When Stanford announced the hiring of Andrew Luck as general manager of their football program the day after their loss to San Jose State, one of the biggest questions was how long would Luck stick by head coach Troy Taylor. Taylor had just finished his second season on The Farm, compiling a dismal 6-18 record, 3-9 in each season. To be fair to Taylor, he didn’t inherit a winning situation as the last two seasons of the David Shaw era were identical in record (6-18 overall, 3-9 each season).
Typically, when a general manager takes over a football team or when an athletic director is hired at a university (Luck in many ways has been acting as both), a desire to get a new head coach is atop the list unless the current head coach has been winning. Yet for whatever reason, Luck decided he was going to stick with Taylor and bring him back for a third season until the news broke of two investigations that looked into how Taylor had been behaving in the workplace at Stanford. The combination of bad PR, Taylor having two dismal seasons, and new university president (Jonathan Levin) eager to carve out his own vision for the university seems to be what led Luck to reverse course and decide that it was time for a reset.
READ: Stanford fires Troy Taylor after two seasons
At this moment in time, Stanford football is at its lowest point since the 2006 season in which Walt Harris cratered the program with a 1-11 overall record. Similar to Taylor, there were “grumblings that Harris didn’t communicate well with this players and was too hard on them.”
Via East Bay Times: Harris gets the ax after 1-11 season
After Harris, the next coach would be Jim Harbaugh, who turned the program around and guided them to an Orange Bowl victory in his fourth and final season with Luck at quarterback. The hope for Luck is that the Cardinal strike a similar type of chord with their next hire. I’m sure the parallels were at least somewhat in the back of Luck’s mind as he made the decision to part ways with Taylor.
While the optics and timing of Taylor’s firing were awkward (spring football practices start in April), the biggest positive to come out of all of this for Stanford is this is now undoubtedly Andrew Luck’s program. He gets to pick a head coach that he truly believes in and feels is aligned with his core values. Yes, Luck was on the search committee that helped settle on Taylor, but it was ultimately now lame duck Athletic Director Bernard Muir who made the call. This time he gets to hire his own guy and be the one whose stamp of approval is ultimately required to sign off on the hire.
It’s a lot on Luck’s shoulders, but this is why he was brought in. To make these decisions and bring the Cardinal back to greatness. I’m sure he wouldn’t have it any other way:
“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 reasserts 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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