Rittenberg claims OSU is "too big to fail"
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7881076/are-ohio-state-b…
The list of college football brand names enduring downturns has swelled: Miami, Notre Dame, Florida State, Florida, Washington, Nebraska, Michigan and, most recently, USC, to name a few. The reasons vary -- NCAA violations and penalties, coaching changes, poor coaching hires, poor recruiting, poor performance, greater parity in the sport -- but the fundamental theme is that anyone can be brought down. Programs had plummeted because of a lot less than what had transpired at Ohio State.
Isn't a 6-7 season failing? Isn't a reduction in scholarships failing? Isn't a one year ban on a conference championship possibility and a bowl berth failing? Isn't being the lead story on ESPN for a month due to your transgresions failing? Isn't your head coach "resigning" in disgrace failing? What an article of pure garbage
It's not that they are too big to fail. It's that what would have caused their slide (Tressel getting fired and their star players getting suspended) just happened to occur at precisely the right time that they were able to get a rockstar-level coach in Meyer. If they would have hired basically anyone else (or kept Fickell), you can damn well bet they don't end up with a recruiting class anywhere near what they had last year, and in all likelihood are not off to the good start they have this year. No school is too big to fail if the right dominos fall.
Chrysler, GM, the entire financial sector, and Ohio. Too big to fail.
but i think instead of "too big to fail" which denotes that they are too important to their regulating body to allow to do wrong, i think the better phrase would be "is financially supported to such a huge extent by their fans that failing is not permissible."
I think Adam Rittenberg is a good writer, and I think his was a very good article. He's completely correct, and he probably could have gone farther in a harsh comparison of how OSU transitioned from Tressel to Fickell to Meyer, as opposed to how Michigan transitioned from Carr to Rodriguez.
Here is what Rittenberg might have dug into some more: The critical thing, in program success and recruiting, is the appearance of stability. To go 6-6 might not be good; but it is far better to go 6-6 as Ohio State did last year, with everybody still pulling in the same direction and with a clear vision for the future, than it is to go 7-5 as Michigan did in 2010 and have the press wondering about what date the coach will get fired.
sorry; dbl. post
More like too big to jail.
Just like Miami was too big to fail? Florida State? Alabama? USC? Nebraska? Michigan?
All "too big to fail" programs that had the floor fall out from them at one time or another over the last 15 years.
But there is the W-L record, and the chaos behind the scenes. Rittenberg has, no doubt, read Three and Out. I'm guessing that Rittenberg was allowed to read galleys for Three and Out.
20+ straight bowls and 20+ years with no losing record.... and then 3-9.
In the end it is opinion, but, I can't see anyone on this board arguing that the bottom didn't fall out in 2008.
I agree that the numbers suggest the bottom fell out, but a lot of that had to do with our terrible recruiting in the waning Carr years. Including this most recent draft, we simply have not had the elite talent on hand to compete for B1G championships.
If you're suggesting that the bottom did indeed fall out, you need to expand the timeframe beyond just those three seasons.
I think all top programs are essentially "too big to fail" on a permenant basis.
Traditional basketball powers: UCLA, Indiana, Duke, UNC, Kanasas, Kentucky, etc. may have a couple down years but will always be top teams because top coaches and top salaries will always be there.
Same for football: UM, Ohio, USC, Texas, Bama, etc. will always have the facilities, the tradition, the money, and won't put up with mediocrity- so they will pay to fix it or turn it around. Hard to see that changing.
Teams like Boise St may fall because who knows if another coach can keep it going, and they won't have the money and long standing tradition of the other powerhouses.
This whole article seemed pointless. Ohio State may take a short-term hiatus from power but its hard ot imagine them not being a powerhouse team close to year-in-year-out.
Of course they are too big to fail. Why? Because what Urban wants, Urban gets. /s
What a tool!
It sucks, but Ohio is too big of a football factory to fail on a prolonged basis. They have recruiting machines in both football and basketball that seem to operate fine no matter who is or isn't the coach there.
The closest Ohio has done to "failing" was their 2-10-1 record against Michigan from 1988-2000. If that happens again, though, I will be extremely happy.
The best thing Ohio has in their favor is their own media within the state, who act as de facto publicity/brainwashing outlets for the gospel of Ohio State everything. Kids are indoctrinated by the age of five, if not sooner, and it only gets worse from there.
Depends on your definition of "fail". Earle Bruce went 81-26-1, won or shared 4 Big 10 titles, went to 2 Rose Bowls, and compiled a 5-4 record against Michigan in his 9 years as OSU head coach, and that earned him a pink slip. Urban is facing a similar situation in that he's stepping into a situation where expectations are impossibly high. He's got a profile that will insulate him a bit, but if he can't maintain Tressel levels of dominance, he's going to lose support fast.
You know the Dispatch and the Lantern both covered the scandal stuff in pretty great detail right? The car story, the Ray Small interview, etc. There was no local media shield.
So's your mom, Rittenberg.
No team is too big to fail and the reality is that OSU and Meyer have two very big hurdles to clear:
First, Tressel has set the bar impossibly high; benefiting from a Big 10 that was in a decade-long malaise. With a resurgent Michigan, a competitive Wisconsin, and a Penn State that appears poised to recover faster than expected, Urban will be hard-pressed to meet unrealistic OSU fan expectations. When Meyer isn't able to run off 7 game winning streaks against Michigan and being the annual presumptive Big 10 champion, I wonder how much love he'll be getting from an OSU fanbase spoiled by an unprecedented decade of success.
Second, Meyer does not have a great track record with running a tight ship and with the NCAA spotlight on OSU during their probation, they don't have a large margin for error. They trip up again and the NCAA will have to come down hard on them and we'll see how fail-resistant they are then.
Your comments in this thread are deadly accurate in my opinion Ferris. I live in the belly of the beast (well actually in the throat - Cleveland area) but your assessment of their expectations are spot-on. A month or so ago WKNR (ESPN radio in Cleveland) had a listener poll up and here was the question:
"How many NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS do you think Meyer will win over the next 10 years?
The consensus answer was three. Some said as high as five/six and the low was one/two. They are EXPECTING to win 1/3 of all National Championships in the next decade.
Do they have a fan base with unrealistic and largely unattainble expecations? I'll say.
The path of logic that OSU fans follow is easy to see if you read OSU forums or blogs. It usually looks like this -
1. Urban Meyer > Jim Tressel
2. Ohio State > Florida
3. Urban Meyer + Florida = 2 National Championships
4. Urban Meyer + OSU = WORLD DOMINATION
I think there is a formula for this. Oh yes, here it is...
How many NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS do you think Meyer will win over the next 10 years?
This is delusional on so many levels. First, why would anyone in Ohio even maintain the slightest expectation that Urban Meyer will still be coaching in Columbus 10 years from now? Ohio is that much better a job than Florida. I don't think so. If Meyer has proven anything, it's that he gets antsy for a new challenge pretty easily. If he has success early and the Brian Kelly experiment in South Bend flames out, I can totally see Notre Dame finally relenting and rolling the Brinks truck up to Urban's front porch, begging him to save the Irish, and him accepting.
I just think it's hysterical that people look at Hoke and think he's Lloyd Carr reincarnated, all evidence to the contrary. Granted, do I expect Michigan to turn around and run off a big streak of wins against Ohio? No. But I'll bet that Hoke and his coaching staff will be able to keep their record around .500 against OSU. I think we're on the cusp of another 10 Year War (although it will probably be more like a 4 or 5 Year War).
So Rittenburg considers Washington to be a "brand name" football program? I know a few Washington grads who'd laugh at this.
I just read this as OSU didn't get hit with tough enough sanctions and got extremely lucky to have Urban Meyer floating around just as they fired Tressel.
"the fundamental theme is that anyone can be brought down. Programs had plummeted because of a lot less than what had transpired at Ohio State. " - from Rittenberg's article
While this is true, it is much more about how quickly programs are able to heal from these wounds, if you will, which is tied to their ability to recruit players and hire talented personnel to coach those players, even in the face of sanctions. Ohio did go 6-6 in the regular season and lost the Gator Bow l to an equally awful Florida team, but even in the face of scholarship restrictions, formal NCAA discipline and shame, they can hire Urban Meyer and be talked about as being a possibility for the conference championship game...if they were allowed to play in it this year, that is.
USC's relative dominance of the Pac-12 South Division has continued with little interruption in the face of sanctions, and again, I believe much of it has to do with getting the talent on and off the field as well as being a name among schools. They still ran away with a division that they could not represent in a title game last year.
Less-endowed programs without the resources of an Ohio or Michigan or USC would suffer greatly and suffer for a long time, I believe, under the same scenario of being hammered by staff turnover and formal NCAA sanctions simply because they do not have the budgets and backing of larger, more storied programs. Like so many smaller companies (if we're going to use corporate analogies), they are also far more sensitive to changes in recruiting patterns, talent shifts, and the like, as well as more constrained by budget considerations that put the A-list talent effectively out of reach. There are programs that were names back in the day that wallow in obscurity now for this very reason, in fact. If a smaller school had to can their Tressel, there is no guarantee of replacing it with like talent, whereas an Ohio can get Urban Meyer. They may succeed, but the success is based on far more fragile footing.
that is all I have to say regarding Rittenberg's article.
Don't really care about Ohio so much, either.
I'm sure he would have said the same about Michigan before RR. But as we all know, it doesn't take much to fall off the ledge for a few years. Now, is OSU too big to fail consistently? Probably. Not many traditional powers have had down-swings that lasted more than a few seasons. Notre Dame is one of the head-scratchers, but even then, they've had some BCS seasons sprinkled in here and there.
Now, can OSU fail? Yes. Will they? Probably not. And I think we can always count on OSU having very good players.
I have a friend down here in FL, who is a gators (fairweather) fan, and he only reminds me of our loss to Appalachian State as the down period for Michigan, that moment when Michigan was suddenly irrelevant. When I told him that it was that year we beat his Tim Tebow lead Gators, he was shocked..the RR era goes on deaf years to a lot of college football fans..to us Michigan fans, it was hell. I guess what im saying is that people won't look at this season as OSU losing because most of their media attention was focused on the violations of a power house program. Now they have Urban Meyer and everything "Pryor" meant nothing unless they blow it with a couple bad seasons, which is entirely possible.
Just like the all the banks that were also deemed "too big to fail", tOSU essentially got a bailout from the NCAA in the form of a slap on the wrist. Don't worry tOSU!! After next season you can go back to your annual bowl/playoff appearances, and you won't have to dwell on past mistakes or learn from them!!
What's your definition of slap on the wrist? It appears it's anything short of the death penalty.
Is Texas too big to suck? Or Oklahoma? Or Florida?
Texas was bad the past 2 years. Oklahoma was bad most of the 90s. Florida has been bad the last two years...
Rittenberg has some OK opinions but this one is pretty dumb.
Ohio sucks.
How OSU successfully argued that JT the individual deserved what he got, but the JT the OSU football coach didn't do anything wrong, is totally beyond me.
Like penalties for like offenses? All USC got hit with was that someone should have known something, and they got killed. In OSU's case, the head of the program admitted to knowing and covering up! That is a FAR bigger infraction that got a much smaller penalty to the program. (JT's show-cause and the player suspensions are individual penalties that were 100% appropriate.) The scholarship losses amount to nothing, as most programs are that far below their allotment every year; I believe OSU has averaged using fewer schollies over the past few years.
"Give a Shit' in that butt-ass team from Columbus. Nor that ass-in-hand butt-ass team from E. Lansing. They are all classless losers that try to win at any cost. I have far more value in the integrity of MIGHTY MICHIGAN than I do in the shit-talking rhetoric of shitty-ass programs that don't have any idea of what it is to cultivate boys into men in an honest fashion than to listen to the banter of some guy trying to get everyone to read his columns at any cost(run-on sentence). It's just like reality TV. Fuck em. We will win in the end just like teen wolf.
I admire your verbage and candor Sir.
Weather forecast for La Paz, 55 degrees and partly sunny.
Slightly OT, but, am I the only one that thinks the notion of "too big to fail" is absolutely retarded? Yet it get repeated in the media all the time. The stupidity is just too much sometimes.