The Stanford Cardinal team sings along to their fight song after a game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Stanford Cardinal on Nov. 29, 2025, at Stanford Stadium in Stanford, Calif.

As the calendar flips to the second day of 2026, the college football world turns its attention to the official opening of the transfer portal, wherein more than 1,000 college football players attempt to find a new college football home.

It should’ve been a big day for Stanford’s first-year head coach, Tavita Pritchard. But five weeks after Pritchard’s official hiring, the Cardinal still doesn’t have a single assistant coach officially hired, as programs across the country begin two-week bidding wars for a mountain of talent looking for a change of scenery. The lack of updates on a staff is bad enough that even some players appear to be in the dark — in a thread on the popular Cardinal Sports Report message board, On3 Stanford reporter Ben Parker said a player committed to coming to Stanford reached out to him directly to see if he had any updates on the coaching staff. (Parker said he redirected the player to Pritchard or general manager Andrew Luck.)

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SFGATE reached out to Stanford, asking for an update on the Cardinal’s coaching staff. A Stanford spokesperson confirmed the Cardinal is not making any hiring announcements on Friday, but otherwise had nothing further to share by the time of publication. Meaning Luck and Pritchard will go it alone on the first day of the portal, and possibly beyond.

It’s the second year of significant turnover in Palo Alto — Luck was hired as general manager after the 2024 season ended, then

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