Any long term job in SEC/B1G is better than jobs in other conferences. Well, as long as you aren't required to win, anyway. Some fanbase are seriously gonna have to realign their program expectations.
***2023-24 College Football Thread***
- Thread starter Jer
- Start date
Guess he was serious about not going to WVU
Now he won't get the chance to go to Morgantown. Good riddance to that uppity POS
Edit: people already beat me to it
Good time to get out -- right before the real responsibilities kick in.
No, its not just going to be 13 Indiana's... but its gonna to be 5-8 Kentucky's. A good 8-5 program but one that gets curb stomped every time they step up.
Realistically, everyone south of Michigan State / Wisconsin and maybe UCLA that is probably their ceiling. Which hey, is not bad.
I'll take an 8 win season every freaking day.
But there is a clear line of difference.
Realistically, everyone south of Michigan State / Wisconsin and maybe UCLA that is probably their ceiling. Which hey, is not bad.
I'll take an 8 win season every freaking day.
But there is a clear line of difference.
For the most part, yep. It'll be tOSU, Michigan, USC, Oregon, maybe Washington and PSU, fighting for it every year with a solid middle tier trying to break through but with little luck most seasons.
Would it be a surprise if everyone in the PAC was broke? Constantly over promised revenue that never materialized. Hard to budget that way.
I just don’t see a difference between the middle and bottom in that league. It’ll be 5-6 teams that people care about and the rest will be an afterthought.
I don’t see wins as a metric of the quality of a team. See Iowa this year.
What I see as a middle tier team is one that can play with the upper tier and win one every now and then. I don’t see anyone outside the top 5-6 able to play with those top 5-6. That’s what the Big10 has been lacking and will continue to lack IMO. The top tier will go undefeated against the rest of the conference and losses will only come between those top tier teams.
Wisco has beaten Michigan 3 out of their last 5. Iowa has beaten PSU 2 out of their last 3, and has wins over each of Michigan, tOSU, and PSU in the last 7 years. Michigan St. has won 2 out of their last 4 vs. Michigan. UCLA has won 2 out of their last 5 vs. USC.
Even many of the losses by the lower-tier team have been in close, hard fought games.
I totally agree that the top tier of the new B1G will be on a different level and the conference title will be a race between them most years. But saying the conference won't have a middle tier because nobody is ever able to beat, or even play with, those top 5-6 teams isn't backed up by recent reality.
One other thing that no one really knows for sure yet is just how much the travel is going to affect those games. Typically teams from the big ten who travel west don’t perform well and vice versa. Will make the schedule home/away matter quite a bit more than years past.
I would add that a 8-4 big 10 west team likely will go 5-7/6-6 with the new schedules. Even though it's only a couple extra losses, the perception of the team is changed dramatically
Appreciate your insight here. Perhaps I'm being too biased on the last two years. I just don't see how they year after year compete for a top 3/4 B1G finish in a conference with OSU, UM, Ore, Wash, USC, and PSU. All of those schools have bigger national brands, are located in better markets, and have sustainably stayed in that elite tier.
Just feels like to me that you can go 6-6 a lot of years with the occasional 9+ win season when the schedule breaks right. 2010-2015 MSU was ELITE under Dantonio and Kenneth Walker was a freak in 2021. Since 2015, MSU's median record is 6-6..
MSU to me is in the tier with UCLA, Iowa, Wisconsin, and maybe Nebraska (Their "brand" is still high somehow). MSU is 5-5 over the last 10 against both UW and Iowa and 4-6 against Nebraska.. The right coach CAN make the leap, but it sure seems to me that they are a lateral job to ISU if expectations are to repeat what Dantonio was doing..
Yeah I don’t disagree with a lot of that, I do think that recency bias has you a bit here though. Outside the last two seasons Sparty pretty much dominated Michigan 10-4, Washington was very average before penix, USC was outright bad and still can’t defend anyone. Really the only consistently excellent teams have been OSU and Oregon.
Football is very cyclical, pre dantonio if anyone would have said sparty would have gone on the run they did no one would have believed it. Same way if you told someone in 2009 that USC would be irrelevant for a decade. The advantage that middle and upper middle tier big ten teams have is that the infrastructure and resources are there so that if the right staff is in place the team can rise rapidly. Might not be able to sustain it but it’s there.
***BTW your 6-6 record since 2015 for sparty is super misleading due to the covid year and dantonios one wild 3-9 season. Take out covid and we have only season with fewer then 7 wins. Also not sure why you picked 2015 as your start date considering the fact that we had 4/5 seasons of 11 or more wins before that with the same coach unless you were just trying to separate out the “elite” years like you mentioned but that’s some real selection bias.
It's a good point, and like it or not, the Big 12 will need a team or two to consistently win and then win CFP games moving forward. I just hope ISU is one of them lol.
Side note, I feel like Utah is a bit like Clemson of old when "Clemsoning" was a thing. Utah is really good, and as a program they have been for quite some time. But as you said, they always have a game or two every year where you just go, "Huh?"
Hot take here, and I honestly don't think it's that hot but someone will take it that way. I think the Big Ten is getting blue blood USC in name only. I don't think USC (on the field) belongs in that premier group of Ohio State, Michigan and Oregon and really even Washington. They are a good team and program, but upper-echelon for the past 15 years? Nope. And as long as Riley is there, they will have an insane offense but no defense.
I see them more like Penn State but possibly even a tiny step below that. They will beat the teams they should for the most part (will lose plenty against the Wisconsins and Iowas too imo) and lose a lot of games against the ones I listed above. I also don't think people are truly factoring in the travel piece of these new conferences. Not the flight time itself, but the time zone differences and what that does to your internal clock.
I see them more like Penn State but possibly even a tiny step below that. They will beat the teams they should for the most part (will lose plenty against the Wisconsins and Iowas too imo) and lose a lot of games against the ones I listed above. I also don't think people are truly factoring in the travel piece of these new conferences. Not the flight time itself, but the time zone differences and what that does to your internal clock.
