Pat Fitzgerald to be a keynote speaker at Exposure U
a tool but he seems to know a good opportunity when one presents itself. At least he isnt too proud...
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I'm with ya. He's always come across as a class act to me.
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not I...
Bad moment for Fitz but he isn't a Michigan hater and he respects our school.
Have exchanged a couple of emails with him and he seems a thoughtful man and a good person.
I knew I always liked that dude (his jumping antics in the 2013 game notwithstanding). He has the stones to show up and speak at Jimmy's camp which is more than we can say for the SEC pussy's down south.
If we are going to criticize the south, let's do it correctly. /s
#ImOldTooGetOffMySpellingLawn
You beat me to it.
to the pussies again... sigh.
beaten a few (dozen) pussies in my lifetime. /s
And I just received an email from my daughter's soccer coach letting us know that the (participation) "trophy's" are available for us to pick up.
I suspect the whole 'Everyone who shows up gets a trophy" thing was started by trophy manufacturers.
When you make a good, quality trophy in the USA, they may take time and you have a decent business making several trophies. When you make them in China, you get hundreds of thousands of cheap pieces of shit that have to be moved. Everyone gets a trophy, yay! (Yes, even you!)
Give them certificates of participation, maybe with a "gold" emblem, and call it a day.
Yes. "Pussy's" is a possessive form, to which "down south" is attached. So a "pussy's down south" would be a pussy's...pussy?
Looks like Michigan and NU are forming a sort of academic über-alliance to take on the football world. I like it.
now faithfully recruiting decent talent and over achievers at what is the single hardest school in the B10 to recruit to, and lacking in fans/$/national rep that most of his competitors have. give the guy his due, aside from one silly jiump, he's top notch. think of what he could do if he was at an SEC school, no limits, lots of $ and booster 'help', the guy would be winning championships.
that is the exact hard part. purdue, illinois, minnesota are all decent colleges, but when it comes to athletics they can take anyone who can academically fog a mirror (okay, not quite). NU, not so much.
comparing to standford which had a 90K seat stadium which is now a beautiful new 50K capacity stadium, a much larger endowment and its in california, a hot bed of talent. NU has a stadium that seats less than i'd guess many high schools in texas.
I guess it's the difference between having a better product to sell (Northwestern academics, stable coaching staff, Chicago) and a smaller market (prospects able to qualify for Northwestern academically), versus having an inferior product (meh academics, high staff turnover, campus in a cornfield) but a larger market (prospects able to qualify at, say, Illinois).
i'm kind of fond of corn fields, but yeah, all else right on.
Good for him. If you are going to make this a real event and not just a middle finger to the SEC, you need legitimate local coaches to come in and treat it as such. This is a nice addition.
vaguely like Val Kilmer in the article pic.
I think it is great that he coaches at the school he played for, even though there might be better opportuniities out there for him. I have an awful lot of respect for that. Unless they are playing Michigan, I can't think of a time when I don't root for Northwestern to win.
when they play Northwestern?
Kind of like with USC. I'll root hard for them when they play Notre Dame. But the rest of the year? Screw 'em.
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In many ways, Fitzgerald is a NW version of Harbaugh. He is coaching his alma mater, is fiercely competitive and cares about educating his players. If he had ended up taking the Michigan job when it was available a few years ago, I don't think he'd have any critics here.
Like Harbaugh, he has a lot of personality quirks. The things we love to criticize from the "other side of the fence" would be "endearing qualities" if he was on "our" side.
I disagree. Fitzgerald coaching here would be just like Hoke coaching here. You can be endearing and care about educating your players etc. etc. but it only goes so far as long as you're getting 5-7 to 7-5 type seasons. Getting the monkey off your back and winning a bowl game might be fine at Northwestern but Michigan has different athletic standards like winning big ten/national championships.
You do realize that he's at Northwestern, right? And you do realize that Northwestern competes in the BIg Ten and not in the MAC, right? And you do realize that winning ten games at Northwestern is like winning a wrestling match with one hand tied behind your back, right?
Fitzgerald fielded a team that put up double-digit wins in 2012, including a bowl win over an SEC team. And they lost two games on Hail Marys that year (including their loss to Michigan). Fitzgerald (and his mentors Gary Barnett and Randy Walker) is the reason why Northwestern now considers 5-7 to be a down year.
Greg Schiano won 11 games and Hoke won 12 games. He won 10 games once with a really easy schedule when he beat one team in the big ten with a winning record. He's gone 5-7 the past two years and our crappy team still beat them both times. I'm sure he's a good guy and is a good fit for Northwestern who doesn't really care if they win championships or not but he's been at 7 wins and under 6 of 9 years he's been there. He was a hot commodity in 2008/2009 but now not so much.
had some underachieving teams relative to expectations recently. I think the difference between him and say Hoke or Schiano is that the coaching fraternity seems to universally respect him as a leader and football mind, former coaches and players who know the game seem to think he's really good, and his players seem to love to play for him. The latter may have been true with Hoke too but I don't know about Schiano.
Anyway, it feels to me he's a much more respected commodity than his record would indicate, or perhaps better said: he's highly thought of in spite of his record. Perhaps he shouldn't be.
Pat Fitzgerald is the all time winningest coach in Northwestern football history with 60 wins. His 30 Big Ten conference wins are the most in school history.
Damn. Just damn.
Fitzgerald is one of my favorite non-Michigan college football coaches. Happy to hear that he isn't among the outraged crowd.
Not saying he's the best coach, but he's pretty much a Michigan type personality (whatever that means) without having any ties to Michigan.
I've always liked having a cordial relationship with N'Western. They're not a threat and they accept the little brother role. I know late in his career Carr used to recommend guys who couldn't come to Michigan to go to NW and play for Fitzgerald.
May have had to do with feeling bad about Randy Walker, but still...Fitzgerald was always class and there always seemed to be a nice relationship there between the programs.
If you're a good enough coach you can still win at hard to recruit to places. Harbaugh had 8 or more wins 2 of the four seasons he was at Stanford. James Franklin had 9 wins 2 of the three years he was at Vanderbilt.