Unverified Voracity Needs To Replicate The Fly Comment Count

Brian

[NOTE: in transit to DC today for Q&A thing Thursday, so light day from me.]

We need some elephants with adamantium blades coming from their hands. This exists:

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The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I need some lambchop-possessing awful cartoon unholy wolverine-elephant combinations stat.

On your TV! Black and Blue, the Willis Ward documentary, will be on your television if you're in Detroit. Channel 7, 1 PM, Saturday. Yes, this is unfortunately timed with the Arkansas basketball game overlapping. Set your DVRs.

Where many coaches just show up from the MAC. The Big Ten has pants and pants of money. Leg-sleeves stuffed with cash. And

Purdue Football Coaching Search: Butch Jones Leaning Towards Colorado

…that about says it all. I know that Purdue is maybe not the best example but the current Big Ten coaches are:

MAC OR MAC-ISH HEAD COACHES: Beckman, Kill, Hoke

NOT EVEN MAC: Hope (fired)

BIG EAST HEAD COACHES: Dantonio

COORDINATORS: Wilson, Bielema, O'Brien, Pelini

POSITION COACH: Fitzgerald (thrust into the job early by tragedy), Ferentz

URBAN MEYER: Urban Meyer

People, stop hiring MAC coaches who get hot for a couple seasons. Anyone can get good in the MAC (except Eastern why do you have football Eastern), and the MACtion nature of the league means that whoever is good is good because of chaos. Hoke at least had a couple years of turnaround at SDSU to his credit.

Also, there is one coach in the league who came in with BCS-level bonafides, Meyer, and he had extenuating circumstances that removed him from his previous job. This year is not a great example because I can't think of anyone who leaps off the page as an excellent coach Purdue should try to poach, but in the past five to ten years no midlevel Big Ten school has even approached a decent hire. I mean, yeah what about Sonny Dykes

Sonny Dykes- Where art thou?

Sonny Dykes, my number one choice, seems to be staying pretty quiet during this whole process.  I haven’t heard his name mentioned for Tennessee or Arksans or even NC State despite early murmurs those were his preferences.  His team turned down a bowl game because they were hoping for a better offer.  If that’s any indication of how Dykes negotiates someone may get a bargain of a coach. Cal seems to be the front runner for him at this point but with the coaching carousel you never know. I’d still like to see Burke take a shot at him and use the extra money for a hot shot defensive coordinator.

Is Cal going to outspend a Big Ten team for Dykes? Adding Rutgers and Maryland will change that. Sure.

Next up for Purdue: maybe Darrell Hazell because Hazell has one year in which his team came out on top of MACtion and two as a head coach. Conference, I roll my eyes at you.

Burnin' the shirt, burnin' the shirt. Well so much for Caris Levert the redshirting guy. Michigan put him out there against Bradley and will continue playing him. This means bad news for Matt Vogrich, who went from a starting, if minor, role to a few minutes late:

"(The plan is to play him) six to eight or six to 10 (minutes per game)," Beilein said Monday. "I don't know if that's always going to happen, it depends on what's going on late in the game.

"That was our intention, that's why we made the move to put him in the top eight -- we're still going to stay with a top eight or nine (guys in a rotation), and he's in there."

With Albrecht and McGary definitely part of that rotation, Levert's addition just about kicks Vogrich out of meaningful PT.

How do we feel about this? Vogrich was off to a poor start this season, but he has been able to provide sporadic gritty grit off the bench in past years and knows how to work a back-door cut. I'm less incensed about burning redshirts in basketball, where the really good players don't stick around four years, let alone five, and anyone on the floor is contributing in a way Sione Houma wasn't when he covered kickoffs that were going into the endzone anyway.

If Levert is worth a couple points a game, I'd say go for it. We haven't seen much to indicate that he is yet, but the buzz has been consistent. If they can really use him as a "defensive stopper," I'll be surprised but that's what Beilein says and Beilein draws a lot of water in this town.

Everyone was injured and now it can be told. Taylor Lewan's shoulder you didn't know was hurt is fine now, which hurrah because Clowney. Gardner's ankle you didn't know was hurt will be fine by the time bowl practice starts. Denard's elbow you knew was injured is still coming along:

Robinson was asked Monday if he's been throwing at all.

"I'm not throwing how I want to throw," he said. "I'll get there eventually."

He didn't indicate what has kept him from throwing the way he'd like.

"I don't know right now," he said. "Got to keep going, keep trying and keep getting treatment."

Nate Brink is not returning and this is apparently still news despite the fact that he walked on senior day. Stood, really, but you know what I mean.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA lolerbee($)

The discussion: Which team is the nation's most talented?

Ford: …the team that may have the most talent in the country, in my book, is Michigan. The Wolverines currently have five players ranked in our Top 100. Kentucky is the only other team to have as many Top 100 players.

Right now, point guard Trey Burke is the only Michigan player ranked in our top 30, but Glenn Robinson III and Tim Hardaway Jr. both have the ability to crack the first round of the NBA draft. Freshmen Mitch McGary and Nik Stauskas are further down the list, but both have a real shot at getting drafted down the road.

That's in part why I believe Michigan is a Final Four team and may give Indiana a run for the No. 1 spot by the end of the season.

/spins in chair whistling strangely

Adopt-a-Bundesliga. I mentioned this on the podcast a few weeks ago and I am still kicking the idea around: I kind of want to adopt a Bundesliga team, because the Bundesliga is a place where people think like this:

Among Germany's well-organised supporter groups is Kein Zwanni (Not Twenty), a campaign to keep tickets cheap. Its spokesman, Dortmund fan Marc Quambusch, said: "You have to keep tickets affordable so poorer and young people can have the experience of being football supporters. German football has a special relationship with supporters because we are the owners of the clubs; people do feel that very emotional sense of belonging and the clubs do listen to the fans. I feel we need to really value what we have."

Watzke is a confirmed adherent to the Bundesliga rule that its clubs, with the historic exceptions of Bayer Leverkusen, Wolfsburg and more recently Hoffenheim, must be controlled "50% plus one" by their members. The other 33 of the 36 clubs, including Bayern Munich, which is 82% owned by its member-supporters, cannot be bought by a single person from outside, like the Premier League clubs, but instead are democratically answerable to their members.

An indication of an "emotional sense of belonging" is what the Big Ten's leadership got from fans once they announced they'd be adding Maryland and Rutgers, and is what they are busy throwing away right now in pursuit of ever-greater dollars without bothering to ask first. Ask anyone. They just did it.

That article is on Dortmund*. Dortmund fell in to debt and is coming off consecutive league championships by digging out and buying young players and building something. The entire league is organized like the Packers with exceptions grandfathered in; meanwhile the Packers setup is banned by the NFL with Green Bay grandfathered in. One gives you Dan Snyder. The other does not.

*[Dortmund pros: successful, opportunity to root against Jermaine Jones. Yellow overlaps with Michigan somewhat. Cons: somewhat of a carpetbagging thing to root for defending league champion, their yellow seems a little off. ]

Meanwhile your business models are unsustainable. Fact: if you do not like sports cable is a huge ripoff. Via Get The Picture:

The average household already spends about $90 a month for cable or satellite TV, and nearly half of that amount pays for the sports channels packaged into most services. [Emphasis added.]  Massive deals for marquee sports franchises like the Dodgers and Lakers are driving those costs even higher. Over the next three years, monthly cable and satellite bills are expected to rise an average of nearly 40%, to $125, according to the market research company NPD Group.

So far, people seem willing to pay. But the escalating costs are triggering worries that, at some point, consumers will begin ditching their cable and satellite subscriptions.

“We’ve got runaway sports rights, runaway sports salaries and what is essentially a high tax on a lot of households that don’t have a lot of interest in sports,” said John Malone, the cable industry pioneer and chairman of Liberty Media. “The consumer is really getting squeezed, as is the cable operator.”

That is an unsustainable model that will erode. The Big Ten has hitched its entire wagon to that instead of things without an immediate return like, oh I don't know, an emotional sense of belonging. They are following the lead of newspapers, most of whom have abandoned any long-term strategy for slowly milking what profits can be made—except newspapers did not have a choice.

At this point I just don't care about the Big Ten expanding. I had my rage, and now I don't care what happens. That's where I am, and that's dangerous for the pointy-haired bosses. I'll watch, I'm committed to that, but there's a continuum here.

Here is a libertarian-flavored argument from Mother Jones's Kevin Drum about this whole business that GTP linked and I agree with, no polo.

No link just a thing I am thinking. The best example of the milking behavior is the Big Ten ruining things by making more of them. The two examples I'm thinking of:

  • Splitting Michigan and Ohio State in the hopes of getting a rematch the next week.
  • Cramming four Big Ten bowls onto New Year's Day, cheapening the accomplishment.

Instead of NYD being a litmus test for a  good season it is now highly likely 8 and 7 win teams get there annually, and then who cares.

Yes, I am thinking about living under a highway overpass. Let's think about something happier.

STAUSKAS. Stauskas.

Also other key plays. I love how on the last one you can hear the entire arena moan disgustedly before Stauskas even gets the ball. They know it's going in.

Etc.: Nebrasketball beats USC to give the Big Ten a little bit of a schedule bump. I watched the first 15 minutes or so and came away amazed at how bad the Trojans were. They have a guy with above-average usage (Jio Fontan) shooting 24% from 2!

Hagerup profiled. Baumgardner on the Bradley game, which I was fine with them playing. I'd rather have Michigan go to MVC schools for RPI and competitive purposes than beat up on the SWAC. Beard on the freshmen. MGoUser club_med looks at overtime games and eventually concludes that how you get to overtime—by blowing a lead or coming back—does not affect your chance of winning.

Late fades after being up big are the best problem to have but I would prefer it if they were fixed.

Comments

AAB

December 4th, 2012 at 2:24 PM ^

I know it's bandwagon-y because they won the league, but they probably won't win it this year (Bayern's way up), and it's not as Duke/Yankees-ish as choosing to be a Bayern fan.  Plus Dortmund plays an incredibly attractive style of soccer, and they might have the best fans ever.  

strider0910

December 5th, 2012 at 2:43 AM ^

For anyone interested, there is a english weekly podcast on Borussia Dortmund. The Yellow Wall refers to the all-standing section of the stadium (Stadium is the largest in Germany ~80,000). They basically discuss the matches, but they also feature a historical figure from the past. BVB is my favorite soccer team; the main drawback is that Schalke's main color is Blue. 

His Dudeness

December 4th, 2012 at 2:30 PM ^

"Meanwhile your business models are unsustainable."

Completely agree with all of this. The last thing you want to do as a business is devalue the product or service.

Delany speaks of the additions as a long term startegy... You can acquire a "down" brand with the hopes of building it up as a long term startegy, of course, but I don't think you have any leverage as a conference to do that when you acquire teams. How does a conference force Maryland to not be shit at football? SEC - in all it's glory - can't force UK be anything but a rather large steaming turd of a football team. What is the B1G going to do with Mary, Rutgers and GT/UVA?

With the acquisitions the B1G has made it has gained tv markets, but essentially made their product shittier. That's no way to go about things in my, surprisingly fairly knowledgeable, opinion.  

BlueLaw

December 4th, 2012 at 2:39 PM ^

The contention, quoted by Brian, that we pay 50% of our cable subscription to subsidize sports appears to be wrong.  Courtesy of The Atlantic:

"Somehow, this stat, or something like it, made its way into headlines and ledes at the Los Angeles Times and Philadelphia Inquirer and Mother Jones and beyond. It's not true.

Your pay-TV bill is $80. Programming costs are $30. Sports programming costs (all of the sports networks combined) are $12, or more if you live in Southern California, as the graph above from the LA Times shows. Twelve dollars divided by $80 isn't 50% of your bill. It's 15%."

Whole article is a worthwhile read and interesting counterpoint to the oft-repeated but infrequently supported conclusion that the cable bundle is an unsupportable business model.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/if-you-dont-watch-sports-tv-is-a-huge-rip-off-so-how-do-we-fix-it/265814/

MI Expat NY

December 4th, 2012 at 3:04 PM ^

I think the most important line in that article is this: "[Google] would have to spend an extra $200 billion to build a nationwide infrastructure to move live video."

Someone is going to charge you for delivering content to your home.  Right now cable and phone companies tolerate "cord cutters" because internet only customers that are pirating/streaming a large amount of tv-like entertainment is a small portion of the customer base.  As soon as they really begin to dig into profits, the model will change, likely leading to much larger internet costs for those with heavy usage caused by streaming/downloading HD movies/etc.  When that happens cord-cutting will be far less cost adventageous.  

There may be a day when a la cart cable choices are the norm, but I think it's far from a certainty.  I would agree that something will eventually slow the ever-escalating cost of sports fandom, but I wouldn't be so sure that the change will result in the Big Ten's strategy of adding schools that bring in high number of cable households being a poor one.  

UMaD

December 4th, 2012 at 3:30 PM ^

However, when costs are so unreasonable people may look to find the entertainment through other venues or look for content OUTSIDE of the home.

Also, cable is going to have to compete with wireless/phone service and it will be an increasingly losing battle for cable.

BlueLaw

December 5th, 2012 at 9:45 AM ^

Yeah.  I think that the issue is going to be that content owners (in this case ESPN, B1G, YES etc) will have to find a way to deliver content that pays for contracts currently in force, whether that is through a cable bundle or some other delivery method.  To the extent that another delivery method exists that can compete in quality, convenience, and breadth with cable (which internet currently does not), it will still need to be priced such that it pays for the content and owners futer obligations.  Which of course makes the move away from the cable bundle less attractive, particularly for those households that have people that watch stuff other than sports and so want to have access to at least a couple other channels offered in the cable bundle.

Brodie

December 4th, 2012 at 2:40 PM ^

The cognitive dissonance that allows someone to admonish Big Ten programs for hiring MAC coaches while praising Urban Meyer without noting he began his career as a MAC coach is kind of astonishing.

I'm curious where Brian wants mediocre Big Ten programs to grab their coaches from if not regional midmajors and national powerhouses? What is the functional difference between Sonny Dykes and Darrell Hazell, except that Dykes took over a good situation in a crap conference and kept things running for three years while Hazell made a stunning turnaround at a crappy MAC program in two years

GOLBOGM

December 4th, 2012 at 3:06 PM ^

Plus MAC> Big East.

SEC coaches aren't leaving, BigTen isn't poachign from other BigTen schools- so unless there are PAC-12, Big12, or ACC coaches available the only choices are MAC or coordinators from big conferences.  In NCAA BB there are so many D1 teams with rising stars for coaches in mid-majors- in football its so much harder.  

Plus as Hoke shows so much of being a top coach is attitude and relations to students and recruiting.  There are plenty of great MAC tpye guys for that.  The bigger issue is bottom-teir BigTen jobs aren't very appealing to top coaches imo...

wile_e8

December 4th, 2012 at 3:12 PM ^

Yeah, but pre-Pac 12 Utah didn't have gobs of TV money like B1G schools, so they didn't have much choice besides trying to hit a MAC lottery ticket. Getting back to the point of this post, the SEC schools also have a ton of TV money, and they use it to hire big name coaches with a better track record than one or two good seasons in the MAC. The SEC method, although not guaranteed success, does have a much rate of success than the Utah method, even though it worked out in Utah's case. This is a big factor in why the SEC is on top of the college football world right now while the B1G has a bunch of MAC-level teams.

Brodie

December 4th, 2012 at 3:20 PM ^

Who are these mythical SEC hires with their superior track records? Saban and Miles, who make more money than god, Spurier, who wouldn't coach north of the Mason-Dixon line for all the money in the endowment and possibly Bielema, which what the fuck. Everyone else is either a former coordinator or from the southern version of the MAC (Hugh Freeze says sup) 

GOLBOGM

December 4th, 2012 at 3:25 PM ^

SEC is also better than every conference- so if you are a coach that is the best place to be for most- makign it easier to lure coaches.  Unless you are in an elite job- UM, Ohio, Texas, etc. you can be lured by the SEC- not as true for other BCS conferences.

Brodie

December 4th, 2012 at 3:04 PM ^

And if Ohio had hired him directly from Bowling Green would he have been a worse coach? Everyone starts somewhere. Head coaches don't spring forth like Athena, as fully formed into proven BCS caliber winners. And even if they did, they wouldn't go to Purdue even if the money was equal (and reports are that the Boilers were offering Jones around $2.5 million a year).

The number of SEC coaches with real BCS conference head coaching track records prior to arriving in the SEC are Saban and Miles. In the Big 12, it's Brown and uh Bill Snyder? Charlie Weis? In the Pac-12, it's RR and Leach. Brian is acting like the B1G is falling behind when the reality is nobody is doing what he wants Purdue and Illinois to be able to do. 

AAB

December 4th, 2012 at 3:08 PM ^

If Ohio State had hired him immediately from Bowling Green, they would have had far less certainty that they were getting a good coach (and, yeah, they probably would have had a worse coach, because he wouldn't be nearly as experienced).  You're looking at this with perfect hindsight, knowing that Urban Meyer ended up being Urban Meyer.  But Brian's point is that hiring "random MAC coach" will give you a crap coach far, far more often than it will give you Urban Meyer.  Coaching hires are about playing the odds, and the existence of Urban Meyer doesn't suddenly make MAC coaches a great bet.  

Brodie

December 4th, 2012 at 3:14 PM ^

perhaps the reason that "random MAC coach" has such a shitty track record is because they're ending up at shitty programs like Purdue, Illinois and Minnesota? When was the last time Kentucky or Vandy or Mississippie State made the kind of splashy hire Brian is looking for? 

M-Wolverine

December 4th, 2012 at 3:30 PM ^

Would fall with Hoke under MAC or MAC-ish conferences.  So him going somewhere else afterwards isn't really a help on his resume according to Brian.

Furthermore, your BCS rankings-

ND - MAC coach to Big East Coach.

Bama- Pro washout (but Saban, so come on. But MSU got Saban as a coordinator).

Florida- Coordinator

Oregon- Coordinator

Kansas State- well, Kansas State, but before that, coordinator.

Stanford- Coordinator

Georgia-  Coordinator

LSU- Okie State. BCS program steal.

Texas A&M- MAC-ish school

South Carolina- NFL embarrassment, gotten because they have good golf courses.

Oklahoma- Coordinator

FSU- Coordinator

 

I think we get the picture. Most program don't hire head coaches from other bigger programs. Really, from this, your best bet seems to be to find a hot coordinator.  

Yes, events like today's are embarrassing, but does anyone think Bielema is going to rule the SEC West? I don't. It's splashy, but maybe not the best hire. Does the Big Ten need to hire better, spend more money on it, and identify coaching talent? Yes. Is that done by hiring bigger name coaches? I don't necessarily think so.

 

GustaveFerbert

December 4th, 2012 at 5:01 PM ^

Based on my reading of Brian's post of coaching hires, it appears he would not have liked lots of historical hires that turned out ok in the Big 10  Bo (MAC), Woody (MAC), Duffy D (Assist Coach), Barry A (Coordinator),  the Vest (I-AA), Paterno (internal hire).  

Now are all MAC coaches destined to be great coaches?  No.   But there is no metric to show guarantees from other places...though apparently Arkansas State is now the hotbed of football coaches taking over for Miami of days past.

It is also funny how perspectives change year to year... Muschamp - last year, he sucked.  This year, pretty good.   Kelly - last year, just a hot head looking like he was in over his head...this year...championship game.   Heck, even Southern Illinois likely hated Jerry Kill the first two years, but then...hmmmmmmmmmmm.....

But the point about the Big 10 having some down years now remains legitmate.  Not every Big 10 school will be a destination school rather than a steppingstone - especially when other schools throw ridiculous money or if there are more glamorous locations.  

 

 

dahblue

December 4th, 2012 at 3:33 PM ^

Frankly, I thought maybe Brian was being sarcastic.  How else to explain the head-in-the-sand approach to hating on the B1G?  Boy, Brian would really have hated the hire of a certain sweater vest-wearing D-II coach about a decade back.  Hell, everyone knows that the best coaches have BCS bowl pedigrees - Chizik, RichRod, Paul Pasqualoni, Ron Turner, Charlie Weiss!  

I also don't get the Colorado v. Purdue comparison.  I'm a B1G guy, but I'd take Boulder in a fucking heartbeat.  But hey, everyone knows that Louisiana Tech is a better program to develop coaches than Miami or Bowling Green.  LaTech is kinda like the mecca of football.

BraveWolverine730

December 4th, 2012 at 4:10 PM ^

So the fact that the Big Ten sucks has nothing to do with the coaching? Compare that with basketball where schools that were crappy at basketball (us, Minnesota) went out and hired a major conference coach in Beilein and a guy with a National championship ring in Tubby. Between hires like that and OSU hiring Matta, Indiana getting Crean, and Purdue hiring Painter, the Big Ten suddenly became THE basketball conference.



If you keep hiring coaches directly from the MAC, you'll get MAC results. Heck even Hoke admitted he wasn't ready for the UM gig when it came open while he was at Ball State and the SDSU job helped prepare him.

dahblue

December 4th, 2012 at 4:56 PM ^

Not sure where to start...Matta is more crooked than Joe Theisman's broken leg, Painter (the beast of Southern Illinois) has been at Purdue for a long while now, Crean is a new hire to a bball legendary program, Tubby hasn't had an easy road, etc.

The B1G having a bad year isn't about the coaching (which is so terrible that one terrible coach just went to the SEC and two others were in the running for national coach of the year); there are likely a number of reasons (shit happens, population shift, last of SEC-style oversigning).  

In any event, feel free to point out why LaTech is any different/better than Miami.  You also might want to search for someone (anyone) who would move to W. Lafayette over Boulder.

BraveWolverine730

December 4th, 2012 at 5:26 PM ^

Thad Matta might be crooked, but he's a successful coach that OSU got from an extremely good program (Xavier). Painter might be the best example of a "MAC" type coach succeding, but he's still a good coach.  Tom Crean came from a major Big East school and Tubby came from Kentucky (though he was probably gonna be forced out at some point).  The point was that it's not merely cyclical, you have to actually hire good coaches to win. Every coach I mentioned (with the exceptioon maybe of Painter) was a major upgrade from the coach each school had in the early to mid 2000s when the Big Ten sucked at basketball.



The Big Ten has been declining as a football power for a long time now. Obviously part of that was us sucking it up during the Rich Rod years, but the difference between the Big Ten and the SEC is pretty stark and has been growing. You can attribute this merely to population shift (which is definitely a contributing factor) or you can see that a league that hires better coaches tends to win more.





The reason La Tech is slightly better than Miami is simply that it's in a better conference. The MAC consistently has shown it's probably the worst league in CFB most years. To be honest, I'm not the one trying to push this argument, but whatever. Show me a coach who has jumped straight from MAC to Big Ten in recent years and been successful. You can say "Urban Meyer coached at Bowling Green", but does he get that job without the stints at Utah and Florida?  I don't necessarily think that you need to poach head coaches from major programs as there are just less of them in College football, but poor HC choices is one of the reasons for the Big Ten's struggles.

dahblue

December 4th, 2012 at 6:05 PM ^

That's a lot of words to say very little.

I mentioned population shift as just one of a number of factors that could affect the B1G.   We had a down year, but are still one of the top conferences in the country.  RichRod certainly took the conference down a notch (as you mentioned) and the Sandusky horror will also hurt. That's one BCS coach and a child rapist.

As for bball...look at facility upgrades.  Anyone think Beilein would be as successful without the upgrades?  Of course not; many factors influence success.  It's very short-sighted to include only one factor (pedigree of coaches) in predicting long term conference success.

So, this year, we weren't as good as the Pac10, Big12 and SEC.  So what?  I'm not one to scream fire when a coach picks Boulder over an Indiana shithole.

BraveWolverine730

December 4th, 2012 at 7:36 PM ^

All right I'll make this as simple as possible, the Big Ten will not improve as a football conference, unless it hires better coaches. I really don't think that's a stretch of a statement. While coaches with MAC roots can and have been very successful (Meyer, Saban, Hoke, etc.), a Big Ten school probably should see some success at a non-MAC level before deciding to hire them. That is all I am saying.

dahblue

December 5th, 2012 at 9:45 AM ^

I can agree with some of that, but what I'm simply saying is that this "B1G sucks" rhetoric isn't 100% accurate and largely coincides with the dark era here.  You can hire a big name coach who flops (see RichRod) or a coach from DII who has a great (albeit it cheaterific) run (see Tressel).  It's just like drafting QBs in the NFL - for every Tom Brady, there's an Akili Smith.

GustaveFerbert

December 4th, 2012 at 6:13 PM ^

Are not most of these coaches replacing coaches where things likely are not going well (see Illinois and Minnesota) so that the verdict should remain out for at least a couple of years to see improvement.   Minnesota improved from year one to year two (albeit not in the BIG).  Will Illinois?  Who knows, but to automatically suggest the coaches are poor without looking at past successes is not accurate.

E.g., Jerry Kill - looked like a poor coach by record in his first two years in Southern Illinios, but then turned the corner.    Might not happen at Minnesota, but there is more than just his coaching holding back Minnesota as a football "power"     

MGoLogan

December 4th, 2012 at 2:51 PM ^

I think another big reason Beilein decided to play Levert is his ball handling ability.  Levert is able to play both SG and SF and brings a much steadier handle than Hardaway, Robinson, Vogrich, and probably even Stauskas.  I know Levert needs to add some muscle, but strength is vastly overrated when it comes to basketball, especially for a wing player. 

Erik_in_Dayton

December 4th, 2012 at 2:53 PM ^

I don't know that I think the MAC is a bad place to go looking for coaches - and I think Darrell Hazell would probably be a very good hire for someone - but I do think that the lack of quality of Big Ten football coaches is something that isn't recognized enough.  If you look at Big Ten basketball, there are quality coaches at almost every stop, and that's a big reason why the league can compete with anyone.  In football, on the other hand, the league has a lot of pretty "meh" guys both at the HC and assistant levels.  I think this makes the disparity in talent between, say, Big Ten and SEC football seem bigger than it really is. 

jg2112

December 4th, 2012 at 3:07 PM ^

The Bundesliga might have a nice entrenched model, but it has exceptions. Wolfsburg is owned by Volkswagen, another club has a sole billionaire owner.

And it's not an entirely competitive league over time. Between Bayern Munchen and Borussia Dortmund, they've won over half of all Bundesliga titles.

Indonacious

December 4th, 2012 at 3:10 PM ^

When stauskas shoots our players start retreating essentially expecting it to go in. In the highlight above, at about 14 seconds thjr starts running back almost before the release and puts up the 3 fingers well before even stauskas. Just an observation...must be a product of what they see in practice and I guess in games so far. Nice having him on our side...