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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As Stanford enters the ACC, football coach Troy Taylor has taken a big-picture view to switching conferences and a shifting collegiate landscape.
“We’ll adapt or you’re not going to be relevant,” Taylor said Tuesday, as Cal and Stanford made their first ACC media day appearances.
Both schools scrambled to find a new conference home after the Pac-12 broke up last summer. Indeed, Taylor recounted how shocking it was to see such a storied conference break apart and how nerve-wracking it was to consider life outside a power conference.
The ACC provided a landing spot for both schools, and while it is not a geographical fit, Taylor said there was a lesson learned as realignment impacted conferences across the country.
“I think our leadership has seen what can happen when you don’t adjust,” Taylor said. “If you think about Stanford not being in a conference 10 years ago, I mean, you’d be like, ‘What? Any conference would die to have Stanford.’
“But that was the situation for 10 days a year ago. So you better build up your football program and your athletic program to put yourself in a position because all signs seem to point that there’s going to be another realignment, and the best thing you can do is have a strong program that is attractive to people.”
Indeed, Taylor said when he arrived at Stanford in December 2022, there had been no discussion about collectives as it relates to name, image and likeness.
“Schools with long lineages tend to react slowly to things, and so that can be challenging,” Taylor said. “When I got here to Stanford, they hadn’t even talked about a collective and I was like, ‘You guys know what’s going on out there? It’s a changing world, so we better quickly adapt.'”
Adapting to travel will be something both Stanford and Cal have to do as ACC members, though both schools downplayed the added cross-country travel involved this season.
“That’s not going to be an excuse for us,” Cal running back Jaydn Ott said.
Added Golden Bears quarterback Fernando Mendoza: “I really do tip my hat to Cal and Stanford’s administration for figuring it out and going into a Power 4 conference to help us all accomplish our dreams of going to NFL because although the Mountain West is a great conference, the better competition you play, the more chance you’re gonna have.”