Stanford Football: 5 Best Recruiting Classes in Recent Cardinal History

Stanford football, fresh off a tremendous 11-2 season, has many reasons for optimism in 2012, along with a few areas needing improvement. 

With the 2011 college football season over, the Cardinal is hoping to announce another stellar group of recruits on February 1. Meantime, let’s take a look at some of the best Stanford recruiting classes of the past 15 years.

5th Best Class: 1996

Stanford won back to back Rose Bowls in the early 1970s, but then endured a nearly 30-year drought before returning to Pasadena after the 1999 season.

The Cardinal had just five winning seasons from 1981-1998. The 1999 team that won the Pac-10 title and lost by a 17-9 score to Wisconsin in the 2000 Rose Bowl put Stanford back in the national spotlight. 

Coach Tyrone Willingham's 1996 recruiting class played a key role in reviving Stanford football, featuring QB Todd Husak and DL Willie Howard, WR DeRonnie Pitts, LB Donnie Spragan and FB Russell Stewart. 

While the Cardinal had a pretty decent QB named Andrew Luck over the past few seasons, Todd Husak remains the all-time Stanford leader in single-game passing and total yards on offense. And Husak is still the only Cardinal QB to have played in a Rose Bowl in the past 40 years.

4th Best Class: 2005

After the 2000 Rose Bowl, Stanford suffered through several losing seasons and hit rock bottom with a 1-11 record in 2006. 

In October 2007, one victory turned the program around toward its current national prominence: the 24-23 upset win over heavily favored USC. 

Stanford’s head coach that night was a newcomer to the FBS coaching ranks, Jim Harbaugh. We all know what he’s accomplished since. 

But most of the key players in the victory over USC had been recruited by his predecessor, Walt Harris. The 2005 recruiting class by the newly hired Harris featured QB Tavita Pritchard, who played the game of his life against USC two years later. 

The 2005 class also included OLs Chris Marinelli and James McGillicuddy, TE Jim Dray (now with the Arizona Cardinals), DL Ekom Udofia, LB Clint Snyder and DB Bo McNally. Some of this elite group had starring roles in the stunning 2007 win at USC, and all were stalwarts on later Stanford teams that ignited the remarkable turnaround from 1-11 to a Top 5 national powerhouse.

3rd Best Class: 2006

Coach Harris’s 2006 class would be a success, even if it's based only on one player—Toby Gerhart. 

The bruising RB set many Stanford rushing records, finished second in the 2009 Heisman Trophy balloting and was the cornerstone of the Cardinal’s power-running attack that has become unstoppable over the past few seasons. 

Yet the 2006 class was not just about Gerhart. That class also included Richard Sherman, who was recruited at WR but later became a terrific CB. Sherman started for the Seattle Seahawks as a rookie in 2011. 

Other future Stanford stars in the Gerhart class were DLs Sione Fua and Brian Bulcke and OL Andrew Phillips, all of whom were starters for the 2010 team that went 12-1 and demolished Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl.

2nd Best Class: 2007

Jim Harbaugh’s first recruiting class at Stanford in February 2007 helped set the tone for changing the Cardinal culture after five consecutive losing seasons. 

Harbaugh’s 2007 class featured current NFL players WR Doug Baldwin (who had a solid rookie season with the Seahawks) and the Cleveland Browns’ Owen Marecic, who started at both FB and LB as a Stanford senior, scoring TDs at Notre Dame from both sides of the ball. 

Harbaugh’s first class also included many of the stars of Stanford’s 2010 and 2011 BCS teams, such as TE Coby Fleener, NT Matthew Masifilo, DE Thomas Keiser, RB Jeremy Stewart and CB Corey Gatewood.

Best Ever Class: 2008

What's to say about Jim Harbaugh’s second recruiting class at Stanford from 2008?

You know, the one that the pundits originally ranked eighth in the Pac-10 and nationally below the likes of Kansas and Minnesota.

Two words. 

Andrew Luck. 

But wait, there’s much more: NFL-bound OLs David DeCastro and Jonathan Martin, DBs Delano Howell and Michael Thomas, LB  Chase Thomas, C Sam Schwartzstein and WR Chris Owusu. 

After two BCS bowls, a record of 23-3 in 2010 and 2011 and national Top 5 rankings, the 2008 class can be regarded as the best in Stanford history.

At least, for now.