{"id":430228,"date":"2025-10-08T14:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T14:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/430228\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T14:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T14:59:10","slug":"bradford-m-freeman-ex-player-gives-50m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/430228\/","title":{"rendered":"Bradford M. Freeman, ex-player, gives $50M"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stanford\u2019s football program<\/a> announced a massive cash infusion Wednesday as college sports enter a new era of revenue sharing.<\/p>\n

Former Cardinal player Bradford M. Freeman has donated $50 million<\/a> to the program, the school said in a release.<\/p>\n

Freeman is a longtime donor to Stanford football, as he financed the country\u2019s first endowed head coaching position in 1988, and the school named the head coaching job after him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will help us to recruit top talent and compete at the highest level,\u201d school president Jonathan Levin said of the donation in a release. \u201cBrad\u2019s generosity and commitment to football will benefit our entire athletics department, as excellence in football will support success across all 36 varsity sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman graduated from Stanford in 1964 and went into private equity investment. He served 10 years on Stanford\u2019s board of trustees and, in 2005 paired with business partner Ron Spogli to commit $50 million to endow the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.<\/p>\n

Amid the financial changes in college sports \u2014 the influx of Name, Image and Likeness payments and the addition of revenue sharing after the House v. NCAA settlement \u2014 Stanford has seen upheaval in its own administrative structure.<\/p>\n

Former football coach Troy Taylor, who replaced four-time Pac-12 coach of the year David Shaw, was fired last offseason after two years, as reports of his treatment of female staffers came to light. Athletic director Bernard Muir resigned in February, being replaced by John Donahoe just last month. Meanwhile, Levin has only been in his post since last August.<\/p>\n

Former star quarterback Andrew Luck became the general manager of football at the school last November with the goal of turning around a program that has not made a bowl since 2016.<\/p>\n

The donation includes \u201csignificant support for institutional NIL and creates five new football scholarships for student-athletes,\u201d the school\u2019s release said.<\/p>\n

Stanford is 2-3 so far this season, its second in the ACC after the collapse of the Pac-12, under interim coach Frank Reich. The Cardinal face reigning ACC champion SMU on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 8, 2025 at 7:51 AM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stanford\u2019s football program announced a massive cash infusion Wednesday as college sports enter a new era of revenue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1926,1443,33587,331,339,4947,7,1921,929,49,48,88,69246,1929,1930,9,982,1923,1968],"class_list":{"0":"post-430228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-college-football","12":"tag-college-sports","13":"tag-education","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-inside-sports","16":"tag-latest-headlines","17":"tag-ncaa","18":"tag-ncaa-football","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-palo-alto","21":"tag-santa-clara-county","22":"tag-south-bay","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-stanford","25":"tag-stanford-cardinal","26":"tag-stanford-university"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115339144040644701","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}