In what might qualify as irony given NU's decades of futility, Ryan said his son was attracted to Stanford, which has missed the NCAA tournament three straight seasons, because Cormac "is interested in being on the ground floor, building up from scratch. There are risks and it could go really badly, but he's OK with that. He wants a really big opportunity. At the end of the day if it does go badly, he will have gone to Stanford. And that's not the worst thing can say about a person."