Close<\/a>College Football Senior Writer for ESPN. Insider for College Gameday.<\/p>\nThe Stanford football program received a $50 million gift from a former player, the school announced Wednesday, marking a significant donation as it attempts to revive the fortunes of the program under general manager Andrew Luck.<\/p>\n
It’s the biggest individual gift in Stanford football history, and an unusually large one for an individual program. Donations of that value are typically tied to buildings or facilities.<\/p>\n
The donation comes from former Stanford football player Bradford M. Freeman, who graduated from the school in 1964 and has been a major Stanford donor for decades.<\/p>\n
The Cardinal are currently playing catchup in the modern college football landscape, finishing 3-9 in each of their past four seasons. Stanford is 2-3 this season under interim coach Frank Reich.<\/p>\n
“With Brad’s incredible gift, we are positioned to win on the field and build a bridge to a sustainable future for Stanford football,” Luck said in a statement. “The ability to support our players through new scholarships and institutional NIL will reinforce Stanford as the preeminent place in the country to be a football scholar-athlete.”<\/p>\n
The gift is also an adrenaline shot to the tenure of Luck, who has been general manager since November 2024 (with fundraising a key part of his task), and for new athletic director John Donahoe, who was hired in July.<\/p>\n
Stanford is seeking a full-term coach, as both the program and Reich have made clear that he will not be the coach after this interim season. This gift is a marketing boost for the job, as it shows the availability of immediate resources and the power of untapping Stanford’s network.<\/p>\n
Stanford will honor the gift by naming both a tunnel and gate at Stanford Stadium after Freeman, who has given a wide variety of gifts to both Stanford athletics and the university. In 1988, Freeman endowed the nation’s first head coach position; the title is known as the Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football.<\/p>\n
Freeman is also a former trustee for the school who has served on numerous advisory boards. He co-founded Freeman Spogli, a private equity investment firm, and in the statement, he said he credits his time at Stanford for impacting “the trajectory of my life” and hopes that it will help “herald a new era of excellence for Stanford football.”<\/p>\n
Luck added: “I believe that Stanford has the opportunity to be a leading program in college football, and we are entirely motivated to field championship-caliber teams.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pete ThamelOct 8, 2025, 10:56 PM CloseCollege Football Senior Writer for ESPN. Insider for College Gameday. The Stanford…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-197920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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