stuff and then what dos that look like? That’s kind of my new area.”
In addition to believing in the importance of his role as general manager, Luck also has a lot of faith in Troy Taylor’s ability to be an effective head coach at this level. He feels like with this new arrangement they have in place, Taylor can truly spread his wings and become a coach capable of leading the Cardinal back to greatness.
“Yeah, absolutely. I think he has a real grasp of what we need to do to win and what conditions need to be set up for our players to succeed on the field. He really does,” Luck said of Taylor. “We obviously had, you know, we had three wins this past season and two of them were big, big time wins, top-25 wins against quality opponents and I know he thinks very creatively in aggressively and innovatively on how he wants to play offensive football and how we need to play as a team.
“And so I’m really excited for spring ball with him. He works his butt off, the staff works really hard. I mean, they’re on the road recruiting right now, and again, you know the blessing and the curse is that we recruit nationally and we find the, you know, the thin slice of guys that are in range to come here that are great football players and great students and I mean, that means our coaches are all over the place. All over this country. So there’s a really hard work ethic in a creative approach to football that’s fun.”
Even though this is a new age of college football, Luck still believes in Stanford’s core mission of having athletes who are elite on the field and in the classroom. He doesn’t believe it’s necessary for Stanford to lower its academic standards in order to win on the football field. He’s confident that they can find quality players who are capable of propelling Stanford’s academic mission into this new age of collegiate athletics.
“Well, this is Stanford and we’re never asking nor do we want to compromise the academic rigor and integrity of this place,” Luck affirmed. “And I know guys are out there. We know it. I know really good football players with amazing grades and the academic chops to make it to this place are out there and if it means we have to work a little harder to find them, you know, especially if we don’t have the wins under our belt over the past few years, like perhaps we haven’t in previous eras, then we’ll have to work harder to find them. But they’re out there and we’re gonna find them.”
Even though this is a new position and uncharted waters for Andrew Luck, he certainly seems fired up about his new job with a passionate commitment to getting Cardinal football back on track. While he does miss playing the game, he’s certainly glad to still be involved with it in this new capacity. It’ll be fascinating to see how he does and what kind of impact his involvement will have on the Cardinal program in the coming seasons:
“Missing football, I mean, there are parts of football I miss. Certainly. I’ve also found myself back in this game, whether it was volunteer coaching at Paly High or in this role now. So, football has given a lot to me. I love the game. I love the game in a different way than when I played. In a much different way and you got to have a different relationship to it, but I’m thankful for what the game has meant to my life and thankful to be back in it here at my alma mater. I wouldn’t do this at any other place. I really, really believe we, it was starting to see a path unfold in front of us that reassert a unique place in the college football landscape with a real identity and winning football games and that’s exciting to me.”
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