re: What does Stanford's recent football success say about other PAC teams?

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hiring the possible 2nd best football coach on earth and having him build your program helps

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This more than anything else. Stanford was absolute garbage before Harbaugh showed up. It also doesn't hurt that other programs in the conference have imploded relatively recently and are trying to rebuild at the moment.

As for endowments, which are really used more for academic and research purposes, there are plenty of other schools with very large endowments while having under-performing football programs. Duke, UVA, Rice, Vandy, Minnesota, UNC, etc. all have top-30 endowments but are hardly considered traditional football powerhouses.