It amazes me to see people put Stanford in the top tier of P12 as a program when discussing long-term issues. Of the current 12 P12 teams, Stanford ranks 7th in terms of all-time winning percentage. And it's not like they have a BYU type history where they absolutely sucked for a century before managing two decades of competence. To the contrary, most of their success from a W-L standpoint is 80 years old. Harbaugh's second-best year there was 8-5, and they were 25-55 the 7 years before that 8-5 season.

Furthermore, their fanbase is pretty crappy. They draw from all over the country, with very few students caring at all about Stanford football before the day they show up on campus. Furthermore, while a decent number stick around the Bay area, a much higher percentage leaves the area than for any other team in the P12. This makes it tough to build the program.

Sure Stanford has some huge advantages, but it also has some extremely significant disadvantages. Given their limitations, it will be tough for them to keep up if they suddenly become less attractive to the intellectually sound elite athletes.

In any event, when setting up tiers of P12 programs based on history and future prospects extending beyond 4 or 5 years, USC is head and shoulders above everyone else, and the next group really has to include Washington, UCLA, and Oregon (their recent surge has been longer and better than Stanford's, and their rise seems to be less coach-based than Stanford, but still Oregon may have a tough time keeping up with the entrenched advantages Washington and UCLA have if the Nike money dries up or they somehow squander the "cool" factor.