Earlier this week, Stanford posted a video on social media of Andrew Luck cold-calling a season-ticket holder from prior years — “Yes, this is really Andrew Luck” — to secure a renewal for the 2025 season.

That came days after a video surfaced of Luck playing quarterback during a spring practice session.

Which came a few days after Luck threw out the first pitch before a Stanford softball game.

Which came weeks after Luck, performing his official duties as general manager of Stanford football, named Frank Reich as the interim coach for 2025.

Which, of course, came in the aftermath of Luck’s decision to fire Troy Taylor.

The former All-American might be in danger of overexposure if this public push continues indefinitely, but it makes sense in the short term. He’s the best thing the Cardinal, who went 3-9 last season, have going for them.

If you’re trying to hire an athletic director, on the other hand, there is significant downside risk to Luck’s ubiquity. His presence as the face of the athletic department, chief executive of the football program and university president Jonathan Levin’s confidante could undermine the candidate pool.

And if you haven’t been paying attention, the Cardinal need the best candidate pool it can find. The mess left behind by former athletic director Bernard Muir is substantial:

— Football appears years away from competing for an ACC championship.

— Men’s basketball hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament in more than a decade.

— The transfer portal and NIL are ever-present obstacles, conference games are 3,000 miles away and Stanford will receive partial shares of ACC revenue for years to come.

— College sports is on the brink of adopting a revenue-sharing model that will add financial and competitive pressures to Stanford’s budget, which has been bleeding cash in recent years.

— And the next five years are an audition for inclusion in whatever version of college football emerges in the 2030s.

It’s all happening at precisely the moment Stanford needs an athletic director.

How’s that process going? As you might expect.

Muir stepped down in late February. Whereas most schools would have named an interim AD immediately, Stanford waited a month to appoint chief operating officer Alden Mitchell to the role. It has formed a search committee (more on that in a moment) and hired an executive placement firm, Elevate, to assist. We suspect the search will run into June, if not July.

Stanford has plenty to sell, but no candidate worth a dime will take the job if he/she doesn’t have oversight of the football program. Currently, that’s Luck’s purview. Exactly how the chain-of-command would work is an issue Levin, the president, must resolve. Multiple sources have said Luck would be willing to tweak the reporting lines, assuming he trusts the next AD.

The Cardinal could hire an alumnus or former athletic department employee. But initially, the search must cast the widest possible net. A swing-and-miss (i.e., Muir 2.0) could have dire consequences given the potential collapse of the ACC in the early 2030s, when plunging departure fees will provide Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina with the escape hatch needed to join the Big Ten, SEC or a fledgling super league.

If Stanford isn’t prepared for the industry’s Great Restructuring — if football doesn’t get fixed — the school could get left behind.

Frustrated fans have reasons for optimism, with Levin’s apparent interest in athletics atop the list. (In that regard, he’s much like his counterpart at Cal, chancellor Rich Lyons.)

Also, the executive running point for Elevate, Kyle Bowlsby, is the son of former Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby, who rescued football from its mid-2000s crisis before becoming commissioner of the Big 12. It stands to reason that Bowlsby-the-elder would pass along valuable insight into what Stanford needs to navigate the increasingly fraught landscape.

The search committee features a wide range of influential Stanford voices, including former women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer and university trustee Amy Brooks, an NBA executive who played for VanDerveer. There are two faculty members on the committee, along with a university official and current athlete (gymnast Asher Hong).

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What the committee doesn’t have is anyone connected directly to the football program, which is the most Stanford move ever and reflective of the misguided approach that created the current state of affairs.

Best we can tell, the committee members most likely to support football are former provost Condoleezza Rice and Jesse Rogers, a major donor.

If Stanford isn’t careful, it could end up with an athletic director who sees fencing and football as equals.

At the risk of offending, our suggestion is the following:

1. Spend six or eight weeks identifying candidates, soliciting feedback from key constituents and clarifying Luck’s future role.

2. Accept the search committee’s suggestions with a smile and thank the members for their service.

3. Put Levin in a room with Luck, Rice and Rogers and let the four of them figure out which candidate would give football the best chance to thrive. Then offer whatever it takes to cut the deal.

Because what Stanford needed when it hired Muir a decade ago isn’t what it needs now.

It needs an athletic director who understands the business of college sports, has deep industry connections, believes football sets the tone for everything else and is tough enough to take whatever criticism comes from prioritizing success on the field.

It doesn’t matter what Stanford does on the court or the sand or the links or the track over the next five years if the sport that matters most by a factor of eight bajillion is mired in irrelevance.

After all, if the Cardinal had been all-in on football in the first place, there would be no need for Luck to cold-call fans from a cubicle in the ticket office.

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