I usually don't doubt anything you post, but then why was Demetris Robinson never accepted when he was accepted at Notre Dame?
Couple things:
1. I'm not saying Stanford isn't
harder to get in to than other schools. It is. I'm saying it's a lie that it's objectively "very hard" to get in for football players... any player that is a below average student can get in. There's lots of evidence to this, but I'll save that for a later post if you want it rather than clog this one up.
2. Robertson wasn't past ND admissions. In fact, we were pushing him to retake his SAT in the months leading up to NSD as much if not more than Stanford was initially. Shaw only jumped back in late to try to keep him from signing with ND. ND lets kids sign all on NSD all the time who aren't completely clear... most of the time they work out, other times (see: Nile Sykes, Bo Wallace) they don't and we ask them to go elsewhere. So don't take our all-out push for Robertson and sending him a LOI as a sign that he was accepted.
3. The best way to describe schools is to put them into tiers... on the lowest tier, Cal, USC, Oregon, almost the entire SEC, etc. will take most anyone that passes the NCAA minimums. Then there is a middle tier with schools like Wisconsin, UVA, etc. that have a low bar but it's certainly not an open door policy. There are definitely some "no takes." And then there is a tier with Stanford, Notre Dame, Duke, etc. where they all have legitimate admissions standards that players have to hit that are significantly harder than what the NCAA requires as well as specific course credits players must take. Each is a unique animal. Notre Dame's infamous foreign language requirement is always a big barrier, but in general ND is much more apt to make an "exception" on GPA/scores for a kid they think is a good fit whereas I don't know a single case off the top of my head of Stanford taking someone below their minimum 1000 SAT, 3.0 GPA (but that's not exactly a high bar, is it?)
4. Stanford used to have much more stringent restrictions. Harbaugh got them relaxed. Since then, it's basically propaganda how "difficult" it is to get into Stanford. They use "difficult admissions to":
A. Cut kids late in the cycle they don't want (see: Kain Colter)
B. Push kids away from visiting during the season and seeing how horrendous their game day experience is (see: "come visit after the season once you've been accepted)
C. As an excuse for not offering kids until late in the cycle (see: like ten kids every single year)
D. As a catch-all excuse by coaches to say "we have it so much harder here because we can't recruit kids others can" (see: Shaw's recent thing about satellite camps)
5. Once you get to Stanford, there is rampant grade inflation in regular classes and there used to be a published list of easy "jock" classes they'd herd their players into to keep them eligible. Those easy classes still exist, players are now just verbally referred by an adviser instead of being handed the list after they got caught and embarrassed.