UCF's hiring of Dino Babers exposes the gutless cowardice of the B1G's also-rans

Submitted by stephenrjking on

The B1G-SEC contrast is overblown. The SEC is overhyped; we all know it. We're tired of it. I can't wait to hear about how Michigan's "brawn" will have trouble matching up to the "ESS EEE SEEE SPEEEED" in whatever bowl game we're in.

But there is one area in which the SEC clearly edges the B1G, and it's a huge, legit reason why the conference is consistently better than the B1G top-to-bottom: Mid-range SEC teams are willing to go to whatever lengths are necessary (perhaps, though a topic for another day, not entirely legal ones) to produce a winning football team. Mid-range B1G teams are not.

This has been exposed, again, by the poaching of Dino Babers by mid-major dumpster fire UCF. 

You know, Dino Babers. Art Briles disciple, who has the potential to introduce to the B1G a style of football foreign enough that wins are a likelihood just because teams won't be able to adapt. Dino Babers, head coach of in-our-backyard Bowling Green. Dino Babers, who has more wins over B1G teams than... current, not-fired Purdue coach Darrell Hazell.

I mean, c'mon, Babers beat Hazell in his own barn this year. He has clearly assembled a better program in a small college in a small town most people don't believe really exists. Why is Hazell still at Purdue and Babers coaching in Florida for a non-power-5 school?

Because, aside from the big boys at the very top of our conference, Big Ten teams are little more than callow lawn ornaments on the national football landscape. They're gutless. A bit of a buyout (Hazell) and they won't pull the trigger. A suggestion of continuity (Tracey "wait let's fire all of our coordinators now that I'm in charge" Claeys and Bill "Mac retread who didn't totally embarrass himself" Cubit) and they can't help but stay the course. A guy with a nice personality or program familiarity (Mike Riley, Paul Chryst) and he's a sure hire. 

The Big Ten isn't a disappointing conference because of talent drain or geography or NCAA bias or even cheating; it is a disappointing conference because half of the teams really don't care.

Dino Babers was in our backyard. He is 3-1 against B1G competition in the last two years. That he won't be on a B1G sideline next year is a travesty.

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stephenrjking

November 30th, 2015 at 1:17 AM ^

That's not a bad position, and perhaps my ferocity in the OP distracts from this. The B1G has a few solid teams (of course heavily skewed in the East) which keeps the schedule healthy, but having some no-threat loser programs to stomp on makes the season smoother. That's how FSU had so much success in the 90s, torching a pathetic ACC and playing two big games a year.

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CoachBP6

November 30th, 2015 at 1:22 AM ^

Great hire for UCF and I imagine, if he has a competent QB, his tenure at UCF will be very short. The great thing about this system is that it attacks every square inch of the football field. I personally like Briles approach to the system though as he puts much more emphasis on the run game. I do believe Babers will be successful.



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doggdetroit

November 30th, 2015 at 1:32 AM ^

I think the B1G has upgraded in terms of coaching in recent years:

OSU clearly upgraded from Tressel to Meyer
MSU clearly upgraded from Smith to Dantonio
Michigan clearly upgraded from Hoke to Harbaugh
PSU upgraded from Paterno to Franklin. (I'm not getting into whether Franklin is better than O'Brien, who left for the NFL, Franklin was a big hire at the time)
Indiana clearly upgraded from Lynch to Wilson
Minnesota upgraded from Brewster to Kill

The only downgrade is Riley at Nebraska. Jury is still out at Wisconsin but Chryst makes a lot of sense there for what UW wants to do. Ferentz has Iowa at 12-0. Fitz just won 10 games at NW with a win over the possible Pac 12 champs. He's also the best coach NW has ever had.

I expect Maryland to make a good hire. I think Rutgers can as well. Illinois and Minnesota were both led by interim ADs, hard to make a good hire in that situation, even more so considering the number of job openings. They did the right thing in retaining Cubit and Clayes.

I am with you on Purdue and Hazell who is a comical 6-30 and coming back for year 4, but to say that Purdue is a mid level B1G job would be incorrect. Purdue is easily the worst job in the league. If I'm Babers, I take the UCF job over the Purdue job and I don't hesitate.

Could Maryland have offered him? Maybe, but let's see who they end up with first. Rutgers just fired Flood, lets give them some time too. The B1G is trending upward regardless of what the lower tier teams are doing with their coaching searches.

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doggdetroit

November 30th, 2015 at 11:54 AM ^

In 8 seasons Parseghian was 36-35-1 overall and 22-31-1 against the B1G at NW. In 10 seasons, Fitzgerald is 70-55 overall and 36-44 against the B1G. The B1G numbers are similar but if you factor in that today's B1G is much more competitive than the B1G was in Parseghian's era, I think Fitzgerald comes out on top. Then again, I've only seen Fitz coach since I wasn't alive for the Parseghian era.

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McSomething

November 30th, 2015 at 10:45 AM ^

And that's why their record is seen as a soft 12-0. It is the first 12-0 in program history, yet nobody is really talking about it. If this were before 2011? Yeah, it would be something worth mentioning, but not in 2015 with the list of teams you mentioned omitted from their schedule.

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Lionsfan

November 30th, 2015 at 1:48 AM ^

Man the Big Ten just can't win. They hire hotshot MAC guys fresh off a year or two of success (Hazell, Beckman) and we complain that nobody is using BTN money to poach conference coaches like the SEC does.

But then when teams do hire other conference's coaches (Chyrst, RIley), people *still* give them shit for "playing it safe".

PS - There's a reason it's called MACtion and not SEC-tion, or ACCtion, etc. etc.

PPS - Art Briles' success is 100% due to coaching in Texas. Being a disciple of his means squat

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MI Expat NY

November 30th, 2015 at 9:57 AM ^

This is exactly right (well, until the last point).  Dino Babers may be a great coach.  But his two year run at BG after Dave Clawson had righted that ship is hardly proof of that.  He took over a team that won the MAC the year before.  He stayed two years.  Who knows if he knows how to run a program.  So he won three games in two years against the dregs of the Big Ten?  That makes him automatically the next big thing?

A Big Ten team hires him and he is just the latest MAC coach to make the jump to mid-level or worse Big Ten job.  The odds say he'd lose, and lose big.

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Monocle Smile

November 30th, 2015 at 1:53 AM ^

Are you Babers' cousin or something? I really don't feel like this forum is the place for bitching about the rest of the B1G. None of us can do anything about this, nor are we really interested, judging from the posts.

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Mr. Owl

November 30th, 2015 at 2:08 AM ^

Maybe I missed it, but I only have one question:

How does the hiring of a coach by an ACC team prove that SEC teams are more aggressive in coaching hires?

I'm not saying he shouldn't have been considered by Big Ten teams, nor that SEC teams aren't insane with their short-term memory.

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gwkrlghl

November 30th, 2015 at 5:24 AM ^

Wait, so now we're upset with Big Ten teams for NOT hiring the sexy MAC coach of the year? We always give the lower tier B1G schools crap for just hiring whichever MAC coach happens to go 7-1 in conference that season so we can't also be upset when UCF takes one.

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Mgoscottie

November 30th, 2015 at 6:15 AM ^

is pretty bad this year, if we were objective about it we would have a hard time arguing about how Florida or Alabama is good enough to make the playoff in spite of winning the conference.  

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Ghost of Fritz…

November 30th, 2015 at 2:14 PM ^

M does lose some highly rated guys to other schools with bagmen,

I am NOT arguing that M should cheat.  I was responding to the OP who argued that the SEC is better not due to bagmen, but due to hiring the best coaches.  I am saying that the SEC bagmen factor is part of it too.

Moreover, this year Big Ten is better than the SEC

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Ty Butterfield

November 30th, 2015 at 6:46 AM ^

I don't give two shits about other Big Ten teams. I hope they all suck. I don't cheer for them in non conference games or bowl games. This isn't the south where we are hoping to change the outcome of the War of Northern Aggression by winning football games.

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J.

November 30th, 2015 at 9:28 AM ^

Or, Michigan could just schedule as challening a non-conference slate as possible and be done with it.  I do not understand this SEC/Pac 12 thing about cheering for the other teams in the conference.  With the exception of the occasional 'cool story' (e.g., Nebrasketball in games not involving UM), I never cheer for a B1G team.  The closest I'll ever come is hoping that one specific team loses (e.g., Sparty vs. OSU last week or Sparty vs. Iowa this week).  That doesn't mean I'm cheering for the other one, and I'm certainly not cheering for them in the non-conference.

I hope the Big Ten goes 1-9 in the bowl games (the one win had better be obvious :-).  I don't care a whit about the national perception of the conference; Michigan isn't going to be left out of the playoff as a Big Ten champion with a respectable record, so we don't really need the rest of the conference to look good.

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UNCWolverine

November 30th, 2015 at 7:02 AM ^

I understand the spirit of your post and I don't necessarily disagree that overall the SEC does care more about this game of football than does the big ten from top to bottom. But at the top and even into the middle I think the big ten programs do care and have shown that. So Purdue is our Vanderbilt, and our conference's 7th best team just threw a bunch of money to steal their coach. Indiana scared the shit out of great teams, Minney is solid, etc. I think you're short selling our conference a bit by focusing your argument on purdue.

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Swayze Howell Sheen

November 30th, 2015 at 7:13 AM ^

A better post would be about the insanity of firing winning coaches. The mentality you ascribe to the SEC I believe is correct - win at all costs, even if you have to fire a guy who is a winner (but isn't getting you to the national championship game); look at what happened to Miles (almost) and Richt. 

However, the reality is that firing a winner is almost certainly going to get you someone worse. The itchy-trigger-fingered money-bagmen of the SEC are an impatient lot, and my guess is that over the long haul, that makes them have worse coaches and outcomes than those with a little patience.

As for the Big Ten, it is kind of an amazing place right now: Urban, Mork, and Harbs alone make it an elite conference. Throw in the renaissance with Ferentz and you have a pretty terrific group, one that is hard to match.

 

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jblaze

November 30th, 2015 at 7:23 AM ^

Should require a minimum total coaching salary in order to qualify for revenue sharing. That way, teams like Minnesota, Illinois, Rutgers... can't get away from being cheap.

The investment has to be forced, since those schools obviously don't care about winning and don't have the expectation to win.

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Kinda Blue

November 30th, 2015 at 7:40 AM ^

I also don't have a problem with any school committing to four years with a coach, but I was one of the folks that thought Rich Rod should have been given a fourth year. I certainly have no problem with Purdue giving a fourth year to their current coach over the MAC flavor of the month (when they just attempted that path with Hazell).

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Humen

November 30th, 2015 at 8:22 AM ^

As long as you can find a way to account for variables like having to start his 6th string MLB. I'm not disagreeing, but that's not so easy because AZ has had a weird season. They've been blown out multiple times but also beat a certain Utah team. Let's not apply the old transitive property...



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readyourguard

November 30th, 2015 at 7:42 AM ^

An old, established Big Ten school wasn't willing to go all "Dave Brandon" and hire a relative unknown, but a 35 year old program was willing to throw caution to the wind. I don't see an issue. Let's not forget, Brady Hoke found success in the MAC.

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bronxblue

November 30th, 2015 at 7:46 AM ^

I'm not sure UCF maybe getting a good MAC team's coach is a sign that the worst couple of teams in the conference don't care about winning. And the SEC has had some bad coaching signings just the same, plus some underpeforming guys sticking around (looking at you Les). There are crappy teams with bad hiring practices here, but that's true everywhere.

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n2b84u

November 30th, 2015 at 7:51 AM ^

New here, long time lurker.

Whats up with the inanity in the comments? The op has a good point. This sport is for our entertainment, and I for one would much rather have Michigan be playing good teams to make for a fun season to watch. I just can't get excited when playing shitty Illinois/Maryland teams. One of the other B10 teams absolutely should have made a run at this guy, he's going to do great things at UCF.

And that comment about how Purdue maintains its integrity by keeping academics high while sacrificing sports is laughable. You really don't understand how important collegiate sports are to big schools. The company line is academics come first, and they typically do. But money in the athletic departments at B10 schools goes a long way to that goal, and can be seen as just as important from the bottom line perspective.

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Wolvie3758

November 30th, 2015 at 8:25 AM ^

Up to Saturday there were FOUR BIG teams in the top 10...This week there will be 5 top 20 teams and  3 in the top 6? Disaapointing? I dont hink so

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chewieblue

November 30th, 2015 at 8:25 AM ^

Barbers comes in having done at BG, basically, what Hazel did at Kent. Why would Purdue sticking with a coach who basically got there like Babers did, be a terrible thing?

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State Street

November 30th, 2015 at 8:43 AM ^

OP is absolutely correct.  Arkansas would never settle for Darrell Hazell, let alone keep him employed for 5 years.  Vandy may have made a terrible hire with Derek Mason, but at least they are paying him $4 million to stink.  Hell even Mississippi State, arguably the second worst job in the league, employs one of the best coaches in Mullen.

The drive to win in the bowels of the SEC is real.  It is not real in the B1G.

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