On life, love, and chasing that next Cig.
Even if he gets to six wins, does Braun survive? New stadium coming at some now-undefined time “next year.” –NUDave
Buffkomodo: I mean, they’ve given you much more
to cheer for than they did last season. They’re better and more competitive than I thought they’d be. You’d be firing a guy who went bowling two out of his 3 years. The normal Northwestern boom/bust cycle feels in line. I guess…what are you trying to improve on?
AlmaOtter: Even if Northwestern loses out, Braun will still have equaled Fitz’s first three years in conference wins. And even if Northwestern loses out, Braun will have surpassed Fitz’s last three years of conference wins by two. He’s fine.
misdreavus79: Wasn’t Northwestern projected to win 3 games or so? If that’s the case, winning 6 should not lead to him getting fired. I don’t see how it would be reasonable to fire him after exceeding expectations by twice the amount he was expected to win.
BoilerUp89: Unless the administration hates him Braun should already be back next year.
Larry31: If not, I think most Maryland fans would be happy to do a coach trade.
RockyMtnBlue: I would certainly think so. Northwestern isn’t going to be the second coming of Ohio State in the modern college football landscape, and while dozens of teams have tried the last few years, only Indiana has pulled an Indiana. If Braun makes a bowl game without a home field, that’s actually pretty good.
HoustonBoiler: What misdreavus79 said.
WSR: Probably. It’ll give them just enough cover to not have to re-hire Fitz. For now.
MNW: Man, if I flipflop on this, I’ll have NO credibility, huh?
Eh. What do I give a shit?
Get to a bowl game this year and I’ll begrudgingly accept it. I still think he’s in a little over his head with clock management and in-game, and there needs to be a change at offensive coordinator. But the defense looks improved under Tim McGarigle. The identity is still there. People seem to like him. Hovering around a bowl game is probably enough. Such is life at a have-not.
And it’s probably not a dagger in the heart of the program, right?
Since Florida is in the middle of a Nebraska style slide to the bottom, and LSU is now attempting to start the same, is the SEC trying to emulate the B1G now? And what is the SEC equivalent of each B1G school? Tennessee = Nebraska (the Blanche Dubois’s of each conference), and Arkansas = Penn State (both scandal-riffic), and Vandy = Northwestern (private schools that are blind squirrels that every so often finds a nut) are obvious ones. But what about the rest of the schools? –jimwchi
Buffkomodo: I mean the SEC is moving to 9 conference games. One real issue the SEC refuses to deal with is that…at the end of the year the SEC will be .500 in conference games. Someone has to lose. Schools with too much money and too weak of an athletic department/management and too much input from donors and you get messes like: Indiana basketball, Florida football, LSU football, Nebraska football, picking it up yet? In a way, the best place to be right now is a school with top tier spending ability and low expectations. You can turn that around in a hurry.
Indiana’s SEC equivalent is…Hell I don’t know. We’re a one of a kind and I don’t care to think hard enough to answer that creatively.
misdreavus79: Emulating, not so much. Finding out what life is like when all the advantages don’t stack in your favor because now other schools can pay players legally and can pay coaches bucketloads of money too? Yeah that’s the one. As per which SEC school Penn State is most aligned to? I don’t know, whatever team beats everyone else but loses to Georgia and Alabama almost every year.
Larry31: Looking at the current standings, Maryland is solidly in South Carolina-Auburn territory. With NIL and transfers, gone are the days when Alabama could stash 4-star linemen in the 2-deep and 3-deep. Bench players will leave for a lesser team to get money and playing time in return.
RockyMtnBlue: OSU = Georgia. They’re the king. They don’t win it every year, but any year they don’t it’s a surprise. Texas = Michigan. Excellent academics. Smug AF. Magnets for talking heads despite neither program being in the same zipcode as “national title contender”. Texas A&M = MSU. Cows. Growy things. Horrible inferiority complex about sexier, older brother in state. Mizzou = Iowa. Tell me Hawkeyes-on-my-belly doesn’t scream University of Missouri to you. I guess Alabama is Oregon? It feels stretched, but they are the “other” perennial power in the conference.
HoustonBoiler: Hmmm … a SEC school that is right now very good in basketball but shitty in football. Sounds like Kentucky = Purdue.
MNW: Thank you for doing the work for me, would you like to run off tackle empire dot blogspot dot biz?
I was going to say Mississippi State under Leach for Indiana, but Cig actually put it all together. Otherwise no title since 1941 for Clanga, which is hilarious. Those Leach teams would’ve made a 12-team though, right? RIP, King.
So now Minnesota is Mississippi State. I would say Ole Miss because the Rebs’ last conference title is 1963, but Ole Miss football is fun. So actually, Indiana can be Ole Miss and Minnesota can be Clanga. Have a blast in Starkvegas, WSR.
WSR: I’ve had that trip planned since 2018, including where I’m eating before my flight back out of Memphis. Which obviously means the games will get cancelled.
Does Curt Cignetti’s new contract include access to someone who knows how to make fake red hair coloring look real? –SeeJayBee
Buffkomodo: His contract includes a magical lamp with a genie inside that will grant him anything he wants (definitely procured from Cuban). So sure.
misdreavus79: It includes more money than I’ll ever see so there’s that.
Larry31: Cignetti is definitely going into Coach K territory when it comes to bad dye jobs.
RockyMtnBlue: I’m shocked he even bothers. He wins. Google him.
HoustonBoiler: I really don’t care if Coach Cignetti dyes his hair or not. If he does, let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out like this.
Which B1G head coach would be a TV minister in a different life? And why is PJ Fleck the correct answer? –HoustonBoiler
Buffkomodo: That or ABY convention keynote speaker.
AO: PJ Fleck would be an amazing and beloved local youth pastor. Fickell would be a dour but powerful bishop in Rome. Bielema would be a megachurch minister with serious scandals in his past. And Schiano would be preaching the prosperity gospel and weirdly getting into crypto.
misdreavus79: Every single coach would be a great TV minister, because you need to have a certain level of [insert thing here that would get me put on a list] in order to be able to coach college football. This is also required in order to be a TV minister.
Larry31: Churches still remain some of the most segregated organizations in America. Even though I fit solidly into the old white guy demographic, I have personally known for years the former minister for the Odenton Church of God [https://www.ocgministries.church/] and attended his retirement service. However, I was forced to go to St. Mary of the Mills Catholic Church by my mom in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Things were different then. We walked through the segregated “Black” part of town right by the recently closed “Blacks only” school to get to our mostly White Catholic Church. This is an experience that I still hold dear because of the contrast between the common decency exhibited by folks in this neighborhood that were discriminated against versus the institutional racism that existed at that time.
Having grown up in a county that has been minority-majority for over fifty years and having attended many different churches, I can confidently say predominantly White churches celebrate the glory of God much differently than predominantly Black churches. For the uninitiated, here is an ever-so-slightly comedically embellished version of Black church from blackish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnSw9sTyUZw
PJ definitely works for some folks. But, I’ll go with Locks for those folks who are looking for something different than what Peej can offer..
RockyMtnBlue: I read AO’s answer. I can’t follow that.
HoustonBoiler: IMHO, it’s PJ Fleck though I readily admit that misdreavus79 makes a solid point.
WSR: Luke Fickell would be an amazing evangelical preacher. Just give him money and you’ll be prosperous. Promise! Is it in football wins? No, but you’ll have selflessly given and that’s a reward of its own.
MNW: Incredible Dan Lanning disrespect here. That dude has absolutely spun around a chair, sat down backwards on it, and told a room of bored teenagers that Herod took the Pharisees -7.5 against Jesus.
We have seen 2 HCs with success the previous years fired mid season on a down year. How much can be attributed to the delusional belief the Indinia unicorn can be readily repeated (new HC and instant success)? How much of this can be attributed to deep pocket donors delusional belief that just throwing $15-20M at NIL will instantly yield a Natty contending team?
If either is a factor, how many failed hirings will it take to end this delusion? –ProveIt
Buffkomodo: Hiring coaches is HARD. Indiana broke everyone’s brain because on the surface, it should be simple. Hire a good coach and spend at a top 15 level and you can compete for a title. Right?
No. Hiring coaches is HARD. You need fit of competent coaching, aligned fanbase results, donor desires, and university expectations. That said, if you aren’t getting the results you believe you want, don’t just keep things going. You can’t allow atrophy or indifference to set into the fanbase. You do need to make a move.
Part of the problem is that coach’s salaries have gotten SO out of control. If you can’t pay players, you can pay a coach $12 mill a year over 10 years and oh you can just call your megadonors and cover the 96 mill if you fire him in year two.
The whole system is fucked sideways and everyone is delusional. If the check is able to be cleared, fire the guys mid year. There’s always going to be another generation of coaches ready to take their shot. You can always place your bets at the Coaching Carousel Casino.
Oh and don’t get me started on donors and strings attached boosters….
misdreavus79: It’s delusional until it isn’t. Two years ago, it was delusional to think Curt Cignetti would be able to replicate his James Madison success at Indiana. But he did.
Part of running an athletic department is the notion of hope. Coaches get fired to give people hope, because once you lose a fan it’s really hard to get that fan back.
Let’s take Penn State as an example since that’s who I root for. I mentioned this the last time, but a lot of the folks that are now fondly looking back at Franklin’s tenure were the first to talk about how much of a not-so-great coach he was. After a certain point, accepting that builds apathy. And once you get apathy you start seeing empty stadiums, lost donations, and a program on the decline. So you fire the coach while the program is still salvageable, reset your clock, and, even if it leads to a couple mediocre seasons, you keep fans invested. And, if you get lucky, you hire a guy that doesn’t need a few seasons to get going and reaches the highs you’ve been aiming for.
So the delusion, so to speak, is all about keeping fans and donors engaged.
Larry31: Once upon a time, Muhammed Ali was so lightning quick that he would bait opponents into swinging for his cocky mocking mug by fighting with his hands lowered from his face, giving the illusion that his head was unprotected. Low and behold, many a less-talented boxer tried to imitate this unique and not replicable boxing style and got their heads bashed in.
Curt Cignetti and his Mark Cuban-financed team of Hoosiers are Muhammed Ali in this analogy. LSU will definitely be the dumb schleps trying to imitate Ali. PSU probably, but I think they get it right before LSU.
HoustonBoiler: I will agree with my esteemed Hoosier “writer” that hiring coaches is hard but add that it’s also a crapshoot. How many B1G or for that matter any power school have hired coaches over the past 20 years and how many of those coaches have competed for natty, i.e., made the BCS Championship Game, the 4-team playoff, or the 12-team playoff? Way, way more coaches have been hired than competed for a natty.
With Cignetti, Indiana has caught lightning in a bottle. With all of the high-level jobs open, I expect he’ll get another raise, perhaps two, before we reach mid-December. Yes, fans generally have very unrealistic expectations and Cig has thrown gasoline on the fire.
Where did I go wrong in life that I don’t get paid $50 million to not work like Brian Kelly and James Franklin? –WackerEraSurvivor
Buffkomodo: Genuinely had this thought the other day. But I work from home usually with a 124/78 BP. People don’t yell at me at work when things mess up and I don’t have message boards dedicated to telling the world I suck at what I do. I live in my house and am home for dinner 7 nights a week. My kids love me and allegedly so does my wife.
I coached with a guy who is cousins with Matt Canada. We had this very conversation. Basically, it is a good gig for the pocket book but after a couple divorces, 6 homes in 10 years, missing your kids lives, resenting communities when things don’t workout…I’ll pass.
AO: If you watched the fallout in the Ohio State fanbase last year re: Ryan Day and thought to yourself that it would be worth the money, I think you need to get your head checked.
misdreavus79: As to not repeat what the folks above me have said, I’ll say this: You don’t get the buyout without the burnout.
Larry31: James Franklin!?! Brian Kelly?1? Fuck them. They actually showed some semblance of competence and knowledge in a highly stressful and demanding job. No thanks. I’d rather go fully coked-out nepo baby like Hunter Biden or Donald Trump, Jr. where you can just pretend to be competent at something.
RockyMtnBlue: I don’t know you, but I suspect where you went wrong is you have a soul and you have decency. It’s ok. Learn from your mistakes. In your next life do it better (and by that, I mean worse).
HoustonBoiler: I think I want the huge buyout without the burnout and Larry31 is onto something with being a nepo-baby. It sounds nice in theory but could also be crappy. I wouldn’t know.
WSR: I made the choice to stop coaching and focus on accounting about 20 years ago. I think it’s time to take a hard look at the Biff Poggi approach and get back into it with inflation the way it is and how easy it is to get fired as a football coach.
MNW: Look at BK, humble-bragging about his immaculate blood pressure while my fat ass is taking meds (like Big Lou) and preparing for an inevitable stroke at about 54.
USC is travelling to Lincoln this weekend. For all the PSU and Wisconsin fans about to experience lasting program decline, let me spin you a story. The last time USC came to Lincoln, College Game Day was there. USC was ranked #1 and Nebraska was in the top 20. After the Nebraska program died a November night in Boulder in 2001… This was our chance to show we were back. Our shitty new coach we hired to replace the 9-3 coach we fired (2 seasons after playing in the national title game) devised a game plan not to win, but to try to keep the score close to keep us from being embarrassed. He succeeded at neither objective.
THAT WAS 2007.
In the following 17 seasons, we haven’t won a conference championship or been to the playoffs. And it ain’t happening this year.
My mailbag question: why are so many programs trying to be like us? We should be flattered, I suppose, but can’t anyone learn from our mistakes (even if we can’t)? –Exiled_In_VT
Buffkomodo: Every time a blue blood falls, Indiana basketball fans feel a little better.
misdreavus79: Looks like I’m going to be saying the same shit on repeat until the new coach gets hired: I do not know the future. It is quite possible Penn State sucks for all eternity after having fired Franklin. It’s quite possible that it may turn out to be the worst decision they ever made. It’s also quite possible that it plays out like Georgia, where the extra investment in the program, coupled with a coach that can fully leverage that investment, leads to finally being able to get over the hump. We’ll just have to see.
What I will say, however, is that anyone who seems convinced that either scenario is what’s going to happen, well, is probably as delusional as the people they’re accusing of delusion.
Larry31: Misdreavus’ first paragraph above is exactly right. But for every Georgia football and Indiana football success story there seems to be lots of Nebraska football, Georgetown Hoya basketball and Indiana basketball stories to go around. To OTE nation, what is the statistical ratio of dreamed of success versus repeated cycles of frustration? Hell, even a basketball blue-blood like UNC had two bad hires before settling down with Roy Williams after the retirement of Dean Smith. I’ll go with a ratio of 3:1 of no improvement to bad hires versus appreciable improvement hires. Maybe 4:1.
RockyMtnBlue: Have you ever read a single comment from Bagels Are For Champions? He’s not as unusual overall as he is at OTE. The “If we’re not national champions, we’re total losers and everyone deserves to be fired and then killed” is a much more common thought process than people think. When those people are athletic directors, or just wealthy enough to influence athletic directors, chaos ensues. Sometimes a fanbase (or at least a lot of it) can be cured of this sort of thing temporarily at least by a bad hire or two. I’m a lot happier about 8-4 seasons than I was before RichRod.
HoustonBoiler: A lot of good thoughts with which I agree have already been shared. I will add that no one wants to be 2008-2024 Nebraska, they want to be 1980s and 1990s Nebraska. Also, it’s easy for the fanbase to dream of 8-4 seasons when your team is doing poorly, but after several years of 8 or more win seasons, will you really be satisfied with that or will you desire to “take that next step.” Everyone wants that but there are only so many wins to go around. Fanbases do get spoiled.
AO: And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
