Andrew Luck aims to bring Stanford football back to glory days

STANFORD – Andrew Luck doesn’t have to use his imagination to envision a time when Stanford was one of the top teams in college football.

The two-time Heisman Trophy runner-up went 23-3 in his final two seasons as Stanford’s quarterback, with consecutive Top 10 finishes and appearances in the Orange and Fiesta bowls.

Luck is embracing his new – and perhaps more important – role on The Farm. He was hired in November as the team’s first general manager and is determined to return the shine to his alma mater.

“I am not here to steward an also-ran in the college football world,” said Luck, who played at Stanford from 2009-11. “We achieve. We aspire. That’s part of Stanford’s ethos – the pursuit of excellence.”

But a lot has changed since Luck, who turns 36 this month, left The Farm and was selected first overall by the Indianapolis Colts in the 2012 NFL Draft.

Since 2021, the team has produced four consecutive 3-9 seasons and watched nearly 70 players transfer – with fewer than 30 transferring to Stanford. Off the field, the school fled the splintering Pac-12 to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, and this spring there was a messy breakup with Troy Taylor, who was fired after two seasons as head coach amid allegations of misconduct.

The optimism and national spotlight that once surrounded the program have dimmed, replaced by questions of whether Stanford can still compete at the highest level.

The next chapter

After Luck surprisingly announced his NFL retirement two weeks before the start of the 2019 season, at the age of 29 and after just six seasons, he largely disappeared from the spotlight. He returned to Stanford and earned a master’s degree in education and helped raise his two daughters with his wife, Nicole, a former Stanford gymnast. He got his football fix as a part-time volunteer coach for the Palo Alto High JV team.

But when given the opportunity to work on The Farm again, something clicked.

“I’m young, and I’ve got a lot more to give the world,” Luck said. “This opportunity aligned with where my family was, with what our university needed and with what I believe in. I love this program. I believe in our young men.

“This just feels right.”

The role is a new one for Stanford, and in many ways, a new one in the broader world of college football. Across the Bay, Cal brought in Ron Rivera, an alum with deep NFL ties, to serve as its football GM.

Luck is part operations chief, part program architect and part culture-keeper. And he’s doing it with a deep understanding of what makes Stanford, well, Stanford.

“It’s been periods of insane intensity,” Luck said. “But I love it. Getting to be back on the practice field, walking off after training camp with this amazing group of young men and coaches. Let’s embrace this opportunity.”

Building a new model

Name, image and likeness (NIL) deals, conference realignment and a growing gap in athletic department budgets are forcing programs to adapt or risk being left behind. Luck doesn’t see the landscape as a threat to Stanford but an opening.

“This new world of college football,” Luck said, “it’s a chance for Stanford to reassert itself.”

He invokes the names that helped shape the Cardinal’s football legacy: Jim Plunkett, John Elway, Pop Warner, Bill Walsh. “There’s 130 years of history here,” he says. “That’s why I believe in this place.”

And if Stanford is going to write the next chapter of that legacy, it starts with the people in the locker room.

“Guys who want to challenge themselves and grow, who want to get the most out of themselves – this is the place for you,” Luck said.

Reuniting with a trusting voice

One of Luck’s first big moves was firing Taylor when reports surfaced about the coach’s alleged mistreatment of female staff. Needing an interim coach who could fill in right away, Luck turned to Frank Reich, his head coach with the Colts in 2018.

Luck was the NFL Comeback Player of the Year, and the Colts made the playoffs during their one year together.

“These guys will joke about hearing me saying and Andrew saying, ‘Hey, it’s all about getting 1 percent better every day, going 1-0 every day.’ That’s the way you build success,” Reich said. “It’s a commitment to that.”

Reich said the Luck he saw as a quarterback carries the same traits now as a leader.

“This extreme confidence,” Reich said. “But also this great humility, to know that you can get better every day.”

 The beauty of the grind

This spring, Luck was all smiles as he walked off the practice field with the team. He remains animated when talking about the day-to-day grind of football.

It might seem like a pressure-packed job to try to engineer a turnaround at his alma mater, it’s nothing that Luck hadn’t faced before during his days as a top-flight quarterback.

“I feel such purpose,” Luck said. “Connected to alignment with the mission of this university and what it means to be part of a program that I was a player of, that I was a fan of and that I’m an alum of.”

This time, the challenge is different – but the stakes are just as high. And Luck believes the formula remains the same: culture, consistency and belief.

He hopes with hard work, the right people and some fortunate bounces, Stanford can rejoin the upper echelon of the sport.

If it does, the Cardinal’s new era will be led by a man who’s come home not to relive the past, but to shape the future.