because swimming, volleyball and basketball are bigger sports in Palo Alto

Yeah it's a big reason it's hard to recruit- it helped when we built the new stadium and downsized from the old gigantic stadium with a track around the football field. But there's a huge difference in football culture between schools like UM, ND etc and the typical nerds at Stanford.

Even still with a personality like Harbaugh we were able to compete with the big boys for a few great years.