psuedo OT: who doth Northwestern snageth?
Their grubby paws, too!
Get that kitten some mittons!
Woke up this morning and the first thing I see on Mgoblog is a tabby eating a pancake. My day can't possibly get any better. Bravo Rob!
I've seen a cat lick the butter dish, but I'll admit I've never seen a cat eat a pancake.
Tommy Rees is the offensive coordinator at Alabama. If he's successful there, he's not going to need to go to Northwestern when the previous OCs under Saban have gone on to head coaching jobs at Ole Miss, Florida, Texas, etc.
Success is a spectrum. I could see him going to NW if he's only mildly successful.
ND fans weren't thrilled when they lost him to Bama, but they weren't super broken up about it either. Good play caller, so-so recruiter, and poor developer of talent was the general feeling among their fanbase.
Also a lot of rumblings he's got his eye on the NFL and doesn't even want a HC job in CFB.
Dude didn’t leave ND for Alabama so he could dwell at the bottom of whatever division replaces the B1G west. Rees can get a better gig than this one.
With conference expansion, the west going away, and NU’s academic and transfer hurdles, it would take a minor miracle for them to ever reach conference title caliber again. Fitzgerald was a decent coach but some of his success was a product of a conference environment that is going extinct.
The NU job is a fit for:
- an NU alum
- a bloom-off-the-rose coach looking for redemption
- a retread happy to win 6-7 games a year and live a nice lifestyle in suburban Chicago
- An up and comer who doesn’t seem to be getting offers like Chris Creighton
- An up and comer who doesn’t seem to be getting offers like Chris Creighton
I mean, this category could very well describe Rees next year if he isn't that successful at Bama, no? Sure, if he absolutely fucking kills it at Bama, no way he takes the NW job, but as I said, success is a spectrum.
If he's just OK to goodish, you really think he's getting his pick of top jobs around the country? I disagree.
I think you are overrating the NU job. It’s a tough place to win in an extremely tough conference, which just got tougher adding USC and UCLA and disposed of their weakling division starting next year. Guys like Rees, Moore and Hartline can find easier places to win as first time head coaches and move up to even better head coaching gigs. Why would they take this job as their first shot as a head coach? So they can fight with one hand tied behind their back?
I'm not at all overrating the NU job, I think it sucks. I think our difference is I think you're overrating Rees, lol.
Guys like Rees, Moore and Hartline
One of these is not like the other. Maybe I'm biased, but Moore and Hartline are one or two tiers above Rees at the moment.
But yea, I agree that all those guys can definitely find easier places to win.
Creighton is 54. Ten seasons at EMU (where does the time go?). Hardly an up and comer. 180 degrees from the new hotness.
I think Creighton is the perfect pick for Northwestern. He clearly is not afraid of impossible situations and actually turned Eastern into a repeat bowl team. Greatest coaching job nobody is aware of.
Creighton has never made serious money coaching and at 54 this is likely his best opportunity. The fit seems quite good for both sides.
Looks like you listened to yesterday's podcast...
I agree if he's successful at Alabama he's not taking the NU job but for the life of me I don't know why people are high on Rees as a coach. Kelly's a raging asshole but he's a hell of an offensive coach and it's telling, at least to me, that the one year he's not there working with Rees ND's offense looks absolutely awful at times and finishes 49th per SP+, a drop from 20th. And yes they had a new QB but he'd been on campus for 3 years and looked terrible, plus they had a great TE and a decent offensive line and running game. I just don't know how you look at the OC who oversaw ND putting up 14 against Stanford and 21 against Marshall and think that's a guy who's going to make me offensively competitive against Georgia.
Agree completely. I don't know where the Rees hype is coming from. People are putting him on the same coaching tier as Sherrone Moore and Brian Hartline and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
And yes they had a new QB but he'd been on campus for 3 years and looked terrible
Rees' job was to recruit and develop the QBs, so this is less of an excuse for his underperformance, and is actually more of another criticism of Rees' failure and poor coaching ability.
It’s not justified - see also, Josh Gattis - but sometimes these dudes are where they are for a reason and sometimes they fall upwards. Going from a OC at ND to and OC at Alabama, you could do better than NU, regardless of who you are. I don’t think Rees is special or worth a major college head coaching gig but someone will
Without consulting anyone, I've decided that my temporary purpose in life is to provide links where they don't exist.
OP, did you mean this?
To post a link, click the icon that looks like the link . . . oh, wait, you're a buncha steps ahead of me.
I'm used to adding instructions to non-linkers but you! You're performing a public service, with a clear life plan in mind. Good for you, LINK PROVIDER !
wait Vet… how did you darken those words and also slant them? You’re doing some sort of sorcery on your Commodore.
Two ways:
1. The top of the Comment box has a B for bold face and an I for Italics.
2. On my keyboard, I can get bold face by holding down Shift + Command + B, and Italics by holding down Shift + Command + I.
Olé!
Great tips. Now how do you get the accent above the "e" in "Ole!"?
I think you have to use a French or Spanish keyboard
/s
For letters with accents, type the letter but hold it down.
At least on my (Francophile) keyboard, up pops a row of options, like different "e" accents (è é ê ë ē ė ę).
It also works for the other vowels, plus "c" (ç ć č), "n" (ñ ń), and maybe other letters.
Trés bien?
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
How long do you hold until the accent comes up?
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ya let go too soon!
(Another MMLOL! Making me laugh out loud. I tried to upvote you but your e's extend off the page.)
It's witchcraft
OR, option 3, I use witchcraft.
But what about this old adage:
"Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime."
I believe educating one in the ways of posting is more effective in the long run than doing it for them. Let MGoBlog be a land of learning, and not just about pin and pull concepts!
shit I could have done that...didn't think the article was worth much on based on a quick read. sorry for the poor m go ethos
No biggie. bluheron's got your back.
The MGoBlog Roundtable had a good conversation yesterday morning on this very topic. The ttop coordinators who are rising stars like Sherrone Moore, Brian Hartline and Tommy Rees will likely pass on the Northwestern job and wait for something better to come along. Not sure where Leonhard fits in this picture - he could be a possibility.
Very likely they will look to a retread for the job.
Another possibility is that they will ride with Braun and see how it goes.
I question what kind of budget Northwestern has to fund a coaching staff. The Fitzgerald thing was convenient for them because he wasn't interested in using the job as a springing board.
Usually, it's "spring board" but I like "springing board." MUCH more active.
I vote for making "springing board" a thing.
Northwestern doesn't come off to me as an AD that will be too aggressive after this scandal. David Braun might be good enough to please Wildcat leadership and quietly be a quality coach that fits their recruitment challenges by using a strong, smart defense and inspires some D1 championship mentality.
I'd be happy with any of our coaches getting this position. It's a job that they can find some relative success and then back to Michigan with gained experience.
You're a lot more optimistic than I am about Northwestern. I think it will be an absolute dumpster fire for the next 2-3 years and beyond. Scandals, lawsuits, shit recruiting, transfers out, etc. over the next year are going to seriously hurt the program. Maybe the next coach can start to build something 4+ years from now but it's going to be tough going.
This isn't a school like Penn State with the kind of football resources to quickly bounce back from scandal/hardship. The best coach the program has ever had went 1-11 last year, 3-9 in 2021, 3-9 in 2019, and the administration was fine with that. It will be very, very difficult for a coach to go in there and build something and start winning.
I don't wish that job on Sherrone Moore. He deserves better.
The good news is that the losses from transfers and bad recruiting aren't as severe to back fill as most. Not that high of a bar to clear...
I think the low bar is part of the appeal. If someone can get them to a bowl in year 3 or 4 (which I'm not saying would be easy, but remember that all coaches think they're god's gift to football), they will be in the conversation for top-tier P5 gigs in 2028ish. Someone like Sherrone Moore should 100% stay away - he can probably just wait for the Michigan job at this point. But there will be others willing to bet on themselves.
I think it can’t even be an argument anymore that Michigan stays within the coaching tree for next head coach and one could make the argument that next head coach should come from someone who stays inside the program the whole time.
You had Bo come in from outside then next two successful head coaches were on staff. Yes Mo left for Illinois but came back quickly and of course Carr came on after Mo crisis.
If Moore is the guy he doesn’t need head coaching experience anywhere to be successful.
Developing a winner can be done at NW as we have seen from Walker, Barnett and Fitzgerald. Sustaining that momentum though has not happened. NW isn't fully behind a winning program which is what is killing them when they get momentum. NW has split the big ten title a couple times going back the last 30 years, won the west division a couple times but cannot build success in recruiting and cannot sustain that success. We think Michigan is in a struggle for recruits academically, NW has it even worse regarding their admissions.
NW is a job most see if you can reach and sustain at or just above .500 you're achieving. Get a 10 win season or two and it's time to bolt for the better job.
I don't think it's so much that they "aren't behind a winning program" as that their method of succeeding requires rebuilding years. A school with their recruiting profile can't just reload annually.
I agree with you and made a very similar comment (below) before seeing yours. I don't think Sherrone Moore would be interested in a job like NW--he'll be Michigan's next head coach or if Harbaugh stays then Moore will get a job with a much greater path to success than NW.
Meanwhile here's my hawt take on the future of NW football: a few years down the road, in a world where the players are recognized by a court somewhere as university employees, and the players unionize in order to gain leverage and acquire a share of the billions of TV $$$ currently being dispersed to the universities, I think there's a real chance that a school like Northwestern decides that world is not for them and they drop down to FCS (or simply stay put if/when the powerhouse FBS schools create an NFL-style elite division of their own).
David Shaw?
It makes sense for Northwestern to look at guys who coach/coached at self-proclaimed academic schools Stanford and Duke.
As 42-27 mentioned above, NU is comfortable with losing as long as the players are actual students and are treated with respect.
Or at least are actual students.
My son is at NW. He sees NW football players in classes. Hard classes. Engineering classes.
Ohio State they ain't. They play school.
Can he rebuild? He kept Harbaugh's machine running for a while, but after the program fell apart, he couldn't turn it around.
I'm not as married to the re-tread idea as Brian was on the podcast. I think NW is a more appealing job than Brian and Sam gave it credit for - yes they're looking at a severe talent deficit in the short-term, but expectations are also very low and so even modest success could be a springboard to bigger and better things. It shouldn't be tempting to someone like Moore or Hartline - those guys are probably close to better P5 jobs in the very near term. But plenty of up-and-comers don't have that obvious path and might take the chance.
I kind of agree. I think everyone is exaggerting how bad of a job it is. First you are in the Big Ten, and at this point it looks like Big Ten and SEC are going to be the premier conferences. Also, while you aren't some blue blood, you aren't some no name school. The brand has a little bit of prestige from their academic reputation.
The bar is so low, that having a barely winning record over say 5 years with 2 bowl wins, 1 crap bowl between 7 win teams and a bowl win as a top 20 team would be considered a huge success and get you other offers. Fitzgerald had NFL interest after going 5-5 in bowls in 15 years and winning 0.567 games (this ignores the last 2 disaster years).
If you ignore whatever chaos is happening in the AD, and assume that everything gets cleaned out and you start with a fresh slate, it isn't so terrible.
I also agree. Northwestern is a hard job, but it's not like the bottomless pit of despair it was from 1972-1994. The right coach can do more or less what Fitzgerald has done: be a bowl eligible team most years with periodic down years and an occasional season where they win 10+ games.
Evanston is also a good place to live and the administration is unlikely to be breathing down his neck unless the program totally flatlines again.
Having said that, it may be hard to find the right coach again.
The question is whether they want to try to sustain that definition of success with another 10+ year guy, or gamble on someone who may exceed expectations but who is nearly certain to bounce to a better job the moment they win 9 or 10 games.
If Orgeron is interested I think that's what they should do. That entire program needs to be cleaned and he's got plenty of experience.
I can't think of a worse cultural fit than Coach O trying to live in Evanston. It could be its own reality show. It is a hilariously terrible idea and I hope it happens.